Every week we’ve been featuring a story from the First Person Museum Online Gallery. This week we’re highlighting Anittah from Philly. I met Anittah this past weekend at The Food Trust’s Headhouse Farmers Market. Anittah was one of the Sunday shoppers who shared her story with us in exchange for one of our First Person Museum tote bags. A perfect swap for toting home some amazing locally grown produce! Check out Anittah’s fashion statement in this week’s featured story about an empowering Grey Shirt Dress.

Theme: Empowered
Object Type: Stuff I Wear

“I knew I would buy it the moment my eyes brushed past it. It was my first day in Moscow, all alone, after four days in xenophobic St. Petersburg with friends. “Oh, you think you are some sort of girly girl now?” My mother laughed at me when I’d returned to Brooklyn and telephoned her to report that I was throwing a tea party and would be wearing my brand new dress.

Yes, mother, I may be 5’10″ to your 5’4″. I may have hairy half-Gr*ngo arms to your hairless smooth Thai ones. I may sweat and grunt and feel jealousy at the glances that the cheerleaders get when I am huddled over a dry erase clipboard while any basketball coach diagrams our next play. But that does not mean I cannot also be a girly girl — That 3″ heels cannot sit patiently next to my high-tops in my closet, that I cannot eventually learn how to saunter into a fancy restaurant in my brand new grey silk shirt-dress.

So I knew that I would buy it the moment my eyes brushed past it, because I no longer cared about “boy or girl?” And when my mom made that comment it only stung a little bit.

Five years later the dress still hangs beautifully in my closet above the high-tops.”

Read Anittah’s official entry.

Would you like to be featured in a Museum? Upload your story today to the First Person Museum Online Gallery! Choose from Story Themes like, “Empowered” and Object Types like, “Stuff I Wear.” Upload media including photos of your object or video.

Stay tuned! Next week’s featured story could be yours!

-Becca Jennings