When you know and like yourself well you don't pay a whole lot of attention to those who do not know and like you well. Celebrate your "strange" or "weird" self, it's "you"!

When you enjoy yourself and what you are doing, it shows and attracts others who like that too, enjoy being around you. It's like money And, you get to weed out the hangers-on, just looking to share your money/limelight/"glow", from the people you enjoy being with and who enjoy being with you, your friends. One can do it the "other" way, find someone one enjoys and hang with them (why we join "groups" -- we all have something in common to begin with) but just doing your own thing and enjoying it, looking up occasionally to survey the scene, you'll notice a bunch of people around you and some of them you'll realize you enjoy having around.

You don't have to evade put-downs, you have to be too busy to notice because they don't "make sense". Your mama wears combat boots! :-) Make you feel bad? No, because it doesn't make sense in your personal world. It just becomes a bit funny that someone thinks that will bother you? It's a child's taunt and you are not a child.