Writer: Mia Fernandes

Editor: Alloe Mak

Fashion is a mirage. I envision it, I see it, I hear it, I can almost reach it when I try. Every morning when I wake up, I try to put on clothes that will say what I can’t, but instead, my own obsessive thoughts compensate for the silence. Clothes express what we can’t say, but I live in such fear of the messages my clothes will send that I often don’t let them say anything at all. I have a fear that anything I put on will be muddled. Stand out? Blend in? It’s a precarious line I try to walk without falling, and I worry that I am failing miserably. To stand out asks a lot of myself—asks a lot of the people around me. I’ll expect a compliment or a smile, and without one, my risk has failed. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. So I could play it safe, but then come the obsessive thoughts—the 3 am fears of “What if I’m forgettable?”, “What if no one notices me?”, which fashion becomes a vehicle for. Clothing is more attainable to me in the summer, when I’m away, visiting my family. There’s something freeing about being in a different country, with different expectations and beauty standards. I don’t feel the regular scholastic pressures I often face, and that somehow releases something in me that eventually finds its way into my closet. In the summer, I am free. I am brave. I am beautiful.

Every other year, my family leaves Toronto to visit my mom’s family across the ocean. We trade out subways and humidity for colourful buildings, fresh fish, and entirely new cultural norms. My own insecurities make Portugal—where I am unknown, incognito—a more desirable place to explore fashion. However, the problem doesn’t start and end in my psyche, it has imprinted itself in my geographical location. Beauty standards change depending where you are in the world, and so do fashion expectations. What is normal and cool in my grandparents’ home country is risque and slutty here. So I jump back and forth—from Portugal to Canada, from confident to hidden—until I’m so tangled in everything that I am convinced that I have no fashion identity whatsoever. The change in seasons, locations, and my confidence can’t be simply my problem Surely, there must be something deeper—societal—that is at play. In an attempt to uncover this, I rewind the tapes to understand where my fashion liberation began and follow the trail to understand why I ever felt frozen in the first place.

I feared a bikini. From the moment I hit puberty, I wouldn’t wear one. I was scared of my belly, my chest, my back. I was scared that once I showed them to the ocean and the sand, I would be rejected. One piece, one piece, one piece for years and years. Blue with flamingos and tie-dye patterns—ugly is an understatement. But, to me, they were worlds better than the itsy bitsy bottoms and tops that were stuffed at the back of my drawer. Out of sight out of mind—but not really, because they always took up a little too much space in my head. 

  My mom found an old two-piece of hers. The bottoms were more like shorts and the top had a ruffle that nearly touched my belly button. 

Ok, I could do that.

This was my bikini. This was my risk. It was all I was willing to give to the Christie Pits pool and to the lake. And then it was time, after 3 years and a pandemic, to go back to Portugal. “I’ll buy bathing suits there” I rationalized, in an effort to avoid the cold H&M change rooms. 

And we were there. My skin felt more welcomed by the Atlantic Ocean than it did by the lake. The sand felt soft—it invited me in. Everywhere I looked there were people showing skin, skin, skin. And, when in Rome…right? So I wore bikinis. I felt excited and comfortable and after a few swims. I didn’t give it a second thought. The sun kissed me, and the warm wind clapped me on the back with encouragement to embrace the foreign culture and speak in a language that is in me but I don’t know all that well. 

My summer fashion liberation comes at me from different roads. Down one sunny path is the knowledge that it is in my DNA to be in the sun. The other tells me that it is North America’s standards that in turn paralyze me. So which is it? Possibly both? Neither? A whimsical mix of the two, leaving me bare-knuckled and confused somewhere in the middle? In the summer, the act of slipping on shorts, a tank top, and battered flip-flops, is what makes me feel truly alive. Digging through a drawer for a sweater that will look cute while simultaneously keeping me warm on my subway ride to school makes me feel stuck. The moment the days get shorter, I dream about warm sand and salty water and peeling off sun-dried bathing suits. And then, the warmer weather does come. My awakening begins. I can trade sweaters for T-shirts, boots for Adidas, and my parka for a jean jacket. On the beaches where women wear tiny bikinis that cover little or nothing, I feel a strength in my own body. I walk confidently in clothes I would gape at back home. There’s an extra sway to my hips in a place where bodies are accepted and celebrated. The sun shines brightly. I wear less to accept the heat, the rays, as they beat down on me. 

When we land back in Toronto, I hold on to my confidence for a few weeks. Maybe I’ll wear a couple of my summer pieces to school, but I’ll just spend the whole day with my arms crossed in front of my stomach.  Shoving this out-of-place confidence deep down so it can’t come up for air. Form-fitting dresses and shorts are okay when I’m across the ocean. I can dance, let go of myself, and who cares if my belly is exposed because everyone’s is too. As teenage girls, we’re expected to want to escape our bodies. But I don’t want to escape mine at all. In fact, I long to find it. 

I learn to speak a new language through my clothing. I wait for my clothing to tell me I belong. I don’t know where I fit here, when it comes to clothes. I exhaust the same three outfits that receive compliments, and on days when I am lost, I hide behind a sweater so as not to attract attention. On the days I feel particular nostalgia for the sun, I venture out of my house bravely. The closer the subway gets to Royal York, the more I fear taking off my jacket. What will people think? They’ll think I don’t belong in these clothes. I wear a crop top, a tank top, and short shorts and it is imposter syndrome at its finest. When I’m put together, I clutch on with bare hands because it’s only a matter of time before I am a mess again. 

In the summers, I am beautiful. I find myself, or I suppose, myself finds me. Or maybe in an environment where bodies are embraced by people and sun and sand, I embrace it back.