Rejecting Norms in Favor of Personal Expression

By Kennedy Stackowicz

Edited by Taylor Morgan

Yuliana Smug / @yulianabetinag on Pinterest

It’s time to say goodbye to the “clean girls” and the “coastal grandmas” of the world. Gone are the days of all these aesthetics, and it could not have come soon enough. 

Before we all hopped on social media, we were what we wore: the bands on our t-shirts, the earrings we found on our favorite trips, the wears on our shoes—that’s us. For a little while, we got tripped up. We became uber-concerned with other people’s perceptions of us. We became people we weren’t, because we thought we had to. We put our mom’s jewelry back in the box, and we all bought the same five pieces from Evry Jewels. Any deviations from this norm were considered weird and uncool.

Not anymore. Thankfully, authentic personal expression is on the rise, and it’s once again cool to be who you are. Those “cool girls” you see on Instagram now? They aren’t just being who they are—they are embodying that person to the fullest, and this is the only way to do it. “Do green and yellow look good together?” It doesn’t matter, as long as you like how they look. “Am I overdressed?” Not if you are wearing what you want to wear. The days of “What are we wearing?” are over. We are leaving this behind in favor of wearing whatever we want. 

If this doesn't convince you, perhaps having a better mood will. The International Journal of Medical and Health Research found that people who wear clothes they personally like report higher self-esteem and better mood regulation throughout the day. Why pass up a statistic like that? 

Who are you, and how do you express yourself through your style?