Have you ever met someone so absorbed in what they wear, what they say, and what they do that being around them starts to feel suffocating? Every outfit is intentional. Every interest fits into a larger picture, as if they’re constantly performing a version of themselves they have worked very hard to become.
Honestly, these people scare me a little.
Not because there’s anything wrong with caring about your appearance or having a strong sense of personal style. I love fashion. I love getting dressed up, experimenting with my clothes, and feeling like my outfit reflects my mood. But there’s a difference between enjoying how you present yourself and feeling like every part of your life has to contribute to a carefully constructed identity.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating personalities like Pinterest boards.
We have the clean girl, the downtown girl, the coquette, the indie girl, and a seemingly endless list of aesthetics that promise to tell us exactly who we are. Each comes with its own wardrobe, music taste, hobbies, and lifestyle. You can find an entire identity online before you have even figured out whether you actually like the clothes.
And maybe that’s part of the appeal. Figuring out who you are is difficult. It’s much easier to follow a blueprint than to sit with the uncertainty of becoming your own person. When an aesthetic tells you what to wear, what to listen to, what to read, and even what to drink, it offers a sense of direction. You know what you’re supposed to look like. So, in turn, you know what version of yourself you’re presenting to the world.
But when did self-expression become something we had to get right?
I think there’s something genuinely sad about feeling like you have to embody a particular version of yourself perfectly. Imagine being so committed to the person you want others to perceive that you become afraid to do anything that doesn’t fit the image. You want to try something new, but it doesn’t match your aesthetic. You want to change your mind, but then you would have to reconsider the identity you have spent so much time building.
At that point, are you expressing yourself, or are you maintaining a character?
One of the best things about getting dressed is that you don’t have to feel the same way every day. Some mornings, I want to look put together. Other days, I want to throw on something comfortable and leave the house without thinking twice about it. Sometimes I want to dress like I belong in a different decade. Sometimes I don’t want to look like anything in particular.
Why should that be a problem?
I want to dress according to how I feel, not according to who I have decided I’m supposed to be. I want to be able to change my mind, discover new interests, and look completely different from one week to the next without feeling like I’m losing my identity. I don’t want to have to justify an outfit because it doesn’t fit the image people have of me.
And I certainly don’t want my personality to become so predictable that someone could guess everything about me based on what I’m wearing.
There’s a kind of freedom in being a little inconsistent. You can love a carefully put-together outfit and still spend the next day in the same sweatshirt you’ve worn three times that week. You can enjoy classical literature and terrible reality television. You can be outgoing at a party and spend the following weekend alone. You can change your taste, experiment with your appearance, and abandon an interest without needing to announce a new era of your life.
You are allowed to be complicated. You are allowed to contradict yourself.
Social media makes this harder because it rewards consistency. A recognizable aesthetic makes an account easy to identify. A carefully curated feed gives people something to associate with you. When everything looks cohesive, it becomes easier to package your life into something other people can understand and consume.
Some of the most interesting people I know are the ones who cannot be reduced to a single description. They surprise you. They have interests that seem completely unrelated. They wear things you would never expect them to wear. They’re still discovering themselves, and they are comfortable enough to let you see it.
I would much rather meet someone who is genuinely enthusiastic about a strange, specific interest than someone who has adopted an entire personality because it looks good online. I would rather talk to someone who changes their mind than someone who seems to have a carefully rehearsed answer for everything. I want to know what makes someone laugh, what they care about, and what they could talk about for hours when nobody is asking them to perform.
Those are the things that make a person interesting. An aesthetic might catch my attention, but a personality is what makes me want to know someone.
And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having a signature style. There’s nothing wrong with loving an aesthetic or finding community through shared interests. The problem isn’t having an identity; it’s feeling obligated to maintain one so perfectly that you leave no room for yourself to change.
We should be experimenting, making mistakes, trying things that don’t work, and discovering that the person we were six months ago is not necessarily the person we want to be today.
So wear the outfit that makes you feel good. Wear something that does not match anything else in your closet. Try a new style because you’re curious about it, not because you have decided it’s your next identity. Let yourself be interested in things that don’t fit together neatly.
You don’t have to build a brand out of your existence.