So this week we’ve been enjoying Book Fair at school — truly one of my favorite times of the year, academic or otherwise! And this year our school spirit squad decided that we should have a dress-up day to commemorate a favorite literary character. That day was today — and how fortuitous that it fell on the 13th of the month!
So here I am…as Marco Alisdair.
One of my students (also a Night Circus admirer) asked me why I didn’t choose to dress as Celia. The simple answer is that I don’t have a dress that changes colors. The longer and equally true answer is that I love and identify with Celia, and as such, it is impossible for me not to love Marco as well.
I have to admit, I was a little taken aback by how easily I could make myself look like a man. It really didn’t take much at all: trousers, pin my hair back, bowler hat, no make-up…and some of my colleagues didn’t recognize me.
One of them told me I made a very handsome man. Hmm.
I will never cut my hair short again. I might even have to start wearing lipstick.
Cheers!
Sappho's Torque 
Don’t knock that look – you carry it off beautifully.
M
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Thanks. 🙂 I was extra girly today, though — even more so than usual! Lipstick and everything.
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Actually, you’re so lucky to be able to experience that pendulum. I’ve only ever been someone who could reach for the pile and throw something on. I mean, I tried when I was a teenager (who doesn’t?), but clothes for me have always been something I need to keep warm…
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That’s kind of you.
I’ve had long hair most of my life; after this long it’s too much a part of my identity to even want to cut it short. But part of that also has to stem from a traumatic haircut I had in fifth grade. Dorothy Hamill was all the ice skating rage. My mom had her wedge haircut and wanted me to get one, too, I suppose, because she convinced me to get one like hers. I did, and after having long hair and then going to a wedge in one fell swoop…well, it wasn’t pretty. It was extra not pretty, in fact. Kids at school who’d been in my class for five years didn’t recognize me.
I remember standing in front of the giant mirror in the hallway and trying on dress after dress and weeping, because I looked like a boy in a dress. In particular was a little white knit dress with the dropped waist that was so popular back then, and a silkscreened print of a brightly colored rainbow and clouds on the front of it. It had been my favorite dress, and now it was awful.
I started wearing pants, Oxford shirts, a sweater vest, and a clip-on tie.
Fifth grade was rough.
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Angelique, please take this as a sincere compliment. I can’t imagine you looking anything other than absolutely feminine. You probably looked less like ‘a boy in a dress’ than you imagined at the time. However, I can understand the trauma that a little incident like that could cause, way above what one might have expected.
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I will take it as a compliment. 🙂 Thank you.
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