Clothing

In case you haven't noticed, Fangirl is all about feeling out of place. It's also about cute boys, gay vampires, manic dads, missing mothers, and drunk sisters, but importantly, each of these things contribute to Cath feeling like an alien among her peers. Perhaps nothing announces her outsider status more than her clothing, though.

On the first day of school, Cath's feeling toward her outfit demonstrates just how awkward she feels. The only freshman in a class for juniors, as she walks into Fiction-Writing she sees, "All the upperclassmen wore heavy black Ray-Ban frames. All the professors, too. If Cath got a pair of black Ray-Bans, she could probably order a gin and tonic around here without getting carded" (2.110). Cath's glasses, of course, are purple. And from Target. In other words, she sticks out like a sore thumb—or at least she thinks she does.

Wren, on the other hand, is already flashing her fake ID all over town. This girl's the life of the party—she knows how to fit in—and we can see it in the outfit she dons for a night out. Check it out:

She was wearing a pink dress and brown tights, and brown ankle boots with heels and little green buttons up the side. They were Cath's boots, but Cath was never brave enough to wear them. (7.107)

Not only does Wren fit in more easily than Cath, as evidenced by her social life and general willingness to leave her dorm room, but she has the confidence and fashion sense to wear a pair of boots that Cath's never mustered the courage to put on. Cath's boots are going out, but Cath will be staying in, please and thank you, for a little quality alone time. She's never the odd man out when she's by herself.

When Reagan finally decides to drag Cath out of her room, she has to give her a tutorial on fitting in, telling her, "Wear something that doesn't have Simon Snow on it, so that people won't assume your brain stopped developing when you were seven" (6.122). It might seem a little harsh, but when we think about it, we actually see clothing working on two symbolic levels here.

First, Cath's usual outfit choices are not the norm, thereby signaling her as an outcast, but second, Reagan's willingness to say this to Cath is a gesture of friendship. And what's friendship all about, Shmoopers? That's right: inclusion. Plus, since Reagan will clearly be Cath's friend no matter what she looks like, we also realize that not fitting into the main stream doesn't have to mean not fitting in at all. In Reagan, Cath is beginning to find her people—and part of how we know this is that Reagan will loving tell her to ditch her Simon Snow tee-shirts.