To fit in or not to fit in

Post Reply New Topic

Although I'm interested in everybody's answers (men, feel free to change words and answer about conventional boy stuff), I'm mainly asking female aspies who were diagnosed as adults (or, like myself, are undiagnosed but probably have AS).

As a child, did you prefer horses to astronomy (i.e. were your special interests conventionally "girly" rather than geeky)?

Do you usually wear makeup, dresses etc.? Do you generally look and dress like most other women your age or do you care less about things like your hair than others?

Do you feel the need or desire to belong to a social group (at work, college etc.)? Do you try to get into new or established friend groups when you come to a new workplace, for example? If you don't succeed, do you feel sad about it?

Recently, since I started realizing what is probably "wrong" with me after getting help for my son, I've been reading basically everything I can find about Asperger's. When I ran out of Swedish AS articles to read, I went on to American articles, which turned out to be very different in many ways. The most interesting thing was the parts about female aspies. Asperger women are said to be more difficult to diagnose because they are often even more socially functioning than aspie men. I believe in this in some cases and it's true for me in many ways. However, some articles say that this is because girls generally have other special interests than boys, for example horses instead of trains. Furthermore, I read in several articles that girls adapt more easily to social codes and are better at imitating clothing styles. There was a picture somewhere of an aspie woman, who was very good-looking, with straightened hair, a nice dress and a sexy smile. Of course there are well-dressed aspies, but sometimes it seemed like the authors of those articles thought that this was general (not that we all look fabulous, but that girls fit in more).

I know we're all unique, but I'm interested in your thoughts! I usually come off as pretty normal and social nowadays, but when it comes to style, appearance and obsessions, I'm a very typical aspie. No horses or high heels for me!

I'm diagnosed with OCD, but I definitely have some Asperger's traits now and had them as a kid. So I'm answering anyway

As a child, did you prefer horses to astronomy (i.e. were your special interests conventionally "girly" rather than geeky)?
The special interests I can remember were cars (I wanted to be a mechanic) and later geology, and then jazz music. I guess the first is kinda conventionally "boyish", the second is a little geeky, and the third was definitely unusual amongst my peers. I failed at fitting in.

Do you usually wear makeup, dresses etc.? Do you generally look and dress like most other women your age or do you care less about things like your hair than others?
No to dresses. I sometimes wear makeup if my complexion is looking bad. I'm no good at doing my hair. I blow-dry and that's it.

Do you feel the need or desire to belong to a social group (at work, college etc.)? Do you try to get into new or established friend groups when you come to a new workplace, for example? If you don't succeed, do you feel sad about it?
No, I usually don't feel the need to belong to a social group at school/work/etc. because it just stresses me out. It's tiring to try and relate to people who are nothing like me. I have a small group of close friends I've gotten to know really well over the years, and that's all I need. I'm shy and quiet around other people.

I'm 30 and was diagnosed with AS last December.

As a child I was quite girly; I remember I had a pink bedroom and played with My Little Ponies and toy animals. I never played with any dolls though, only toy animals.

Nowadays I wear make up everyday but that's more as a form of protection against the outside world. I don't wear that much make up though and I'm pretty bad and putting on eyeshadow or anything beyond the basics (mascara and eyeliner). I very, very rarely wear dresses and never wear high heels because I love walking and they're a pain to walk in. I don't care at all about fashion or following current trends and just wear thing that I'm comfortable in. Same goes for my hair, I just stick with a style that easy to look after and doesn't require too much work.

I left my last job a year ago and haven't had another one since. I haven't joined any social clubs in the meantime either so only really see anyone outside my immediate family maybe once every one or two months. I'm quite happy with this though as I like my own space. When I do start a new job I find it easy to make a good initial impression but I then struggle to back it up with any form of friendship, mostly because I don't really consider the people I work with real friends (except the odd person I feel a genuine connection with). This does frustrate me sometimes because I can see that everyone else seems to get along really well and I feel left out, but at the same time I don't want to pretend to be good friends with someone when I'm clearly not.

Are you thinking about getting a diagnosis, Nerves?

my first special interest ever ( after the toddler "dust in rays of sunshine/the light of the sun as seen from under a beach towel ( rainbooooows lol) etc phase) was reading. my mother became worried and tried to make me do some sports, i quit judo/viet vo dao etc everytime a competitive event happened. so she tried horseback riding. yes, horses and riding them and befriending them was my second interest from then on, so....i guess i'm pretty boring for an aspie lol!!
i kept reading though so that was pretty geeky ( was into child psychology round ages 6 to 8 i guess, after that the horses came up and i mainly read novels. )then i started learning english and bye bye went the horses.
makeup? i tried, but the kids in my son's kindergarten started calling me "the make up mommy," so i desisted. i forget most days...
as for keeping my hair done, it's like i don't even know why i'm doing it. i wash them when they start looking unwashed, and let them hang. like a sort of hippy i guess i don't look very classy....
i wear jeans and sneakers. that's it. i look good in a dress but i don't feel either safe or comfortable in them. and they require heels so that's not gonna happen, i fall from my own height enough as it is.
friendships...meh. i wish i could do that as it feels nice when it works out, but it never goes past the first month with me. i get bored with people as soon as i know the way they work.
but hey, i can look like that woman in the picture, if i actually put my mind to it! most of the time, i feel it's just useless hassle.

I preferred astronomy to horses, was never really into horses. I also had special interests of rocks and minerals, dinosaurs, when the other poster mentioned sharks that brought back memories.
I never enjoyed playing with dolls, I did enjoy making things for them like houses, furniture and clothes.
I don't dress to fit in with those I work with but I do like to wear classic clothes and frequently wear dresses and heels to work. I do my hair and makeup in the morning and try to look the best I can for that day, then I go away and forget about how I look for the rest of the day. I spend the time in the morning so that it is not something I need to concern myself about and I can feel polished and professional as I perform my job.
I don't feel any need to feel that I belong to a social group, either at work or in my personal life. I usually enjoy a good conversation with someone else and there are people that I feel closer to and we have a good relationship but I wouldn't say I was in the "in" crowd or have ever been.

I am an adult male diagnosed with Asperger's. As a child I preferred astronomy. My interests were more geeky. However, my best friend and I often rode go carts and dirt bikes on his grandparents' backyard. We shared a lot of similar interests like model rockets and model building. Neither one of us were much into sports other than bowling and golf.

I never paid much attention to how other guys dressed. It just didn't matter to me. My mother took care of picking out and buying my clothes for me all the way up until I got married. I tended to wear my hair the same way and not necessarily the way the other guys wore theirs. As a child, I did often wear long hair, as many of the guys did in the 1970s.

Mom and Dad kept me well stocked on clothes, and tended to buy clothing based on what I wore the most. My choices of what to wear weren't so much based on what others wore, but what I felt comfortable in. My favorite clothing choices were somewhat similar to the other boys of the 1970s. In the colder months---jeans or courdoroys and flannel/polyester shirts or sweaters. In the warmer months---shorts pants and tank tops or mesh shirts (shirts with the little holes in them).

I did not, and still don't, feel the need or desire to belong to a social group. But I did enjoy belonging to the band in school. But the social cliques weren't my thing. I prefer doing things on my own. I have performed music publicly for many years (since I was in high school). I enjoy performing solo without having other performers with me. In college, I tended to stay by myself. I didn't want to stay on campus, so I drove to college (Ohio University) every day---an hour and half each way.

My philosophy is that although I am autistic, there is nothing wrong with me---I am merely different. Many people have seen me as shy or very quiet---the typical way many people with Asperger's are seen. I have the Asperger special intense interests that others very much know about me---roller coasters and music for example.

I have never been girlie, not even as a child. I played with dolls but it was mostly to make clothes for them, which I considered more as a craft project than as playing dress-up. I didn't really have special interests as a child, so I was not interested in either astronomy or horses. (As an adult I've been obsessed with a band for the last 16 years, which I consider to be a special interest.)

I definitely care a lot less about my hair and clothes than other women. I realize that looking as frumpy as I do can be embarrassing, but I don't really know how to look different, as odd as that sounds even to me, since all I would have to do in theory is copy how other people look.

I would like to be a member of a social group, but socializing is the most difficult thing for me, and when I have tried in the past I have been burned badly. (I do have a few close friends.) I think I come off as shy and a bit awkward, but not noticeably different, so it isn't obvious to other people why I find socializing so difficult. Ever since I found out I have AS (which was only a few months ago, although it first occurred to me as a possibility about 12 years ago), I find it even more difficult to socialize because now that I know why it's been so difficult all this time, I can't go into a social situation with the blind hope that this time it will somehow turn out all right.

I'm a 30yo female and I consider myself "mildly aspergic" though probably not diagnosable.

I was interested in astronomy, dinosaurs, etc. but nobody seemed to think this was unusual. I played equally with "girl's" and "boy's" toys, but I think when I played with dolls I mostly wanted to tidy their hair or just generally "fix them up". I loved lego, building blocks, etc. and most pretend play involved very rigid and thought out scenarios and rules.

I don't wear much makeup, hardly ever wear a dress or skirt, am hopeless with doing my hair up, and even though I want it, I lack some sophistication in my overall fashion sense.

I do make some effort to fit into social groups, but that is because I don't like being alone all the time, not because I crave socialising. I am very fussy about the sorts of groups or events I will participate in.

The whole "disguising the symptoms" thing with females is fascinating, I think perhaps the ability to do this is also a spectral construct, with some females having the ability to appear socially "normal" and others not. I'm not very good at disguising anything, but I'm also not highly impaired. Pretty sure I come across as shy and a bit awkward.

Ahh, Lego. :> So much memories there. <.<

Regardless of fitting in or not, i was just "myself", so i didn't really care what people would think / say about me. :<

I love astronomy. I have my own telescope and photography set up. I'm allergic to makeup and don't even bother with fashion. Well I do but in my own way. I don't care about fitting in. People seem to like me despite I do at times 'play up the weird.'

Thanks everyone for sharing your stories and interests!

Just as I thought, the ideas about female aspies seem to be based on stereotypical ideas about girls/women being genetically programmed to nicely adapt and follow fashion (grr!). Seems like most of you are like me with some natural variations - not absolutely clueless about clothes but still with some limits.

I care about what I wear, but I prefer vintage men's suits and occasionally classic women's clothes. Trendy clothes never appealed to me. My hair always looks the same and I've often been picked on for it, but I don't care. If I get split ends, I cut them off myself (because they itch rather than because it looks bad). I own some makeup and I make an effort with it for a date, party or a special occasion but never in my everyday life. I keep my eyebrows in check and feel more comfortable with shaved legs, but I don't know anyone who spends as little time on their body hair as I do. If I wear a dress and nice stockings, I have to wear flat shoes and very little makeup, or I will feel extremely uncomfortable. And sometimes I spend a lot of time on my outfit but forget to try to cover up an acne breakout... You get the picture.
There was a time (6th to 7th grade) when I desperately tried to follow fashion, but that was never really a matter of me wanting to fit in and make friends. It was simply an attempt to survive in a rigid hierarchy, and everybody was so obsesseed with brands that there was no way to avoid it. I eventually got fed up with it though, and started dressing in ways that others found very weird.

I never understood what was so interesting about horses, boy bands, sports or anything else that girls my age liked. My interests have been (and still are, although the obsession levels have changed) sharks (I was so happy someone brought that up!!), tornadoes, trains, phonetics, astronomy, chemistry, pyrotechnics, books, microbiology, quantum mechanics... All I wanted for my 18th birthday was a telescope, and while other kids want to be astronauts at age 7 or so, that was what I wanted in high school. My musical interests have also turned into special interests of this kind, and my taste has always been very different from what has been popular among people my age. For example, I was mad about opera and classical music during my early childhood.

I never felt sad about not fitting in, either. Of course, I can make an effort to be casually friendly tp people, but I prefer to be friends with people I've actually connected with somehow. Friend groups seem to form in ways that feel unnatural for me, such as chatting during breaks, just hanging out after school and things like that. I can live without it, really. After having been surrounded by people for an hour or so, I want to be alone for a while, and I really don't need company for buying coffee between lectures. I'm limited edition - either people love it or they don't!

And yes, I will go on and see if I have AS (although I'm sure of it). I have an appointment with my son's doctor on Monday and then we will see how we can go on with it. It would be a relief on so many levels, not least because I feel that I was betrayed by the adult world when I was a kid. A diagnosis could tell me that it wasn't my fault, that I wasn't stupid, rude, hopeless or terrible.