The Living Rockumentary

Apart from the usual girls running around with whiskers and cat-ears and guys dressed as Grim Reapers (I had three of the latter in one class of six students), there is one particular trend at this small boarding school that I've been seeing a lot of today, which is people dressing up like other individuals on campus.

Thankfully, this is all done in good humor. For instance, one student of mine dressed as her best friend's boyfriend, with fake muscles, painted-on stubble, and workboots. Others have stepped out of character to portray classmates who feature wardrobes different from their own. Most of these are cases where the student is "dressing down," taking on a punky or jocky look in direct contrast to their own normal conservative appearances.

In one case, though, I witnessed the scene where Molly Ringwald gives Ally Sheedy a makeover in The Breakfast Club and Emilio's eyes pop out of his head. A female student who normally wears dark colors, baggy pants, and I guess you could say is just a shade away from a gothy look was today sporting a pink cableknit sweater and miniskirt, had pulled her long hair back into a ponytail so that her face and forehead were unobscured and looked taller than usual due to the raised heel clogs on her feet in order to portray a popular classmate. She came walking by the computer lab today and my whole class yelled at her to come back in. The self-called preppy girl in my class looked her over and unironically complimented her on her choices and said she looked really good today while the guys stopped typing and just gawked. I imagine it must've been like that all day for her. What is going through that girl's head right now? What does she do tomorrow or next week? Does she return to her normal wardrobe without hesitation? Or will she alter some part of her look? Or will she gradually start to assume aspects of the "costume" until next year, she pulls out her old clothes on Halloween to reflect the antithesis of her new sartorial appearance?

What would you do? That's not an easy one. For a 15- year old girl at a small boarding school, that is not an easy one and much more weighted with significance than anything she learned all day in school today. I don't care if she wrote her college application essay, learned and comprehended all the causes of The Civil War, solved eighteen quadratic functions, memorized the entire periodic table of elements and read the first four chapters of The Catcher In The Rye today, what she does next regarding her wardrobe is going to have a huge impact on that search for identity.