It’s the third week of classes on the University of Michigan campus, and I can’t stop staring at everyone. I find myself exhausted by the decisions associated with returning to in-person classes: where to sit and what to pack and when to leave and what to wear. I feel like an old-timey anthropologist taking field notes about human behavior in the form of the fashion updates I text to the group chat: “overalls are back in, I think.” “I saw someone in a skort today.” “I swear every woman I saw was wearing white sneakers and stonewash jeans.”

There are two very possible explanations for this anxious and investigative response to changing trends. The first is that I have crossed that much-satirized line from young into less so, and I no longer know what’s cool. To be fair, I did not always know what was cool before, and I certainly didn’t manage to dress that way. But the aforementioned fashion group chat is mostly expressions of horror about the return of the bucket hat, which is surely a mark of passing from one age unto another. “Not very long ago, ‘millennial’ was synonymous with youth,” reads an ominous topic sentence in the Washington Post about skinny v. wide-leg denim. The article later goes on to call us “middle-aged.” (See below.)

working on a theory that basically goes: the first time a trend in pants drastically changes and you don’t like that change, you are no longer Young

— molly mary o’brien (@missmollymary) July 11, 2021

The second is the very distant and indistinct possibility that lying awake for hours last night trying to strategize an outfit for my cousin’s wedding celebration is both about fashion and not about fashion (to adapt some syntax from Coach Bennett).

There are logistical reasons for concern: I have waited until the last possible moment to address this problem and am approaching the window in which anything I order online will not arrive in time. The situation demands I find something I want both people I know from college and my grandmother to see me wearing, which is a tough needle to thread. I’m involved in the ceremony, so people will actually look at me during the course of the evening. I have a huge bruise on my leg from eating it on uneven payment during my run last weekend. And my local Nordstrom Rack was in absolute chaos last night, likely because of pandemic-related supply chain issues and understaffing. “A total bust,” I texted a friend. “There were four options in my size, and everything I tried on made me look like either a couch or a backup dancer.”

After this failed attempt, I ambled over to the jewelry section figuring that if I’ve got to wear something I already own, I might as well spice it up with new accessories. And again I found myself circling the disheveled racks of earrings the way my dog paces the house when she’s looking for whichever one of us isn’t home. I had to fight the constant urge to text somebody—anybody—to check in. “Does this look good?” “Do you like these?” “Do you think they’ll go with that wrap dress from my closet?” I felt desperate for someone to tell me what to do. I wanted someone—anyone!—to verify for me that my choices were okay.

If I’d asked, the group chat may not have been enormously helpful; today’s exchanges included “what even are cute shoes anymore?” and “does this mean I can pull off overalls as an adult?” and a third person recommending patterned pajama bottoms as workwear. (No shade to Sarah, who looked great.) It’s been encouraging to realize that I am not alone in feeling adrift in this area, in this pandemic stage. I did some googling, while reflecting on it: a half-dozen articles about how no one knew what to do with their closets back in February, pieces about wearing the same thing over and over while working from home, some about unreliable trend forecasting and changing norms for the office. The book I’m reading for a seminar on “flesh and spirituality” might ask: “what work do you perform to make your body express particular messages?”¹ to which I might reply: “what kind of messages am I even trying to express now?” I don’t know how to present myself because I don’t know what other guests will think these earrings say about me, and I’m not sure what I’m trying to make them say about myself. As that WashPo article on mom jeans says: “the real Jean War, after all, is internal: where do you fit, and what fits you?”

I would like to look good at this wedding! I would like everyone there to believe good things about me, and I would like my outfit to communicate somehow that I am young and successful but also mature and kind and definitely cool, but in a fun and relaxed way, and also if you knew me in high school and saw me at this event you should spontaneously think about how nicely I clean up, still—or now, since I didn’t necessarily before. I want people to think that I understood the assignment. I don’t know how to feel about attending large events and seeing family and being back at school in person but I just want my dress and earrings and shoes and hair to all express to everyone, including me, that it’s okay, and I’m okay, and it’s gonna be okay.

¹Griffith, R. Marie. Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirituality in American Christianity. University of California Press, 2004.

Katie Van Zanen

Katie is a doctoral student in English and education at the University of Michigan. She loves the New York Times crossword puzzle, advice columns, oceans, and dogs of all kinds.