#fbf My Growing Attachment For Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion, Jam Of The Day: “Doing It (Remix)” by Charli XCX featuring Rita Ora, And Watch NYC Trains From 1986 [VIDEO]

When I watch Romy and Michele, I see exactly who I was back then and still am today. Colorful, occasionally goofy, hopelessly excited for the future to get away from the present. I’ve recently clung to this film because when reality hit the titular characters that maybe they haven’t accomplished as much as they should’ve in the last ten years, even humorously, that resonated with me. Romy and Michele, they graduated in 1987 with not much to write home about by 1997 (party girls that watch Pretty Woman on repeat; one is unemployed; their saving attribute being they love designing and making clothes) even though they’re only 28. Yet, in all that time, they held on to their individuality and the real issue at hand was that they had always sold themselves short. They never felt smart enough to do something like run a business or comfortable in the kind of environment that wasn’t akin to a cubicle.

In my ten years, four of those years were spent in college, eventually graduating with a B.A. in English, but it would take another four years to receive the job I left home for, a writing position in New York City (again, like Romy and Michele, I had left home too for something more. They had gone to L.A.) And it wasn’t easy. I felt bad sometimes. Logging onto Facebook and comparing my journey to someone who was already a lawyer, or with kids, or freelancing for Billboard, while I was still a Sales Associate with no intentions of wanting to move up (I was thankful for these discounts, my closet was looking real sweet) or worse, being a restaurant hostess. Ugh. When I was closer to the dream often through an internship, I was so anxious for success I came across passive aggressive or straight up frustrated with not feeling creatively fulfilled.

In Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, the circumstances of their return to Tucson gives them the push they needed. While they were always themselves, they finally believed in the freedom and creativity being so gave them. That’s the thing about being “different.” You actually embrace it for the most part. It’s just getting around to not caring about how uncomfortable it makes others who chose to not to see the beauty in contrast. My peak didn’t come a year after high school or college, but close to the same year my ten-year anniversary would be. My golden ticket came winter 2014. I had been trying since fall 2010. I did what I had to do to (working retail, attending to unpaid internships, writing on my own blog) to get where I wanted to be. I must’ve watched this film at least ten times by the time this is published.

Another interesting note that I must include is that the film reminds me of a classmate of mine from middle school. We also went to the same high school. She adored this film. I won’t reveal her first name, which she created her own nickname for, but her last was De Leon, and she was possibly related to the conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon that we briefly read about in history class. She was a bit of an outcast in school, and not because she wanted to be but she was treated as such by the class clowns and trying to be bullies. I knew she was raised by her mother (who wonderfully accepted her daughter’s art school tendencies), and had a very late ’60s vibe about her. A style true to the hippies of the flower power movement. She was also ahead of everyone, even the writers of Entertainment Weekly, in being a fan girl for That ’70s Show. Her hair was dirty blonde and wavy, and she sometimes wore huge glasses and nail polish hues like pea green and shimmery turquoise. I remember her just sometimes wanting to be left alone when kids didn’t get her, twirling her hair and subtly rolling her eyes if someone made fun of her, muttering insults under her breath (which I found uproarious.) I liked her because she was in her own league, no one else was like de Leon in our grade. While we weren’t besties, when she was talkative, I remember us bonding over Romy and Michele. We even quoted it a few times, I wish I could remember exactly which lines. If you knew de Leon, Romy and Michele was so her, and that’s a compliment to how I remember who she was. I remember everyone, but some people were just distinctive.

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion was promoted as a kind of ’90s dumb blonde comedy, but it was truly a love letter to the weirdos and outcasts of high school that may had been overlooked in their House of Style or TRL days, but somehow even through the maelstrom of bullshit were always true to themselves. These same people were some of the brightest, most authentic people you would’ve had the pleasure of getting to know if you got over the fact that their musical tastes were different from yours or had a different upbringing. Everyone’s got a little Romy and Michele in them, but only a percentage of us are willing to display these capricious and self-assured sides whether we’re surrounded by those that love us or insist on loathing.