The Material Mirror: On Belongings and Becoming (By Clara Carter-Klauschie)

Collections and trinkets insulate my room, filling the mind with a comforting sort of white noise. This background hum helps drown out the doubt. It acts as an anchor: I am tightly held within a patchwork of myself, unable to float away. If my space were drained of its cluttered character, would I be whole anymore? I’m not sure.

Nearly every person holds a subconscious, or in my case, conscious preoccupation with the material. We all wish to see ourselves through a certain lens. Belongings can color, stain, pattern, and texture the lens, adding layer upon layer of complexity. Without this carefully crafted looking glass, the identity can feel flimsy. 

This partially stems from a need to both belong and feel unique – to define ourselves. We all strive to present what we feel inside in a manner that is palatably remarkable. To show the world that we are interesting. Most importantly, to reassure ourselves that we are someone. In the process of self-portrayal, the external and internal further blend and blur. We begin to change the “in” to resemble the “out” and the “out” to reflect the “in.” Our ins and outs begin to mirror the ins and outs of others. In the pursuit of delineation, we have conformed. The material manifestation of self plays a large role in this coming-of-age paradox. 

My obsession with morphing the picture of myself began early. As a young kid, I changed outfits every 30 minutes, overlaying dresses with tank tops, capri leggings with shorts, and scarves with other scarves. Though not consciously, I treated myself like a canvas. I was the artist who could never leave well enough alone. Working myself into knots, I erased and redrew until the canvas wore thin. This chaotic art soon became a concern. My parents set a limit: only three outfit changes per day. 

This chaos permeated beyond fashion. The room I shared with my sister was meticulously messy. My stuffed animal-covered bed stayed perfectly made, no exceptions. Sleeping atop the comforters, I clung to the comfort of neatness. And atop my dresser, an odd collection of characters and items could be found, arranged in perfect formation. To an untrained eye, the room may have appeared messy in its clutter. To me, everything was perfectly in place. 

Though my particular brand of specificity and perfectionism extended far past the arrangement of a room and the peculiar nature of my fashion sense, these are the most glaring manifestations. I am still that kid who could never decide on the right outfit; I ruminate and obsess over what to wear, ashamed of my level of concern with something that seems so trivial. But why do these choices carry such gravity? Well, just like the clutter of my room, the right outfit is grounding. It tethers me.

However, just underneath the exterior, this comfort is a constraint. I am bound to a system that is not innocent, but insidious. I am tethered, yes, but also trapped. Consumer culture exploits the desire for identity, cloaking manipulation in the language of self-expression. It tells us that we are what we buy—and that we are never quite enough.

The push and pull between belonging and individuality isn’t simply human nature. It's manufactured. We are sold the idea that self-worth can be purchased, that identity can be curated through transactions. This notion keeps the capitalist wheel turning; the hunger to invent and reinvent ourselves drives purchases far beyond the necessities. Newness becomes synonymous with improvement, and expression becomes indistinguishable from consumption. In attempting to define ourselves, we are often defining our ability to buy. The line between authenticity and acquisition has blurred. 

I have fallen prey to this trap, experiencing the complex mixture of fulfillment and discontent that material belongings offer. Life can feel like a performance. Costuming the role of “Clara” every day, I make choices that feel personal but are often shaped by outside forces. I am not immune to the pull of trends—it would be difficult to find a teenager who could make that claim with complete honesty. The capitalist, consumerist design of America, and a large part of the world, makes it nearly impossible to block out the static of popular culture. We’re left with a few options: attempt to tune it out, reject it altogether, or mold ourselves to fit it. To purposefully oppose the norm is to allow the identity to be wholly dictated by that norm. Therefore, rebellion, inversely, is a brand of conformity. So most of us settle somewhere in the middle, reaching for uniqueness while still borrowing from the world around us.

Contending with this deep-seated consumerist framework demands self-awareness. We must learn to navigate the blurred line between joy and performance, expression and consumption. Somewhere within that noise, we might still discover a version of ourselves that rings true.