Clothes

Watching Yasmin Ahmad commercials always makes me nostalgic for a country and a people far away. One important aspect of me is how people dress - the old t-shirts, the hand-me-down shorts, the faded skirts...in all that there is an assumption that dress really isn't that important. The most beautiful, courageous, eloquent people in her movies are often sloppily dressed most of the time. They do dress up, but it is for an occasion, a special enough reason so that even the meticulous preparation is a joyous task. A first date. A performance. A wedding. A raya celebration. These are the milestones that call for the best representation of oneself, and one obligingly steps up to task.

Contrast to American private colleges. Every season requires a new wardrobe. People say "the most important thing to me is closet space! Thank God there's enough here to fit all my clothes!" My three suitcases of stuff, which to me seemed like too much already, only half-filled my expansive closet. My roommate's is bursting with cute dresses and shorts and jeans and pretty tops. There are so many "extra things" - make-up, lip gloss, hair bands, hats, tights, bags, shoes (don't even start)...that need to be diversified for different occassions - and those mornings when you wake up and you "feel" a certain way and need to dress how you feel.

Clothes become an extension of your personality, a declaration of yourself to the world in the commercial choices that you put on your body. It becomes a barometer of taste and standards, a discreet unspoken measure of economic position.

Oh these first-world consumers who buy and throw as if the price you paid in that shop means you have absolved all responsibility to the rest of us. I wish I could walk around in my faded t-shirts, my big unflattering shorts, my grey trackpants, my kind-of worn out pretty tops and my perennial 365-days-a-year slippers as I would at home. You have made me ashamed of what I wear because I am reduced only to that in your minds. I wish you would understand that 1 US dollar is 3.4 ringgit and a relatively cheap 16 dollar sweater that you'd buy in a second costs 55 ringgit which is what I used to earn working 14 hours in my more-than-minimum-wage job after high school. I know you have people struggling with economic problems too. But that is all swept away in the mania for new clothes and cuteness and fashion sensibilities.

I asked for this, in a way. I have intruded your modest upper-middle class enclaves with the rise of affirmative action and need-based scholarship. I do not belong here and maybe I show it. But look beyond that and see my struggle every day, in every outfit I pore long and hard over, balancing budget constraints and the desire to look as beautiful and put-together as everyone else. My ultimately-purposeless labor to fit in with the rest of you.

I'm not the only one.