Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
I had a stepmom once. When I was seven my father married a woman named Deborah who didn’t like me very much, mostly because we were very different and she had 16 and 17 year old sons when I was just seven years old. She didn’t feel like parenting in reverse and I can’t say I blame her. By the time I was 12 my father wasn’t married to her anymore. I didn’t mind.
There were a lot of ways I never wanted to be like Deborah, mostly I wanted to be kind, but the one part about her that really made me afraid for my future was the way she dressed. She wore, essentially…sacks. Loose, tapered-leg sweatpants, 1980s thick slouchy socks (which are back by the way because of course they are), and oversized tunic tops that went down damn near to her knees. She was always comfortable, but there was something about the way she dressed that always made me feel sad. There was a sloppiness to it, as though she didn’t care, and not in a good way. My style ever since has been an effort in outrunning a presumed sense of inevitability. I’m Deborah’s age now, so it’s time to reconcile wanting to be comfortable with simultaneously not wanting to look like a sentient potato.