I had a close call the other day, when I came across an expensive and totally inappropriate fashion piece that ignited my fantasy of being an angry schoolgirl.

Look at how bad ass this is! I pictured my self wearing it with a white tank top and black jeans.

It even says ‘loser’ on the front! It’s so ME, I thought. It’s some kind of polyester and costs around $600, but I was THIS CLOSE to buying it.

Then I found a lookbook for the designer, showing sulky young girls wearing the jacket with a Goth Lolita flair, smoking cigarettes and clearly ditching school.

It suddenly occurred to me that I’m not an angry schoolgirl anymore, at least not on the outside.  No one wants to see grandma in her kooky jackets at this point. It was a highly unpleasant epiphany.

I’m still not over it. Yesterday, I waked into my husband’s home ‘office’ wearing a faded pair of Levi’s with a black wife beater and demanded, “DO I LOOK TWENTY-TWO?” He answered Yes, like a dutiful robot, but he may have been trying not to laugh. I don’t even know why I chose 22; it could be Gwyneth Paltrow‘s famous boast of a “butt like a 22 year old stripper.” That’s the kind of statement you can never forget. It’s part of why we all hate her.

Sometimes I wonder about the function of fashion, even though I’ve read more than my share of long-winded essays on the subject. What are we really trying to express with the clothes we wear? Our coolness? Our amazing taste or ingenuity? Our credit card limit? Are we trying to project our inner selves or to create a false identity?

Normcore was a great trend, even though it was preposterously stupid. Normcore is like having a private joke with yourself: Haha, I look like a boring Nothing but I’m doing it on purpose, that’s how hip I am!

It’s so much better than the current trend of paying a trillion dollars to look like a bedraggled biker.

I just want to make peace between who I am inside with who I am outside. As if that could happen.

A few days ago, I went out with my husband to look for shoes. While he looked, I headed for the kids section to look for a schoolgirl skirt. Just like all normal people, I have a fetish for pleated skirts, especially tartan ones. My personal excuse, if confronted about this, is that as a jew, I am fascinated by all things Catholic. Catholic things have the allure of forbidden fruit. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I couldn’t find a skirt in my size but I did find a dress among the school uniforms, priced right at $7.99. I showed it to my husband who patted me on the head, with either affection or pity or both. I interpreted his gesture as “Awww, you’re nearly sixty and you still like to pretend you’re a schoolgirl!” He told me to go try it on.

The dress was a good fit but when I took it off, I saw to my horror that is was made in Bangladesh. There is no way I’m going to buy a dress made under terrible conditions, maybe even made by someone who perished in the Rana Plaza factory collapse.

I don’t regret my decision to pass on the dress, but now people are scolding me for a position that will only hurt people in Bangladesh who want factory jobs. “Those poor people are grateful to work in sweatshops, bla bla bla!”

Fuck! I can’t indulge in my fetish and I’m increasing poverty in Bangladesh.

Opinions, ridicule, advice, anyone?

At thirteen, I still had braces on my teeth but I wore a ton of eyeliner to compensate. I was looking for trouble and I found it in an attic apartment occupied by a pair of Dirty Hippies.

The Hippies were both nineteen years old and mine had a handsome baby-face with a goatee. The other one had long stringy hair and a suede fringed jacket that he later gave to my sister. It stunk of tobacco and sweat, and I was always begging to borrow it.

The Hippies taught me how to smoke pot, but I don’t think I did it right. They entertained other middle-class schoolgirls, some in their uniforms, all hoping to establish their coolness in the smoky attic, under the tutelage of the Dirty Hippies, who hung a sheet up to separate their mattresses.

For a while, I struggled to maintain my purity on the filthy bare mattress, but my Hippie found the way to my heart, or I should say girdle, by offering me a cheap ring.

When it happened, it was all about dealing with the girdle. I think I wore the girdle to hold up my stockings, but it’s still a bit of a mystery to me. All I remember was some pain and embarrassment, and his parting directive: “Next time, don’t wear that contraption.”

A few days later, I realized he had given me crabs.