Alexis, the Girl Who Dresses Like A Slut: A Social Experiment

                                 possibly part of my new temporary "look"

I was considering that between some of the more flexible wardrobe items I own, a few I could borrow, and a few I could pick up cheaply with a miniscule amount of the money I've recently earned, I could make myself look really trashy for the first two weeks of classes next quarter. A few of the other students and professors, particularly those in the music department, will have been in classes with me prior to this and will wonder what the hell is up with my new haute couture, but most will be complete strangers to me, as this is a huge campus. They'll assume it's my normal style of attire. Impressions will be made on such. It will be interesting to see how those first impressions color my classmates'and professors'  perceptions and are or are not altered as I reveal myself to be the achiever that I normally am.

One aspect of trashiness not available to me is prominent display of cleavage. If you don't have it, it isn't an easy look to create on a shoestring budget.

I can store the trampy clothing in my dorm room and put it on at school so my parents will not have cause to wonder what the hell is happening with me. It's not that they would or even could prevent me from leaving the house in such raiment; it just gives them one less thing to gossip about  regarding me with their friends.. My dorm neighbors will wonder why I walk into my dorm room every morning looking relatively preppie and come out looking like a skank, but it will give their vacuous minds something to think about, as God and everyone else knows that they're certainly not thinking about their studies.

There's no real point to doing this except that I'm a bit tired of being invisible. Some might say being invisible is preferable to having everyone think you're a floozy, but I beg to differ. Besides, it's temporary.  I don't plan to dress in this manner every day all quarter. I'll apply the look judiciously if arbitrarily.

Then I'll store the streetwalker wardrobe away in my dorm romm. On random days of random weeks, I'll drag a few items of hussy apparel out and wear them again for no apparent reason. Then I'll go back to my ordinary preppie look. It will cause people to wonder about me, which at least means most of them will at least be aware of my presence. If they think I'm certifiably insane, I don't have a huge problem with it, as I happen to know that several of them are certifiable morons. They may not have been such before they arrived here, but the peculiar combinations of booze and drugs that entered their systems since showing up have rendered them as such.  So if  some of my classmates think I'm bat-shit crazy and I think some of them are idiots, it's a fair and just  case of reciprocal judgmentalism.

If this seems to be attention-seeking behavior, such is probably a reasonably accurate impression. I admit to going through an odd phase. I don't want a professor, when he reads my essay answer aloud, to announce that it was my test he was quoting. I  don't like it when I don't have time to straighten my hair and people comment on its extreme curliness. Not to be racist, but when I was little and my skin tanned in the summer (I no longer tan quite so readily, and I also apply sunblock because I know what the sun can do to unprotected skin) I fumed when people asked or assumed that I was bi-racial. I don't  want anyone to look at the scar that is still somewhat visible on my leg (I'm still applying Mederma faithfully, and I think it's still helping to cause the scar to fade, and at least the bone is perfectly straight now; the surgeons did a very nice job in that respect) that they usually don't have a chance to see, because in regular classes I wear clothing that covers it. I don't necessarily like being singled out by the professor as the only student in my music theory class with absolute pitch.

On the other hand, it doesn't bother me when grades are posted by the last four digits of student ID numbers, and the other students talk amongst themselves and decide the highest score has to be mine.  I don't mind it when the professors only ask me questions if they've exhausted every other poetntial source for an intelligent response. I don't care when the theory prof  writes sets of intervals or a line of  music on the board and asks everyone to come up with the interval or the melody without humming it aloud, but tells me I cannot anwer because it's too easy for me.  I'm not bothered  by being more skilled in a gym full of non-gymnasts.  It doesn't bug me if I get called out of my theory class because there's an accompaniment that the chamber choir accompanist cannot sightread.

There are areas, good or bad,where we all wish to fade into the woodwork, and there are other areas, sometimes not al that different than the ones we do not wish to be recognized for, for which  we're perfectly content to be be noticed. At times there's no logical explanation for the reason for which each falls into its respective category. It's intangible and inexplicable -- partly teen angst and  partly who we are, and that we cannot always impact the way we feel.

We can, however, impact what we choose to do about how we feel. I choose to look like an underaged nymphomanic if I so desire, and it is what I so desire [at school] at this time. I don't particularly want to explain my rationale either to my Uncle Steve or to my Uncle Scott. (Oddly enough, I think my dad would get it, and very little explanation to him would be required.) I think for me, it's really about control. If my classmates who don't know me are going to look at me funny anyway, I may as well control the reason for the discomforting stares.

Classes will start on Monday, and  I'll tell you then about the results of the beginning of my social experiment.