I love fashion. From as far back as I can remember, style and fashion were my passion…still is. I remember as a little girl, I had a whole drawing pad of designs before I was 10. I always had an eye for fashion and actually had good original designs from young. I love how you can change the look of an outfit by just changing accessories. How color can add so much personality and pizzazz to an outfit, how your clothing can change to fit any event and express your own personal mood and style. I think your style is the most fun way to let others see a part of you without speaking or doing anything. Your style can reveal your confidence, whether you are fun, whether you’re flexible or more rigid, etc. Although your style can convey something about you, we also have to learn not to judge a book by its cover for sometimes it might be conveying someone’s mood at the time, rather than their personality and who they are. Whatever your style conveys, I for one am grateful that I live in a place where my freedom of expression of my style is not totally controlled by religion, culture, or society. We can, for the most part, wear what we feel to without harsh repercussions like other parts of the world. I as a woman am free to adorn and display any part of my body that I choose, more and more now as the suppression and blame on women and what we wear is transforming to put more responsibility onto the men in society.
Growing up in a traditional Chinese family in a predominantly Muslim country, I was always struggling to show my style freely. I was easier to keep “inline” when I was younger obviously but as I got older and we moved to Canada, let’s just say my pre-teen years and beyond did not sit well with my mom. With the changes in culture, weather and environment, I had an overwhelming urge to express myself, go through my discovery phase of defining my style. Till this day, when my mother sees my purple hair, partially shaved, and the short shorts I wear, or the low cut shirts, or pretty much anything I wear, still triggers her. She grew up in a conservative culture where when you get to a certain age, especially if you have children, you don’t look a particular way. You’re suppose to look “your age”, so although a haircut might’ve been accepted when you were younger, it is frowned upon as you age. Where if you wear revealing clothes, you’re looked upon as being of lower class or “of the streets”. Like many women in her generation, she believed that the more covered you are, the more proper you are. The amount of fights my mom and I have had over the way I look…..too many to count. I don’t blame her for her views though for it’s what she knows. She did not change with the times where women can wear what we want, at any age we want if it makes us feel good. The times that women can adorn our bodies the way we see fit, to embrace our bodies as beautiful temples and show it when we please, however much we please, without being judged or shamed for it. She didn’t get the chance to discover her style and express it fully, but rather let society confine and restrict her style into what is acceptable to wear.
Our bodies and how we dress it and style it is one of the most creative forms of expression that we all do daily, whether we’re into fashion or not. How we dress convey a message about us and represents us the way we want to be represented. It can show support of what we like, what we stand for, our preferred lifestyle, and so on. The easiest way to speak a message without speaking are with graphic T’s, which has become hugely popular nowadays. Graphic T’s have allowed us to be walking billboards for our thoughts and beliefs, and has become a staple in everyone’s closet. Although they are t-shirts, the graphic T’s have been accepted into more upscale and sophisticated style that can be paired with heels and under blazers. They also have a power to connect us and identify us with others by speaking silently our thoughts and feelings, whether it be comedic, social, political, or just plain cool. The simple and clean graphic designs on the Woke and Toke T’s are definitely made for expression and connection. It was designed with a subtle yet clear message in support of cannabis, so that we can show our support in a subtle yet classy way that can we can easily add our individual signature style to by the pieces we pair it with or the accessories we wear with it. It can help identify and connects us to another cannabis supporter that we may not have known about.
Suppression of any part of our individual expressions, is suppressing parts of ourselves. All has to be freely expressed in order for us to be ourselves fully. It all ties back to our fear of judgement why we can’t be fully free. We are afraid of what others might think if we were to wear this or that. We fear to be rejected if we don’t look the way we are expected to, so we conform. We conform to what is the norm, to what is acceptable by other people’s standards of us, instead of showing the world who we really are and standing in our unique individual power of our true selves through our clothing and style.
