When Jack, a friend of mine from high school, proposed to his incredible girlfriend, Catherine, in our hometown, I was thrilled for them. But after the invitations had been sent out, my RSVP confirmed, and the guest list casually discussed, I made a shocking discovery. Their wedding would put me in the same room as my childhood bully for the first time since I was 18.
I was mercilessly bullied by the same girl, let’s call her Sarah, from elementary school through high school. It started with the standard stuff—getting my glasses broken, being shoved into lockers—before evolving into a kind of psychological warfare, involving sinister voicemails and vicious rumor-spreading. I’d like to say the experience made me stronger, or that her cruelty motivated me to succeed, but I’m not so sure that either of those clichés rings true.
When I knew that I would see her again, I had no desire to kill her with kindness. Instead, I was thinking about revenge. Specifically, revenge dressing.
Sarah and I didn’t speak at all during Jack and Catherine’s wedding—but I made sure to stand directly in her line of sight the entire night, the dance floor lights hitting me like a retaliatory disco ball. My revenge dress was a fringed, silver-sequined, skin-tight gown with a keyhole cutout that started at the jugular and ended at my belly button. I knew I looked incredible (and was even told so by a handful of boys whose attention I would have killed for in high school)—but better still, I felt incredible, too.
Of course, I’m not the first woman scorned to wield fashion as an emotional weapon; Princess Diana famously did it with an off-the-shoulder black dress in 1994, after her husband publicly admitted to having an affair. But over the weekend, Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie) and Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer) carried on that wonderfully petty tradition on Euphoria, as two friends attended the gaudy wedding of their shared enemies, Cassie Howard and Nate Jacobs.
Skin was the theme du jour for both characters: while Maddy wore a barely-there backless dress in bratty green with a rosary dangling above her derriere, Jules arrived in a Acne Studios dress ingeniously draped to only just cover her bust. The looks were perfect—and the daggered eye contact between Maddy, Jules, and the not-so-happy couple, perfectly familiar.
So wear the dress (or the piece of fabric artfully manipulated into a dress). I promise you won’t regret it.
