30 Day Lolita Challenge - Day Ten?: A picture of yourself before lolita came in to your life (Picture heavy!)

Hello everybody!

Keiko here~

Now, you might be wondering why the question mark on 'day ten?'. Well, as per the original 30-Day Lolita Challenge (which you can find here), day 10 and 11 are supposed to be a 'what's in my bag' and a loliday's worth of pictures... Unfortunately, I am out of town and away from all my things/the room I have not moved into yet, so doing those challenges right now is not possible...

HOWEVER, I am still going to proceed like normal and will simply skip these days and come back to them once I am home and all set up at my new abode for the semester. In the meantime, I will skip days 10 and 11 and come back to them after day 15. Then I will proceed to day 16 like the challenge dictates.

The challenge I will be doing today is day 12's prompt:

A picture of yourself before lolita came in to your life

I wasn't always conscious of my clothing and make-up choices. I was a foreigner to the aesthetic world of fashion for most of my life, in fact. Up to high school I stayed a lazy person with a hot-mess look inspired by the weaboo dream. Ah~ Smells like 2008~

Can't help but love the picture quality of good old '08

This took a long time to change. I went through a gender crisis in high school in which I wasn't pleased with traditional femininity and felt more comfortable in masculine roles. This brought me to crossplay and to cut my hair quite short, wearing baggy clothes and avoiding all girly things.

A picture of a much later time, but following the same principle

  Right up until nearly the last year of high school, I maintained this non-traditional expression. Then I had a crisis. As I was preparing to go to college, I wondered what if I was doing things wrong all along and if employers would resist my gender expression. I sought to become what I thought I had to be-- traditionally feminine. I started leafing through magazines, practicing makeup, and taking modeling lessons. That's a whole different story altogether, but I basically ended up learning the basics of makeup, etiquette, and hairstyles/dressing styles appropriate for body and face shapes, as well as some tricks on posing and going down a runway. While this modeling stint didn't last very long, it built the foundational knowledge that allowed me to get interested in and experiment more with looks. Needless to say, I started to dress a bit better.

My bunny, Peter, graciously traveled with me to college

As I mentioned on the first day of the challenge, I entered the Lolita scene after experimenting with other J-fashions. I initially researched Gyaru because I liked the make up techniques, but could not bring myself to apply that much make up in all my laziness orz.  At this point, I was still enamoured with the edginess of my high school years, so Pastel Goth was very appealing to me, but, again, my laziness got in the way. I settled for incorporating cuteness into my wardrobe instead.

I moved toward casual Fairy kei, determined to bring in a bit more fluffiness and color to my wardrobe. It worked to some extent and laid the groundwork for the more labor-intensive lolita fashion later on. Here is the result of my derping around with the newly discovered world of pastels:

That is how we arrive to the present. From hot mess to crossplayer, to normal (?) person, and into the J-fashion void I went. And I stare into the void affectionately. It has taken me as one of its own and it makes me happy.

Look at that happy (?) nerd!

Anyway, that is the more than one picture tale of my journey into Lolita. It has been bumpy but fun, and I can't wait to see what other fashion adventures await me in this fashion.

Keiko out~