Fotografo de Bodas, Santiago

November 25, 2009

Warning: this post is completely non-Chile/non-photography related. It’s inspired by a series I read in Elle Magazine based off of a play called, “Love, Loss and What I Wore.”

When I was little, and I mean really little, like kindergarten, the other girls in my class all wore saddle shoes. I wanted some so badly and finally convinced my mom to take me to buy a pair. I got them in pink and they hurt my feet so much that I almost never wore them. At a time when the biggest stress in my life was forgetting my lines in the school play (I was so painfully shy I almost got held back and in a play called, “The Elephant’s Child,” I was literally playing the elephant’s child. Talk about pressure), my love affair with consumerism began.

In second grade, we moved from the boondocks, to what could actually be considered civilization, my parents got a divorce and I was The New Kid. I was a girl with a boy’s name and a short hair cut and my classmates were merciless. At lunchtime I would sit inside a little wooden house that other kids played on, and read inside it. I struggled to turn the pages in my book wearing bright red mittens in the brutal, snowy Michigan winter. Children poked me through the wooden slots with sticks while I read. I remember those red mittens so vividly. I don’t remember how sad I was at the time; it’s more like a vague black fog in the back of my mind that clouds my head when I think about that period in my life.

When I turned 10, my mom’s boyfriend at the time, Joe, took me and his daughter to a Janet Jackson concert. My first CD, when the CD player had just been invented, was Rhythm Nation, after my dad bought it and decided he didn’t like it. I grew up on, “Coontrooooooool. Now I’ve got a lot. Controooooool. To get what I want,” and “People of the world today. Are we looking for a better way, one time, SING IT, we are a part of the Rhythmmmmm Natioooooon,” The Janet concert was the highlight of my young adult life. Standing outside Pine Knob in Detroit, waiting in line to get in, I inhaled and squealed, “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M BREATHING THE SAME AIR AS JANET JACKSON.” Joe bought me a t-shirt, wildly inappropriate for a fourth grader, of Janet, topless, with her boyfriend’s hands covering her boobs. I wore it to school every day with cream colored jeans. That was the moment I finally decided to embrace my eccentricity. Yes, my name is Kyle Hepp, and I love Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson so much I named my birds after them. This year, when MJ died, I’ll fully admit, I cried. And a 5th grade classmate wrote on my Facebook wall, “Thought of you today. I still remember you moonwalking in class.” What a legacy I left on people.

Then came junior high. I spent ages picking out an outfit for the first day of school. I was so nervous. I instinctively knew that I wouldn’t be one of the automatically cool kids. Yet, I still tried so hard. Like we all do. I wore tapered jeans and then found out that bell bottoms were back in. With a new red turtleneck and a fuzzy cream colored angora sweater, at home I’d thought the outfit was perfect, but as soon as I arrived at campus, I felt sick to my stomach. I knew it was all wrong.

High school flew by. I wore my cheerleading uniform on days we had competitions and my soccer uniform on days we had games. The rest of the time I mostly wore pajamas and laughed at my friends who actually cared about what they wore to school. Once I did an experiment and wore the same purple pajama pants, they were huge on me, for two weeks straight to see if anybody would say anything. Nobody did. That was in 11th grade. That same year for prom I wore a hot pink’ish orange dress to prom, form fitting, to the floor. I looked hot. And I was happy because I was going with a guy who was kind of weird enough to be interesting to me. We used to IM until 4am in the morning. He was the only person I knew who had an insane nocturnal schedule like me and he “helped,” me all the way through a website building class. It was the only time in my life, that I remember cheating in a class. When we were in high school, he was still super skinny, what my mom would call “a late bloomer,” and I thought he was awesome. I was chubby. Now he’s super athletic and has ridiculous six pack abs. While I might not have the abs, I have lost quite a bit of weight since high school. I feel vindicated for the both of us.

Part II coming tomorrow.

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I love that you decided to do a post on this! I may have to steal this idea at some moment in the future when I feel otherwise uninspired

I also love that I KNEW you were going to write about the naked Janet Jackson shirt. Haha, when you told us about it that night at the beach you were so passionate with your love for a t-shirt!

Comment by emilyinchile — November 25, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
Wow. Este fácilmente clasifica como uno de los posteos más sinceros y emotivos que he leído en un blog. Gracias.

Comment by Alex — November 26, 2009 @ 6:20 am
There are people at my college who will only remember me from moonwalking on a table in the physics department lounge room!

Also, where are the pictures of this orange dress? it sounds A-Mah-zing.

Comment by Decoybetty — November 26, 2009 @ 11:30 am
Nice post. Looking forward to Part II.

Comment by jonnifer — November 26, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
[...] Part I in the post right before [...]

Pingback by Love, Loss and What I Wore, Part II « Kyle Hepp — December 18, 2009 @ 8:20 am
[...] Loss and What I Wore, Part I and Part II — something a little out of the ordinary for this blog. Some of it is Chile [...]

Pingback by Everybody’s Doing It « Kyle Hepp — December 18, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
nice post

Comment by Ski Goggles — January 1, 2010 @ 5:38 am
nice post

Comment by Ski Goggles — January 1, 2010 @ 1:38 pm