The Irrational Anxiety of Sticking Out

This post comes to you on the back of a brief conversation with a friend, as well as some other thoughts that I’d had anyway. And oddly enough, this isn’t quite so strictly about lolita fashion.

Once you grow used to wearing lolita fashion out and about, you quickly become fairly desensitised to it. Of course, we all still rationally realise that we stand out from the crowd, but it stops being so much of a bother. Skills such as blocking out the stares, walking away from rude people, focusing on the thing that you’re doing at the moment etc. become second nature. Crutches like headphones, sunglasses, and these days also masks help cope with the attention and keep yourself to yourself. So like with anything, things become easier with repetition and existing in lolita in a public space becomes a perfectly normal thing to do.

Given this - you’d really think that we’d be better with wearing other kinds of clothes that stand out, right? And yet I’m noticing that this isn’t necessarily the case.

Photo by Jan van der Wolf on Pexels.com

Sure, there are areas of overlap. Other types of J-fashion or certain styles that seem to blend with lolita in the eyes of the proverbial normies are much easier to cope with. I’ve seen plenty of lolitas indulge in fairy-kei, menhera or Western goth when they’re not in frills, and I myself am partial to some otome-kei and rockabilly/vintage fashions. These have a more obvious connection to the look we already have whilst in lolita, which helps to treat them almost as an extension of lolita.

However, once we hop over to certain other looks, suddenly this becomes an issue. Ball gowns or dresses that otherwise fall into formal wear/black tie are the most notable in this category. As lolitas we are very good at telling ourselves that we’ll wear this OTT JSK or OP to the next fancy tea party - but we struggle to find similar occasions for The Strawberry Dress, for example. We tell strangers on the street who ask (and ourselves) that we are the occasion, that we are enough of a reason to wear these dresses with loads of ruffles, bows, pintucks, lace and whatever else - yet somehow that doesn’t seem to hold true when the dress in question is more mainstream wedding guest fashion. Even though we might love these pieces equally well.

It did get me thinking about why that is. Why are we able to normalise one and not the other? Why can we bear the attention until we become accustomed to it with one, but struggle to apply ourselves like this to the other?

I’ve genuinely pondered that a lot over the last few years. Whilst for the most part my thoughts revolved around a different style, where the answer came more easily (i.e. a more revealing and conventionally sexy clothing where I just don’t want to deal with the male gaze and the sleaze that comes with it), this stumped me a bit once I realised that I had the same struggle with basically fancy normie wear. After eyeing Teuta Matoshi’s designs for months now and building myself to getting one as a 30th birthday present, the one thought that inevitably stops me is: where and when would I wear it? Masked under the guise of being sensible, this is a powerful question which in lolita helps me avoid impulse buys, but in this case serves to stop me from indulging in something fun altogether.

This is the one that I want. And given the type of lolita I wear, this feels extremely wearable. And yet knowing how instantly I'd get clocked for being 'too fancy for daytime' is a big source of anxiety.

The explanation as to why this happens that makes the most sense to me is that this involves a very different kind of judgement from bystanders. With lolita we know that there is a degree of judgement that we will have to accept, but also know that for the most part people seeing us are confused or just unsure of what it is they’re seeing. The countless questions of “What are you wearing?” and “What’s the occasion?” are all proof of that. With something like a ball gown people already know what it is. Which means they also know that this is something that would typically only make an appearance in a certain context and daytime usually isn’t it. Not only that, whilst people might make some positive assumptions or simply admire, some might take you to be a social media influencer - which in itself isn’t a bad thing, but it implies a certain degree of vanity, arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and generally that it isn’t a legitimate thing to be engaging with since it doesn’t seem like the wider public necessarily has a great opinion of social media influencers. Or is that just in my head? Judging by how many people I know who aren’t comfortable telling their friends or family that they create videos on YouTube or that they do well on their social media, surely those worries haven’t just come out of nowhere.

So here we are, practically coming full circle from our baby lolita selves when it was the thought of wearing frills and sticking out that induced anxiety strong enough to stop us from wearing a fashion we love. Knowing what I know now about wearing lolita out in public, I would totally tell my younger self anxious about being noticed that things will be fine and that there will be a day when she will treat these dresses like any other clothing. Is there a Paulina even further in the future who is wishing to say the same thing to me now about that Teuta Matoshi dress I’m eyeing so hard? Maybe. Quite possibly, actually.

Which means that the more appropriate question is: what do I have to lose if I don’t listen to her? And if you’re reading this and finding the whole idea relatable, regardless of what sort of clothing it’s about - what do you have to lose if you don’t face you anxiety and wear the clothes?