I consider myself a late bloomer.
I didn't get into anime until I was seventeen, but everybody else I know seems to have come out of the womb quoting lines from Evangelion or something. I didn't really count Pokemon as "anime" but my parents seemed to associate Pikachu with anything from Japan at all, like, ever.
My first-ever encounter with a lolita was at Japan Expo 2007 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and let's just say it wasn't very "Angelic Pretty", if you catch my drift. As a result, I swore off lolita fashion as a hobby for girls like The Plastics in Mean Girls. I was like eighteen or nineteen at the time, so I was still clinging to those typical high-school mentalities like a crutch.
I made the uneducated mistake of asking what anime she was cosplaying from, to which she responded with a snarl, "It's not cosplay!"
I'm sure she'd been hearing the same question from people all day long, and now that I am a lolita myself, I can sympathize with where she was coming from on a whole new level. It really sucks to have to explain what you're wearing over and over again. It's exhausting and ruins your day.
Though I understand her reasons, to this day, I still don't think it makes her actions right. That is why I now strive to be compassionate and polite to people who ask me all the silly questions from "What play are you in?" to "Where are your sheep?" and I want to respond to them with grace and dignity.
Heck, I wave at people when I catch them trying to sneak photos. Sometimes they smile back. A little bit of kindness goes a long way, and if I can make someone's opinion on lolita more positive when I correct them about the nature of my choice of dress for the day, then I'm gonna do it. I don't ever want to make someone feel the way that girl at Japan Expo made me feel.
I missed out on a lot of fun because of how upset I was about it.
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