>>457986My situation is similar to
>>458166where I’m still technically in the group but I don’t attend meets anymore. I still post coord pics and occasionally buy or sell stuff so they haven’t kicked me out, but I’m at a point where I haven’t even met most of the regular posters in the comm discord. And, considering they’re overwhelmingly gendies who introduce themselves by posting their laundry list of self-diagnosed disorders and usually own one or two (godawful) Taobao dresses at most, I don’t really feel like I’m missing out.
I stopped attending meet-ups when I realised that 1) I didn’t actually enjoy them and they felt more like an obligation and 2) I was deeply embarrassed to be seen with my comm and spent every meet praying that I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. Not just because they looked bad (though most of them did) but because of the way they behaved. One time I ran into a couple of coworkers during a meet and they were completely bewildered to see me with my comm. They genuinely could not wrap their minds around the idea that I would willingly socialise with these people and came up with the explanation that I must have been volunteering with some kind of organisation that arranges outings for intellectually disabled adults. I began to ask myself what I even have in common with 99,9% of my comm, considering that the way we dress is barely even recognisable as the same fashion, and came to the conclusion that there was no reason for me to continue attending meet-ups.
It was a good move for my wardrobe, too. Once there was no pressure to fit in with the rest of the comm and to dress ‘lolita enough’ it was easier to focus on clothes I genuinely liked and wanted to wear, even if they wouldn’t impress most other lolitas. My taste is very toned down classic and gothic with a hint of aristocrat whereas my comm is almost entirely sweet, so I always felt very underdressed and often people didn’t even recognise my coords as lolita. I started putting together more costumey coords just so people at meet-ups would stop asking me “who I was there with” (“you’re not wearing anything I recognise as lolita so the only reason you’d have for being at a lolita meet-up would be to accompany an actual lolita, right?”). As a result I ended up with a bunch of coords I would only
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