Mimielle on Fashion: When We go Out, People Gonna Shout?

Mimi on the loose!

Hello Addicts! Here is a topic your fashionably frightful fellow Addict, Mimielle has been mulling over:

When you go out dressed unusually, do you get comments about it? I’d love to hear your experiences with this because when discussing fashion, it’s often one of the more common reasons people give me for being a little hesitant to fully realize their fashion sense, the reactions or fear of the reactions making them uncomfortable. And not just teens or twenty-somethings. It’s unfortunately a fact that many people of every age feel unable to wear the fashions they’d like to in public for fear of reactions.

Since obviously, I roam the streets dressed like this…

I currently live in a smaller metropolitan area in a southern state so in hopes of encouraging you to be brave and deal gracefully on your own terms with people who are rude enough to publicly and sometimes even confrontationally question your fashion, I’ll share the 2 most common reactions I get wearing Gothic Lolita fairly regularly and my thoughts about them. I leave kid’s reactions out because mostly they are great, either asking me something completely outlandish like “Are you Lady Gaga?” or whispering to their parent “Wow look, a princess!” Plus you can’t actually punch a kid, not that I’m suggesting it or anything – where is your sense of the ridiculous?

1. People wanting to take my picture. Oddly, this doesn’t bother me if they just stealthily take a snap or 3 but when they come up to me, it makes me self-conscious at times. Like when I am in Walmart on a Tuesday morning, holding a package of bacon. True story, Morning Glory. I totally expect to end up on People of Walmart one of these days but I’m still not sure if I’d leave the photo up or ask them to remove it. There are a couple of people already posted on there that have Lolita-related outfits, dating back 4 years or so but they aren’t very good representations of the fashion. There is one nicely dressed Texas Lolita posted there with a Little Miss Muffet caption, she actually got several nice comments though and left her photo up so obviously opinions vary!
   
   
2. People wanting to have my fashion ‘explained’ to them. I can usually spot these people before they come up to me and they are the worst. Let me preface this by saying that even in the Lolita community, I am not the person who loves to explain or define anything and will most often defer to the nearest other handy Lolita or online, point people to the nearest decent resource. There are so many people who DO enjoy teaching about and talking about the fashion and do a really good job of it that aside from here with you darling ghoulies and goblins on Horror Addicts, I don’t really talk much about my fashion – much less divulge any secrets! That’s how you know I love you!! So anyway, these women who come up to me (and 99% are women, very few men will talk to me at all)…Most often, they are women over 25 or so, and I can often tell that they already do not LIKE what I am wearing, and can also divine by their scowl or stinkface that this is the most ‘polite’ way they can justify sort of demanding an accounting for why a grown woman is wearing dark frilly dresses with Gothic jewelry and such ‘interesting’ shoes in the daylight on Tuesday at THEIR Hobby Lobby. It would be comical (and often is afterwards) if they weren’t so serious about it. Or if they actually listened to my reply instead of having their word filter on High trying to pick out something deviant or weird in my explanation to justify their pre-judgement of disapproval. If they are with their daughter, it is also a little embarrassing to watch HER embarrassment as her mother is rude and judgmental to another woman who just smiles in return.

Yes, both situations make me uncomfortable, obviously the latter more than the former since it gets me so wound up! I can carry a phone and pretend to talk on it because people will grudgingly walk past, still staring, but refrain from actually disturbing me and I also usually have the advantage of a very grouchy looking fiancé nearby to run interference if I give him ‘the look’ (which often looks like ‘deer caught in the headlights’).

I got curious and searched ‘Goth’ on People of Walmart and turned up 14 results. Frankly, I expected more but you’ll have to go and see for yourself what I found because descriptive words escape me to define just what I saw. After that, I was afraid to search “fashion”.

If you were photographed and posted on People of Walmart or on a similar site, would you leave the photo up or ask them to remove it? We want to know! Please vote in the poll and don’t be shy to elaborate in the comments if you have some thoughts on this, I’d really love to read them.