overweight girl with tattoos and shaved head

We were walking to a museum on the University of Nebraska – Lincoln campus a couple of weeks or so ago. We got behind a girl on the sidewalk who seemed to be the epitome of self-hatred.

She was a good bit overweight, her head was shaved on the sides and died a chartreuse on the top, longer and pulled back (kind of an update to the Cyndi Lauper look of the 80’s), she had one whole arm and one leg covered in multi-colored tattoos and wearing a short flouncy skirt with a t shirt and torn fishnet leggings.
For some reason, I don’t remember the shoes. Visual overload, I guess.
She was carrying a backpack and was obviously a student, for her age maybe even a grad student.

The question is why. Why would someone go so out of their way to look bizarre? She was not a particularly attractive girl, so maybe she was just showing everybody she didn’t care. Maybe she was naturally rebellious and was thumbing her nose at both society and her parents. Maybe she couldn’t get a boyfriend and was pretending she didn’t care. Maybe she was on her way to a costume party. Nah. Not the last one probably.
That was in July, so that probably wouldn’t be the case.

But why? Why would an otherwise healthy girl bury herself in bizarre?

I mentioned to my son once in the past that he looked dumb because of the way he was dressed. His reply, and you never did when you were young? My answer was yes, I did, but we could cut our hair and put on normal clothes and we were normal looking. Whatever that is. It’ll sure be different in 30 years when this generation gets older.

When I was in my younger 20’s, my favorite outfit to wear to church and lead singing in was a black shirt with a really loud tie that I had bought in Germany, tan brushed denim bush bell-bottomed Levis (you remember – they had patch pockets and a little pocket on the side of the main pocket), a pair of double buckle chukka boots (also bought in Germany) and topped with my army dress green jacket. I loved that outfit. Coupled with my longer hair, mutton chop sideburns and long mustache I was far out. Also add the fact that I was a really big guy - 6'3" and 220 lbs - it was an outfit to remember.

Okay, that was over the top. But when it came time to settle down, I traded the outfit for another, cut my hair (sob), trimmed everything else and looked normal. How are you going to do that with multiple piercings, several sleeves of tats, a split tongue, etc?

Now admittedly, the future generation of adults will view things differently. But I figure that there are going to be some rich dermatologists in the future, because normal will probably be pretty close to what it is now.

My son had a variation of my outfit with attitude. He dyed his hair green (still not sure why I let him do that), and would wear a suit and tie to church. And, just like they did me, they liked him. For some odd reason, people related well to me in my outfit and to him in his. They knew, I suppose, that I was not a wacko, just a differently dressed young man who would grow up one day.

People related the same way to my son. Not only that, but because of it, when I was a substitute teacher at his school, all the punk kids thought I was cool for letting him do it. I monitored detention and had no trouble with them. Interesting part of life.

But back to the girl at UNL. One of these days she is going to want to look nice and will not be able to. One of these days a potential employer is going to look at her and reject her before he even looks at her resume, no matter how impressive it may be.

Just an observation. No answers.