I re-watched the 1993 Nutcracker movie with my husband on Saturday, and it unlocked some core memories. I was not always the neon goth peacock you know and love (or at least tolerate), for a time growing up there was an attempt (that I fought at every conceivable event) to make me refined.
I was neither heard nor understood in my household growing up, and even less so at school, I got into physical fights, I used my words to lash out, I was being abused but could not articulate the depths and various methods from various perpetrators.
There got to be a point, in middle school, I want to say 6th or 7th grade, so around age 12, that my grandfather concocted a scheme to try to make me act the way they thought was good and appropriate. They roped in the mother of one of my friends / a teacher at the school (Mrs. G)
Thus began a half year after school ‘etiquette’ class, a few days a week instead of going home I’d stay after school with this (well meaning and beloved) teacher, trying to put me through elocution, manners, walking with the books on the head, the whole thing, think ‘A League of Their Own’ where they try to un-butch the girls.
My grandfather talked about perhaps having a ‘coming out party’; my great grandmother, ‘Flip’ was a venomous narcissist and never missed an opportunity to make digs about my upbringing, my behavior, and of course my weight. She stopped taking me to the pool at her country club because she was embarrassed by having a chubby great grandchild. I was still expected to learn how to assimilate into the country club format, even though I am diner coded.
This fight to make me a ‘young lady’ went on my entire childhood until at some point in my late teens my grandfather begrudgingly gave up on trying to make me classy.
The class however culminated in the most god awful ‘make over’ where they took me to an expensive boutique salon near my house, and got me a ridiculous hair-do with make up that looked like I was getting ready to take mall pictures, and to cap it off of course a trip to the ‘Dress Barn’ to get a hideous semi-formal dress so my family could take pictures and pat themselves on the back.
When I got home my grandfather asked my why I couldn’t dress like that all the time.
I hated it, every uncomfortable second, every huff and puff of the hair stylist and make up artist because I wasn’t skinny enough, and they didn’t know what to do with my hair with such a round face. They wanted to make me feel ‘normal’ by making me feel more alien than I ever had. The only silver lining was my friends mom, who always was in my corner.
Now a days, I am as weird as I want to be, very out loud and publicly, because being weird rocks, and no one else decides my life anymore.
EllyRox 