Being weird to everyone and cool with it
I've been sitting with a thought for quite some time now.
A few weeks ago, I heard through the grapevine that someone had an unflattering opinion of me. Even worse, this person is a woman, a peer in an eccentric group. A group, one would assume, someone's weirdness would be accepted.
The weirdest person I know also happens to be the coolest, my favorite person, and my biggest inspiration, my big brother. I know I'll never be as cool as him, because I will never be accepted like he is. I have watched as we've grown, his weirdness being welcomed, appreciated, and even sought after. Mine, which I learned chiefly from him, was shunned in an effort to bully it out of me. A man's weirdness is embraced, a woman's, I think, is a sign of unconformity.
My unconformity is not seen as an “outside the box” “louder than life” essence; it is often judged by the women who have fallen victim to the internalized sexism and pressure to be small, not take up space, be sugar, not spice, everything nice, uniform and controlled by the confounding force of social media, and the money made off of making women hate themselves.
Everyone romanticizes being the weird and off-putting girl. The Zooey Deschanel, Phoebe Buffay, April Ludgate, and Wednesday Adams of the world. But no one stays awake at night hoping, praying, and yearning that they will never truly feel like they fit in somewhere, like they must earn acceptance by diluting themselves, that they never feel pretty enough to fit the social standards that grant you kindnesses from strangers and free drinks at the bar, and forever having a feeling that your friends don't really like you that much.
I've spent an eternity walking the line between too weird for the normies and too normal for the cool, interesting, on the fringe of society weirdos.
To strip weirdness down to its core, is it still weird if it is publicly accepted? Is the weird and off-putting girl on TV really weird and off-putting with her quirky bangs and bug eyes if shes on your Instagram feed and Pinterest boards?
Weird and alternative are often said in the same breath. Weird is different; in its nature, it is not accepted. So, is it cool to be weird now? The weirdness I felt shunned for growing up with was never cool; my crooked teeth and lengthy limbs were never truly accepted, and that is why it was weird.
The true, uncut, intimate, and raw weirdness isn't showing up in your feeds.
Just because my features don't show up on your feed doesn't really make it a reason for me to become less hospitable to you, and if it does, then get a life.
The world doesn't revolve around what's in your favor or worldview.
I spent so long, painfully, internalizing this, hiding my smile, changing my clothes 100 times before I walked out the door, but I feel less connected to that now. I enjoy being who I am, and I think you should revel in who you are, especially the parts that are least accepted. Those parts make you who you are, the draw of your essence, your uniqueness, the long line of love and lineage in your blood and bones that has built you.
They tell artists to make bad art to get better.
I think the same should go for personalities. Do things and have opinions that aren't fed to you through the ultra-processed machine of liking, sharing, pinning, and posting.
Be passionate about things no one else thinks about, dance often, laugh loudly, take up the most space, be radically kind, wear things that bring you joy, be thunderous and messy if the joy asks you to be, be present, just be strange, and let others do the same.
If not for purpose, for peace.
When I heard a girl, whose alternative and unique presence I have always admired, speak of my own intricacies negatively, that ugly, unabashed, impudent beast of self-hatred reared its big, ugly, animalistic head. Drooling and foaming off of the fuel of regressing myself into a defensive state of smallness and unworthiness once again.
Except this time, I kinda like my crooked teeth, the big scar down my back, the mole between my eyes, my bad taste in books, and my body proportions that just aren't quite right. After hearing this and sitting with it, I held the hand of the little girl who everyone found annoying in her search for attention, but that search was born from the suppression of my own weirdness and of everyone's attempt to bully it out of me.
Be weird, or don't be, it doesn't truly matter to me. If you call yourself weird, romanticize the weird girls, and keep your wardrobe off the main course, then actually accept the people you think are weird, but not in the way you're weird. Not in your “acceptable” version of weird, the real, raw weirdness.
Strike out,
Delaney Holman, Writer
