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I could go to Walmart wearing a hole-ridden Tweety Bird nightgown and a fright wig RIGHT NOW and hold my head high, that's how confident I am in all this (points at self, head to toe). That confidence might come from being a grown-ass woman, or it might come from drinking too much wine earlier this morning, one of those two. But I certainly didn't have it when I was a kid. That's what the first day of school outfit was for -- to fake everyone out into thinking you were better than you really thought you were.

If my perfect first-day-of-school fantasy ever came to fruition, the combination of my new clothes from Sears, extra crispy bangs, and fresh, dope, plastic framed glasses would have translated into a girl that no one would recognize from the year before. "Who's she?" they'd all say. "Is she an exchange student from France?" and "I didn't know we had a vocational model program!" And then they'd say "It's Kristi! Kristi from last year! But you're so pretty!" And then they'd immediately elect me homecoming queen even though the vote was a month away and we were in elementary school and didn't have homecoming.

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How to Bring It Back

That ridiculous optimism that you can create a whole new you on the first day of school is rooted in fact that's as American as apple pie: You really can reinvent yourself. Maybe not in front of the same kids who know you wet your britches under the slide in kindergarten, and maybe not when everyone else is also trying to solidify themselves on the cooler side of the social spectrum, but upgrading is not only possible, it's a good instinct. If you're familiar with the show Mad Men, you know the character Don Draper took the idea of reinvention and ran it to the finish line (of death? We don't know yet). Here's the character Don Draper as we know and love him: