Delightfully Tacky: The Early Years

Last week when we spent time with my parents, my mom brought an envelope full of old pictures of me and our family. Oh man, was it full of solid gold. You can for sure see my "style evolution" through these photos. My mom says that I was always very stubborn when it came to what I wore. When I was really young, all I would wear is dresses and leggings, and I was VERY into the striped top/polka dot jumper combo in the photo of me playing with a leaf (or somthing). I also was a ballerina... but apparently that didn't stick. I wish it had, though. In retrospect I would've loved to have been a ballerina, but by the time we moved to Alaska I was already shunning girly things and running around outside without shoes on pretending to be an indian or dog-musher instead.

And then came the baggy t-shirts and sweatpants. And they stayed for an ungodly length of time, only to be succeeded by baggy t-shirts and baggy jeans. Oh, 90's, you weren't very stylish, were you? Also, my hair went through an odd phase where it was stick straight. And someone made me pose for a school photo with a stuffed dinosaur. I remember the only other options were sports balls and I wasn't into sports, so the only other thing left was that ugly dinosaur. Oh well. Oh yeah, and I also wanted to be a boy real bad, hence the super short hair cut up there. Speaking of hair cuts, I think I have the same haircut now as I did in that photo of me & my brother where I'm looking very spunky in my pose.

Look! More sweatpants! And the raddest snowsuit ever. Actually, I don't know if that one is more rad, or another one I had which was neon blue with highlighter yellow accents. Snowsuit style was clearly very important in Alaska. I remember really liking that hat too. It had Orca whales on it. That "Curfew" Sweatshirt up there reminds me of this time where I wore a "GAP" sweatshirt to school and we were playing volleyball inside on our knees with the desks lined up in the middle of the classroom as the "net" (the things we had to do in Alaska when it was -15 and outdoor P.E./recess wasn't an option) and I missed the ball when it came to me and everyone made fun of me because I was the "gap." Pretty sure I never wore that shirt ever again. Wanna hear another sweatshirt (near) horror story? Well, since I exclusively wore sweatpants, one day I got to school, took off my snow coat and realized I had worn a sweatshirt the exact same color as my sweat pants, which just happened to be green. Probably the same nasty stained sweatpants in the photo above. Luckily I caught it before I went into the classroom as a big green blob, but I made sure that little error never happened again.

I'm gonna try to find some photos from high school and maybe college to complete this little style evolution! Unfortunately all the really good photos are back home in Alaska in my parents' photo albums, but I think I have a few here in Tacoma with me...