Angie -- Yes. Fab. I really like my hair this length, too. It's close to two months grown out, actually, but I like the softness around the edges and the movement/texture my bangs get at this length.
Shevia -- Blundstones are HUGE where I live, too, for both men and women. This is the first time I've worn them since the spring -- I wore them at least every other day from last October thru about April so I gave them a break over the summer. Really nice when something so functional is also well-designed and gets to have a fashion moment.
Runcarla -- Thank you for your story! It makes perfect sense to need to define your persona as distinct from your parents'. I think I come at tomboy style from the opposite end. I always liked dressing in boys clothes as a kid -- jeans, graphic tees (boys tees had cool things like dogs and dinosaurs and sailboats! I love that you now see more of those motifs featured in little girls clothes as well), sweaters, sneakers, etc all usually came from the boys department. I know I also liked leggings and "bike shorts" as they were known in the 90s an awful lot, so really I just wore whatever I felt like. I think I was completely unaware of what people wore until well into middle school. (My 3 yo son, on the other hand, already memorizes other people's outfits and reports them back to me -- this might be because he's watched me spend a lot of time thinking about my wardrobe in the years since he was born!)
I never actually had to do any soul searching about this. I just was never attracted to pink or lace or glitter very much. My parents were probably relieved I wasn't upholding every norm and stereotype that's been placed on little girls. I literally didn't wear anything pink, or any skirts and dresses, until I was well into high school. Then I went through an "ironic" phase, where I started adding pink accessories -- sneakers, bag, you name it -- and got really into mini skirts, polo dresses, and patterned/textured tights. So through my teens and twenties I went through a very magpie phase that involved a lot of juxtaposition of punk and prep, and a lot of gender sub/inversion. When I thru-hiked the AT, I wore a skirt (there are some great hiking skirts out there), plus a pink bandana and pink wrist-warmers, because it was really satisfying/empowering to be overtly girly in a very male-dominated environment (this was before Wild by Cheryl Strayed came out -- that book/movie has done a lot to shift backpacking demographics!).
Anyway, this capsule -- blazers, 501s, button front shirts -- is sort of like coming full-circle back to a lot of my most basic style impulses. My mother has a picture of me, preschool aged, sitting on a big rock wearing an oversized white oxford shirt and a pair of rolled up jeans. So this is definitely an authentic look for me.
