Growing up shy and reserved, I used clothes to ground myself and, at times, to disappear at school. 

By: Alissa Lee

I have always used clothes as armor. Every year in elementary school, I would have one piece of outerwear I’d wear every day from the first day to the last.  If I were going to the grocery store or to my cousin’s house, I would leave it at home. But I would never leave the house without it if I was going to school.

I have always been uncomfortable at school. No matter what the grade or  age, I always walked around afraid of being noticed by my peers and teachers. I never understood where the fear stemmed from. I still don’t. I only know that I hate standing out. I hate when people stare at me, or expect me to say something — especially when it feels like they expect me to sound profound or be an interesting person. I hate disappointing people. But what I hate most is how much I care about what people think of me. I’d rather just blend in, disappear, avoid the whole deal. So before each school year, I would find one dark-colored sweater I really liked and wear that for the entire year. 

Before my fourth-grade year, I was rummaging through my mother’s long, narrow closet. Inside, shirts and jackets hung  on a brown wooden rod nailed to the wall. It was a time capsule of my mother’s youth. All the pieces of clothing had been hers when she was much younger. She didn’t wear them any more,  yet she never had the heart to toss them out.

I scanned the clothing, and then  I saw it: a dark blue jean jacket. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Although it wasn’t  leather, it reminded me of bikers and greasers. I tried it on. The blue jean jacket clung on my body. The sleeves hung past my hands like a scarecrow, awkward. It was perfect. 

Everyday during the fourth grade I wore that jean jacket as if it were glued on me. It made me feel confident and comfortable in my own skin. I didn’t care that it was big on me or that sometimes it was too hot to wear it outside. It made school feel more bearable. 

“I like your jacket,” a girl I didn’t know said to me one day during recess. I practically beamed. It was the only time anyone complimented me that year, but I have never forgotten it or the way that it had made me feel. 

Throughout elementary and middle school I had classmates who wore knee-high socks every day. Some always had a cap on their heads, wore plaid shirts and styled their hair the same each day. My best friend, Jailia Her, would always wear wide cloth headbands. Until now, it never crossed my mind that maybe their chosen piece of clothing was their own piece of armor. When I wore my jean jacket I felt like a better version of myself. I’d like to think that when they wore their armor, they felt the same way.

There is something called enclothed cognition. This term was coined in 2012 by psychologists, Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky. From an experiment they both conducted, they discovered clothing can affect how well or poorly people complete a task. Clothing influences in part because of its meaning to the wearer: Or, as they write, “the influence of clothes thus depends on wearing them and their symbolic meaning.” 

For, what felt like, my entire life I’ve been practicing enclothed cognition without knowing it. As humans, it’s something that I think so many of us do without thinking. We wear what we wear to feel more comfortable in a room, to fully engrain ourselves in an environment, to express ourselves and sometimes to protect ourselves. 

After fourth-grade, I retired the jacket and forgot all about it. Occasionally, in the years that would follow, I would open that closet and look at the jacket on the hanger. A couple years ago my mother threw all of her jackets, including the jean jacket, into a cardboard box. With a black sharpie, she wrote “Mom’s Old Clothes.” The cardboard box is inside a black, enclosed cargo trailer on my parent’s driveway, along with boxes filled with old items from their youth. 

I have gone on to other enclothed cognition expressions. In other words, even now, as a college student, I still find myself looking for armor. But my armor changes every day. It never looks the same. Some days it’s how I do my hair, when I choose to wear my glasses or my contacts, doing my makeup, using my phone, reading a book or simply putting in my headphones and blasting music. 

For what feels like my entire life I’ve been practicing enclothed cognition without knowing it. 

Maybe one day I won’t need or want the armor, but right now it’ll stay on.