Are we all chucking away our crop tops at 25?

The joys of transitioning from girlhood to womanhood.

Prior to turning 25, I never bought into the whole “frontal lobe development” thing. I was convinced I was born with fully formed tastes—my enduring love for leopard print surely being proof of that.

But last summer, the summer I turned 25, I sensed a shift: The girl version of me was leathery, seemingly having withered overnight, skin cracking, peeling, and shedding to accommodate the blossoming, nay, erupting, woman within.

I realized this when I tried to squeeze into one of my ancient crop tops from university. Attempting to fit a fully-fledged woman into a ribbed Forever 21 polyester crop top with “Baby Girl” embroidered on it felt off—almost pedophilic. To myself. Unnecessarily infantilizing.

Consequently, I took a critical look at my closet and try-on-hauled my clothes to see what else should be binned.

It was neither looking nor feeling good.

Items I’d adored merely months ago—stringy tops, open-back tops, and low-rise jeans—felt far too uncomfortable to wear. Bits and bobs splatted out. Organs hung loose. I felt like it was Halloween, and I was cosplaying different cultural variants of a string sausage.

These were the types of clothes I’d wear while proclaiming '“body positivity!!!” whenever someone pointed out that I was inappropriately dressed for the occasion (and they weren’t wrong.)

And it wasn’t just their cuts that bothered me, it was their overwhelming loudness that was jarring. I felt like a walking, talking eyesore—“visual pollution,” as the Dutch once called my moving boxes when I was settling into my Amsterdam accommodation.

The bright, look-at-me colors I once loved walking around in for the love of self-expression, experimentation, and “having a personality” also made me feel itchy, more perceived than I was okay with. This shift felt strange because, for as long as I’ve known myself, I’ve used fashion as a creative outlet.

I was all for trying new styles, trends, and aesthetics, seemingly allergic to basics. My closet was a display of my hoarding habits; an eclectic mix of mismatched, clashing garments with not a single timeless piece in sight.

In fact, to this day, I still don’t own a simple white T-shirt (though I’m on the hunt for the perfect one.)

Back in university, I’d spend hours perfecting elaborate make-up looks to match my outfits—metallic deep blue cut creases, khaki smoky eyes, sunset-inspired looks, you name it. This was a habit I’d carried over since my high school days when I’d wake up at 5 a.m. just to blend the perfect grey-to-black ombre smoky eye before class.

Defining, refining, and redefining my look used to be one of my favorite hobbies, so much so that my version of ambient noise was make-up tutorials and “outfit of the week” videos playing on a loop in the background for hours on end.

And I genuinely believed, as you do when you’re young, that everyone was just like me, using fashion as a means of self-expression.

Whenever I saw someone dressed plainly, I couldn’t help but make assumptions about their personality. I assumed they were just as dull and uninspiring as their outfit. It never occurred to me that, for some—if not most—people, clothing was merely a practical shield against a criminal charge of indecent exposure.

So, dare I say, I surprised myself last summer when I purged a third of my closet, tossing out clothes that had too much personality. Clothes that, at 18, I’d be frothing at the mouth to own because they made me look “different” and “not like the other girls.”

I suppose I now understand older women—the ones I used to look down on for dressing plain and run-of-the-mill.

Now, in my eyes, the chicest, most fashionable women are often the simplest, dressed in timeless cuts, natural fabrics, and colors that flatter their skin tones.

In the end, these are the pieces you’ll never regret owning as you learn to distinguish between what’s trendy (but not truly fashionable) and what’s overpriced (without justification in fabric quality).

Maybe becoming a Plain Jane is part of growing up. Or maybe I’m simply tired of the guilt that comes with trying to donate my skimpy clothes to orphans or filling up a landfill with more spandex.