the fabric of skin

Hello. This is my introduction to my new style blog. Cataloguing and capturing seem to be a new goal of mine as I near the second half of my twenties, and I realize life cannot always just be a chaotic walk down a poorly-lit tunnel. I have to find ways to be present in it, and why would I call myself a writer if I don’t try to capture that presence and the revelations that come from it?

Just a little content warning, I discuss eating disorders in this piece, and I will continue to do so in the rest of the writing in the “Fabric of Skin” series. I don’t anticipate writing anything triggering (and will make sure to include a warning if I do), but some mentions about how my ED has impacted my thoughts and relationship to my body may be upsetting at times! You know yourself and your comfort level!

So, here’s the thing: I’ve used clothing as both a hobby and a coping mechanism since my childhood—divulging into niche clothing aesthetics online, thrifting at Saver’s on their special sale days with my mom, upcycling my clothes with hand-made patches and dull kitchen scissors. I’ve overbought and cut and tie-dyed and personalized and sewn and donated and rebought many, many pieces of clothing since the manager at my first job (Old Navy in East Tucson) handed me my first measly little paycheck in 2018. Actually, it was direct deposit. Clothing is a part of who I am now; I’ve bonded with my closest friends over fashion, and I pride myself in having a distinct personal style, experimenting with new looks and maintaining a finger on the pulse of the fashion world while always staying true to my personal tastes. Despite this, I’ve never pursued anything adjacent to fashion influencing. I’ve always thought about it, but never worked up the courage to post my outfits consistently, keeping style as a part of my identity exclusive only to the Real World.

In the beginning of 2025, I wanted to find a way to start sharing my Passion for Fashion, as the Bratz would say, while simultaneously diving more into my sometimes unhealthy need to buy clothing as an attempt to better understand myself. The goal at the time was to start a daily practice of tracking what I wear and what I buy by taking a picture of every piece of clothing I own and making a physical version of Cher from Clueless’ clothing catalogue. This quest barely came into fruition; the sheer volume of clothing I own proved it ridiculously time consuming and requiring the focus of someone who can remember to write down what they wore every single day. Considering I can’t even remember to take a daily gummy vitamin, I am not that person.

I know you’re going to tell me to try one of the many apps that create a closet catalogue for you, but my phone is a vortex that I try to avoid as much as possible, and I am addicted to my laptop. My replacement plan involved dusting off Tumblr.com to create a new blog on the site that feels so unchanged despite our near-decade of separation. Since I give Tumblr so much credit for shaping my adolescence and exposing me to styles that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen in the desert land of flip flops and cut off jorts where I grew up, I figured bringing it back would serve as both a helpful tool for tracking my buys and wears along with gathering new stylistic inspiration. I posted a style blog tracking what I wore and what I was inspired by for summer 2025. Checking on it a week after I posted, my heart dropped when I saw the post only got 5 notes. And then I remembered where I was. I had romanticized a nostalgic version of the site, and I forgot that it was still social media. It has always been yet another place to search for validation. As if this isn’t.

I scrolled through my home feed in an attempt to cling to rose-tinted memories of my 15 year old self customizing my blog at 3 A.M. and sharing pictures in tennis skirts, but I froze when a pro-ED post popped up on my laptop screen. And then another. And then I remembered where I was.

Time for a tangent. In my first draft of this, I was going to joke that it’s too early into this new blog series for me to divulge into my unhealthy relationship with eating and my body. Gotta tune in next month to start chipping away at my real intentions here! Oh my god. I’m so sick of coating every word, every thought and every action in aloofness and apathy to avoid being fully vulnerable, snarking my way around issues just enough to insinuate my point without ever projecting anything with my fucking diaphragm. I feel like this pull to irony-pill everything I do stems from the voice of the internet, seemingly homogenous at this point, amalgamated by what the tech gods and algorithm choose to promote. Tame relatability with a hint of unattainability. Rawness for spectacle without actual honesty.

I was recently reading writer Arden Yum’s article Am I Writing Like a White Woman? where she explores the way that The Almighty Algorithm, specifically on writing sites like this one, promotes the airbrushed, relatable-but-still-unattainable, millennial, apolitical voices of middle/upper class white women, leading to an echo chamber in terms of the voices shared to readers:

Travelers romanticize summer vacations along European coasts and cobblestone streets. Fashion inspiration comes in the form of thin, white bodies posed on the sidewalk, or mirror selfies in minimalist, Scandinavian-inspired apartments. The food bloggers eat thick red burgers from Red Hook Tavern and open-faced sourdough bagels from Apollo. The bookworms read Sally Rooney, Miranda July, and Joan Didion. The essayists ponder girlhood, overconsumption, and brat summer.

The quirky listicle and short-but-sweet conversational journal entry that maintains a 6 ft. emotional separation between writer and audience has dominated the personal essay genre, as performance on the internet promises a facade of a flawless self without facing trauma or intensity. After discussing the topic with various non-white writers, Arden concludes:

Perhaps we are all seeking attention without embarrassment, connection without vulnerability. The voice of the white woman is unburdened, relatable, fun. When we channel it, we can claim those qualities, too.

Arden’s main focus of this article revolves around race and the way that white voices are pedestalized, and this is a necessary part of this conversation that I recommend reading the article to get insight on. While reading, I couldn’t help but also ponder on how this pertains to thinness. As my weight fluctuated throughout my childhood and adolescence, I learned to view thin women also as unburdened, relatable and fun. She’s the empowered, adventurous woman you want to be, and you’ll find freedom through being her.

The pressure of perfection leads to disingenuousness. The way in which I’ve shied away from divulging into reality and truth in my writing mirrors my eating disorder. Just as I’ve learned to hide my body and try to mold it into forms that are unnatural for it, I feel drawn to mold my voice as a writer to be palatable and idealized, with just enough sarcasm to feign relatability. It’s a lie of liberation through pretending to be something you’re not. If I write pieces that barely graze the surface of truth and also make sure to only eat one meal a day, I can be published by Vogue and live just like Carrie Bradshaw. Then the thin, rich, unbothered big-city life of my dreams can finally be mine.

If we’re too afraid to be honest with ourselves, our readers, the people around us, do we end up actually saying or doing anything of substance? If our realities and bodies have to be idealized, how can we face the flawed, disgustingness of existing? Eventually I have to stop lying about myself and my problems and face the ways in which reality, irony, truth and fantasy constantly interact within us. As long as forums like this exist for sharing writing and ideas, I personally feel like I have to use them to be as true as I can about living within my various identities, even if it’s messy and conflicting at times. I owe it to my current self and to my past self to stop hiding. I owe it to whoever reads this to be genuine, even if it isn’t pretty.

So I’m going to tell you the truth: I’m starting this blog to track my fashion inspirations and wears, and to hold myself accountable to experiment more and buy less.

And another, deeper truth: I’ve had a disordered, dysmorphic relationship with my body and food for as long as I can remember. I keep this part of myself close to my chest and don’t talk about it to nearly anyone. I think I’ve been conditioned, or I’ve conditioned myself, to think that being quiet and mysterious about my thinness makes me special, that it places me on the same pedestal as the many desirable, famous thin women that keep the origins of their thinness unspoken. I want to confront the way the world has impacted me without bitterness, facades or self-pity. I want to find my voice through writing and fashion, and hopefully heal my relationship with my body just a little bit in the meantime.

So here’s how it’s going to go. Once a month, I’ll tell you what I wore, what I bought, and what inspired me. I’ll try to be consistent about tracking what I wore that month, but I’m being realistic about it. Then we’ll chat a little bit about bodies, how fashion and style relates to our relationships to our bodies and the forces that can manipulate how we treat them.

Let me know your thoughts. I’ll see you next month <3