If I had to pick an article of clothing to represent me, I'd pick an ugly Christmas sweater, like one of those gaudy sweaters composed of two extremely saturated and unflattering colors. I'm thinking highlighter green so bright it sears your retinas and red so burnt it's basically mud brown. Maybe one with a super tacky Christmas pun on it and the sweater has to be knitted, of course. Why an ugly Christmas sweater, specifically? Well, I have a list.
So here are three reasons why I identify with ugly Christmas sweaters.
1. It's just for kicks
Why do I want to wear an ugly Christmas sweater? Simple. It's because I can. Not every action needs an explanation. There's a part of me that wants to justify everything I do. There's a part of me that wants to link all my experiences to one cohesive narrative. All of these thoughts are intensified by my kinda low-key toxic mentality toward looming college apps. I think thoughts like: Why am I studying so hard? By doing this activity? Does this activity strengthen my college apps? Why am I taking this class? Does this class relate to my future major which will relate to my future career? And sometimes these thoughts keep me organized but other times they just give me stress. So sometimes, I just want to do things for kicks. I want to stop assigning meanings to everything. I want to stop believing that there's some sort of divine plan that my life adheres to.
And maybe this is just some facet of teenage rebellion. Maybe I've finally digested all those ideas from 21st Century Novel, and subconsciously decided that Camus and those existentialist dudes were right -- the universe is meaningless and it's up for the individuals themselves to derive meaning in an absurd and indifferent world. Maybe I'm just tired of always trying to explain my actions to myself. All I know is that just once, when someone asks me about college or my future or adulthood, I just to be able to say, "I don't know" without any shame.
2. It's a fashion statement
Not gonna lie, ugly Christmas sweaters are, well, ugly. But it feels freeing to wear something ugly in public and not care at all about how people perceive you. Stressing over how people perceive me is an issue of mine. I'm worried about looking ugly or answering a question wrong and being thought of as dumb. I'm worried about not being smart enough for Uni and being thought of as an imposter. And so it's super freeing to be able to wear a sweater and declare, "I look ugly and I don't care." It's freeing to say, "Here are my unfiltered thoughts and I don't care if they make me seem dumb." By wearing a Christmas Sweater, you're throwing away societal expectations and norms of beauty and embracing ugliness. I want to be brave enough to openly speak about my insecurities and fears. I'm tired of letting my metaphorical ugly Christmas Sweater fester in the closet. You need a certain amount of self-confidence to wear an ugly Christmas sweater and one day I hope I'll be that self-confident.
3. It's a joke
So yeah, wearing an ugly Christmas sweater both embraces the ugliness in life and is apparently, possibly an existentialist statement??? (I'm still a little skeptical and worried about my 12 p.m. jumps in logic, but hey, I personally derived meaning from an ugly Christmas sweater so what are the existentialist dudes gonna do? Say I'm wrong?) But one of the best things about ugly Christmas sweaters is that they're jokes. At the end of the day, if you get a negative reaction, you can always just claim that it's a joke. And you know what, it's easy to use humor as armor. I make jokes about being bad at math or failing a test but underneath that veneer of light-heartedness, these are reals concerns of mine. In that situation, I want to talk about failure but I'm scared of being thought of as a failure. So, I make a joke about failure. Because, at the end of the day, you can still revert back to the status quo. After the holidays, you can easily take the ugly Christmas sweater off. Similarly, I'm not forced to commit to being some sort of existentialist, ugly Christmas sweater wearing confused teenager. I can just claim that this entire blog post is a shitpost and thus meaningless.
tl;dr I'm scared of committing myself to my ideals.
So there you have it. There are my thoughts on ugly Christmas sweaters. They might seem a little dumb and crazy but sometimes you just have to get the words out of your mouth.
Disclaimer: I've never owned an ugly Christmas sweater (I've owned some unflattering sweaters but I've never owned An Ugly Christmas Sweater tm).
I really enjoyed reading this blog post, and I also found it interesting that you have all these ideas about the sweater but have never owned one lol.
ReplyDeleteAt first I was confused by the title of this blog post, and it drove me to read it for myself. I like how the justification for using an ugly christmas sweater is that there is no justification. The idea seems very fresh out of the mind and in some ways relatable, which is why I enjoyed it very much.
ReplyDeleteI take personal offense to this! Not for the reasons someone would think though. Winter is my favorite season because it's holiday season and it's really fun, especially when its nighttime and the lights are on, and its snowing outside while you listen to Christmas songs or whatever floats your boat. I like Christmas sweaters because they exemplify this spirit! I can agree to a lot of your statements though, they are mainly correct!
ReplyDeleteAight, why can't people wear things just because though. Like if it's not harming anyone let people wear things with judgement. I mean what even characterize "ugly" anyway... it's all perspective ya know? As someone who hardcore struggled with fashion in middle school, I don't care what people thinks anymore. I simply wear what's comfortable, whether its ugly sweather or a baggy shirt.
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