Teen Explains Her Loud Sense of Style

Editor's note: This is the first in an occassional series exploring individual senses of style and fashion. Have a subject for a future installment? E-mail jay.corn@patch.com.

Her hair is bright pink.

She wears a tight Superman shirt underneath a pink sweater with black shorts and high tops.

She’s 15, likes heavy metal, has plenty of friends and says she’s happy.

Her name is Angel Sanders, and her favorite color is actually purple.

“My hair used to be really, really bright purple, but it faded,” Sanders said, turning down the Rise Against track blaring from her iPod.

Her loud fashion draws plenty of stares during the course of a typical day, but Sanders says she usually ignores the double takes and furrowed brows.

“I feel looked at everywhere I go,” she said. “At school a lot of people find me weird. Little kids look at my hair and think it’s the coolest thing ever, but teenagers look at is as a deformity.”

Her mom likes pink and purple, too, but prefers her daughter’s hair to be a more natural color.

“It’s just sort of who I am,” Sanders said. “I never really like normalcy, I guess.”

A once easy mark for bullies, Sanders said she now goes “mostly” unbothered at school.

“They used to tease me until I started teasing back,” she said. “Now they pretty much leave me alone.”

When it comes to music, Sanders says she prefers mostly heavy metal music but has a palette for symphony.

“I actually really like classical music like Beethoven, which is like a weird combination,” she said. “It’s what I do.”

Sanders hangs out with what she describes as a “weird circle” of friends at school

One has teal hair. Another liked green.

“They’re just a bunch of off the wall people,” she said.

Saying she’s generally happy with life, Sanders says her style isn’t an act of rebellion or a grasp for attention. She’s comfortable. 

“When I was younger and looked more normal I didn’t fit in as well, actually, which is kind of funny,” she said. “I actually got a lot happier once I started being myself.”