Alternative subcultures and beauty standards

When I was a young alternative person I was initially scared to be different at all. But online communities helped me gain confidence to be unapologetically myself. I started dressing in the silliest outfits, attempting to emulate cool people on the internet with the limited resources I had. I'd wear belts across my body and hairclips stuck to my shirts, I took out the lining of a jacket to wear as a vest. I was ugly. My looks were incredibly uncoordinated, my hair was always greasy, tons of my little accessories were falling apart because they were very poorly hand-made. I looked awful, but boy was I happy. I loved being able to embrace that weirdness, make it something I'm aware and proud of. None of those basic kids could ever understand me and many even hated me for it but I knew who I was and who I wanted to be. 

Fast forward to a few years later. I'd grown, just a bit. I accumulated a cool new wardrobe, tons of awesome pieces found at the thrift and such. I thought it was awesome that I finally truly looked like those awesome teens I saw online. But then my take on my appearance started to change. I started being worried about how I looked, a lot. Being so consumed by this idea of being the CoolAltPerson, I felt I needed to always live up to this standard. My hair always had to be perfectly poofy, my bangs straight, my liner bold and precise. Often I'd create looks based not on what I truly liked but on what I thought would make me 'scene' or 'emo' enough. I bought some clothes that I didn't even really like just because I knew they fit the aesthetic I was going for. 

I'd lost it, I lost the joy I once had in being different, I now felt this high pressure to look perfect and cool and put together and alternative enough at all times. When I was a kid (well, a couple of years ago) I was ugly. I was different and weird and looked dishevelled asf and I loved it. I suppose I'd always strived for a certain kind of look but it didn't use to bother me that I was just ugly and different. Now I'd become a sort of caricature, carbon copy of what I felt a scenester or emo or alt person was supposed to look like. 

I forgot what it meant to be alternative or the weird kid. It had always been about being different, not just from normies but from those alike you as well. We will always be judged and treated differently, the stigma surrounding those that are different than the ideal mold will never go away, at least not in our lifetimes. No matter what we do, no matter how put together we look, no matter how expensive our clothes are or how perfectly our make-up is done we will STILL be judged. And it is unfortunate, but the alternative community has taken on this hateful rhetoric. We've changed the idea of what it means to be beautiful but we cling onto the idea that we need to be beautiful to be valued, an idea taken from conservatives. Let's not forget that people who choose to dye their hair aren't the only targets of hateful behavior. Disabled folks, non-white folks, visibly queer and transgender folks, and many others are so often isolated from society for their looks. They're called appalling and disgusting for simply existing, for just having certain features. If we continue to shift towards this renewed beauty standard we will just as well be alienating all of these groups of people for the same reasons. 

We need to seriously get out of this terrible perfection mindset. We are alt. We are different. We are ugly. By most people's beauty standards, we are ugly. And it's fine that we are. We mustn't bring the idea that beauty is everything into our community. Thinking of yourself as beautiful is fine, and thinking others are beautiful is fine too. But it gets to a point where these weird boxes are created that everyone is forced to fit into and that's when it becomes a problem. I think the key to fixing this problem would be to kill the image of the CoolAltPerson as it is just a stupid label with stupid requirements (like being conventionally attractive). We are alternative and our beauty is in our differences and our ugliness and our weirdness. Don't kill your whimsy for repackaged conservative beauty standards. Be you, have a label, don't have a label, whatever, just be you and resist those oppressive standards by existing as you.

There is lots of talking to the community, but this is mostly about my realizations about my own life. I hope to find the joy in being weird and ugly again. And, if you resonate with what I've said, I hope you find it too.