Watched by belladet
People watching but on steroids. People watching but as God. People watching but you’re controlling your Sim in 1st POV and locking them in the basement with nothing but a toilet and easel so they can make “art.”
People Watching. Observation. Snooping. Surveying. Being a nosy bitch. Call it whatever you want; I love people-watching. If it were a sport, I’d be in the Olympics. I’d have seven gold medals right now and a career-ending injury that forced me to become a trainer. I’d have to coach up-and-coming people-watchers and watch them live out my dreams. I’d have lived the plot of Touchback two times and still have room for end-credit scenes.
I have an organized mental list of all the best spots: M-36 Coffee, sitting at the long wooden table against the window; the bus stop in the winter while students, as miserably cold as I, struggle to find their footing on the ice; My living room couch with the window that looks down at South U, where all the drunk girls walk home.
One night, really late on a Saturday, my roommate Chris and I sat outside a corner restaurant at 10:30 pm to watch people coming to and from the bars. We sat bundled up in our coats and scarves, making funny voices for people and embellishing their lives with dramatic soap opera plot lines. Chris would smack my arm when a cute guy walked by, and I’d make some stupid joke about how he probably has three toes and smells like cheese. Shitty jokes with no punchlines. The best kind of jokes.
People-watching is my way of falling back in love with the world. When my dad and I went to London during Christmas break, we visited a small town in Kent where his old boss lived. It was a cold, dreary, and undeniably British day. We waited on a bench outside a coffee shop in Tunbridge Wells. A church bell rang, and as I sat tucked under my dad's arm to stave away the cold, swarms of tweens flooded the sidewalks. Catholic uniforms, Uggs, and navy Longchamp bags ran up and down the streets. Girls and boys emerged from all sides, and out of nowhere, we were surrounded. Boys in all-black Air Force ones and ill-fitting school uniform suit jackets pushed each other back and forth like hyenas. Girls caked in foundation two shades too orange became herds of penguins huddled together for warmth. My dad and I? Two National Geographic presenters watching the great migration of school to Donner Kebab.
My dad asks me if I had one of those bags in middle school. I smile, filled with the comfort that he’d remember something as insignificant as a bag I probably wore for 9 months. A mirage of nostalgia settles over me. God, I wanted that bag so badly. My mom got it for me on my 12th birthday, with a tiny neon orange miniature coin purse version. In front of my eyes, the penguin-girls abruptly turn into American tweens and then into a bunch of me’s. A herd of young Bellas leaving school to get a bite across the street with their friends. Even though the British girls had shiny, straight hair when mine was wild and curly, and their accents stuck to their tongues like glue when mine sprung from my mouth like skipping rocks on a lake, we both had the same purse, cakey foundation, and youthful naivety. I tell him mine was brown and that the corners got all fucked up after only a few months of having it. He comments that it mustn't've been very sturdy. I say no, but it’s never about the quality, is it?We smile. The kids come and go—some line up outside a hibachi place. My stomach rumbles, and I joke about wanting Mexican, knowing tonight we’ll be going to a traditional pub. I lean on my dad's shoulder. I am 13 again.
Disgusting, wretched 13. It's an awkward, hairy, smelly mess. When I was 13, at the height of Instagram and Vine, when social media was truly starting to pick up, trends were being broadcasted like never before. New Balance shoes, flat-ironed hair, skinny jeans, and Longchamp bags. Back then, all I wanted was to fit in. Be like the girls I people-watched at the mall. Back then, at 13, it felt like nobody was like me. I remember the first day in middle school, when I walked in with that purse slung over my shoulder, and how the power slithered up my spine. Alexis, a girl in my math class, said it was soooooooooo cute and that she had a pink one at home. Elaina told me she was begging her parents for one; she’d have to wait for Christmas. A cute boy may have smiled at me, or maybe it was the delusion setting in. But I was in! I had what someone wanted, was what someone wanted. Simultaneously special and normal. A teenage paradox. And it felt so good.
Today, with the exponential rise of social media, there is constantly something new to be. High visual weight, low visual weight, mafia wife, coquette, basic, clean girl, boy pretty, girl pretty, negative canthal tilt, positive canthal tilt. I can keep going. Do you want me to keep going? Okay! Cat pretty, fox pretty, deer pretty. I can be as feminine as possible and fit into the box so well, but at the end of the day, they’ll still hate me for wearing cardboard.
My dad asks me if I liked the bag. My lips purse in thought. Did I like it? I liked how I felt with it. I liked that other people liked it and, in turn, liked me. I picture the white plastic lining that had pen marks all over it. The lack of pockets. The short handles that would always slide off my shoulder unless I shoved them under my backpack straps.
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​“Yeah, I did.”
"Then it was worth it.”
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It’s exhausting trying to juggle the social faux pas of today, but when I see a girl walking down the street in an outfit I would absolutely wear or saying the same stupid joke I’d tell my friends, the weight lifts a little. Because, yeah, I’m an individual with individual thoughts and wants, but so is she, and yet here we are in the same aerie leggings, Free People jeans, Birkenstocks, or rare beauty blush.The sidewalks empty out. The kids’ parents come to pick them up in their BMWs, or they’ve all gone somewhere to eat. It gets colder, which I thought impossible. My 13-year-old self walks off to go somewhere warmer, cooler, trendier. I let her, worried if I don’t, she’ll bite my head off. People-watching is my way of understanding the world and how intricately similar we all are. As much as we love to praise our individualism, sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that we’re like everyone else, if not to keep some of us humble. We all know that person who needs a little kick off the high horse they rode in on. What is so scary about looking at a stranger and seeing a small piece of yourself looking back at you? And we’re all judgemental. Don’t lie to me or try to lie to yourself. You see a girl with ugly shoes, and an impression is made.
But through people-watching, I’ve learned that while finding the differences, the similarities are just as apparent and just as important. It’s like the snap of a rubber band for a bad habit. You can’t stop the initial thoughts, those first impressions, but you can add to them after. So, yeah, his hair might be flat, but don’t you see, his eyes are the color of sun-dappled forest floors. My mom used to say, it's not the initial knee-jerk thought, but the correction you make after. I’ll still wake up and cook an egg and cheese bagel. Make myself a cup of coffee and sit on my couch to stare out the window. I’ll judge the temperature by the number of coats and scarves I see. I’ll see myself reflected a thousand times over and be thankful I can see myself at all.
