My junior year of high school, I walked into my pre-calculus class, sat down, and was immediately greeted with a variety of reactions ranging from shock, reprehension, confusion, all the way to “What are you wearing?”

I was wearing a dress.

I, a closeted (at the time) non-binary kid that tended towards the most androgynous clothes possible, was wearing a black floral-print dress. For some reason, this really freaked people out.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve gotten reactions like this. Whenever I cut my hair shorter and shorter, whenever I dye it out-of-the-norm colors, whenever I show up to school and I’m wearing slightly more eye makeup than normal. If I look slightly different than I normally do, people always wonder who I’m dressing up for or what the occasion is. Why can’t it just be because I felt like wearing a dress?

People are so often pressured to maintain the same style, whether it be music, clothing, or simply the way they act around other people. They feel that they can’t change their interests or the way they dress—I certainly have. Whenever I’ve gone public with a new hobby that I’ve gotten into, I always have people asking me “Well, where did this come from?”

That’s the issue, right there: the conflict between our public and private selves. We all have aspects of our identities that we keep out of the public eye. This can range from our gender and sexual identities, to our guilty-pleasure TV shows, to the knitting hobby you keep at home and rarely bring out. We’re not obligated to share these things with everyone, but when they do come out in the open people assume that it’s a new thing, even when it’s not.

Harmless comments about a new hairstyle or a shared interest aren’t that bad, but sometimes the questions become judgmental, and in turn, harmful. There’s nothing wrong with telling someone you like their haircut, but when you say that it looked better the other way it becomes an unnecessary comment—did they ask for your opinion? It may seem harsh, but think of how that person feels. When I walked into pre-calc wearing that dress, I was already anxious enough, riddled with dysphoria and worrying about how I’d be perceived. Having people bombard me with questions about it didn’t exactly help. Even if you mean well, your words can still hurt.

I’m not sure why society is so resistant to change. Perhaps it has to do with familiarity—in a world where technology is constantly changing and political tensions are at what feels like an all-time high, it’s one less thing to worry about if your friends wear the same kind of clothes all the time. Maybe it’s something more like ease—there’s no need to worry over what to talk about if you already know what your friends like. Or perhaps it’s something a little more introspective, and a little more to do with that public v. private conflict. If everyone around us can change, what’s keeping us constant? What’s holding us to our principles, and keeping us from picking up and moving away the minute something doesn’t suit our fancy?

Here’s my challenge to you: try something you’ve always wanted to do. Bring something out into the public. Wear that outfit sitting in the back of your closet, talk about your favorite guilty pleasure, knit at lunch with your friends. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Just take a leaf from David Bowie’s book: “Turn and face the strange.”