The other day while I was looking through my closet for something to wear out for a casual dinner, a thought came to me. I'm not very good at being a girl.
I don't mean I'm not good at doing girl things, though I don't consider most activities gender specific (except stuff like going to the gynecologist, because jeez, we have to draw the line somewhere, right?). I like to cook and I revel in a hot bubble bath, for instance. And I don't mean that I have a tendency to gravitate to traditionally non-girl activities. Sure, I can mow the lawn, hang a picture, and change the oil in my car, but truthfully, I'd rather have someone else do these things. I don't care if they're male or female; it's not about gender. It's laziness, not a political statement.
What I have a problem with is the fashion portion of femaleness. I appear to be sorely lacking the shopping gene. I don't have 27 pairs of shoes in a dizzying array of styles and colors - I think I have 4 pairs that I actually wear, several of which are cross-trainers. There are a few more languishing at the bottom of my closet that I should just get rid of, because jelly shoes are never coming back in style and I just need to come to terms with that. My lipstick wears off before I even get to work and I never remember to put it in my purse before I leave the house, so I'm forever wandering around naked lipped. I work in a very casual office, and if I go into work wearing anything approaching a dress, I'm immediately besieged by co-workers asking me where I'm interviewing, because any other clothing than jeans and a T-shirt is perceived as being dressed to the nines. I'm just not skilled in the exterior arts of girlhood.
I recall a Cosmo quiz I saw a while back (and before you berate me for taking the Cosmo quiz, let me point out that it was this very quiz that convinced me never to open a Cosmo again - and I haven't). At issue was my fashion sense and the burning question Am I A Slave To Trends? I pretty much already knew the answer to this one since I was standing around in line at Safeway in a Disneyland T-shirt from 1993 and sweatpants delicately festooned with cat hair, but I thought I'd find out how dismal Cosmo actually thought I was. It's not unlike walking up to the most popular girl in school and asking her what she thinks of your brown paper bag book covers - you know where it's going, but the look on her face is pretty entertaining.
So I was taking the quiz and I got to the following question, the question that told me it was all over. The situation posed was this: "That darling little chocolate brown skirt in your closet is so last fall, but you don't have the cash for this spring's styles. You a) hit Bloomie's with your credit card and go for the latest look - you deserve it! b) hunt down a fabulous new scarf at Nordstrom and update that tired skirt - creativity is your strong suit! or c) wear the skirt - nobody will notice."
My response was "WHAT chocolate brown skirt?!"
The correct answer, of course, the answer that struck the right balance between au courant and sensible, was B - update that exhausted 6-month-old look for god sakes, but don't spend a fortune doing it. Response A (in fact, ALL the response A's in the entire quiz) was the Slave To Trends answer. The profound Cosmo quiz analysis after the test itself indicated that if you scored enough A's to be graded a Slave To Trends you might want to consider getting your head out of your shallow ass and looking around a little because girls all hate you and boys think you're a dimwit. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist. The response B's, as I've mentioned, were the Hip But Practical level. These girls successfully walk the line of staying on top of the hot looks, but sprinkle a dash of common sense in the mix by purchasing $90 scarves to "update" the essentially new skirt they've only worn twice. How levelheaded! To quote Michael Palin in The Meaning of Life, "We're all really impressed down here, I can tell you." Those poor saps who responded with a preponderance of C's were the Could Use an Update girls. I don't understand that at all - they bought the chocolate brown skirt in the first place! They were in the know enough to race out and purchase a skirt that would be completely out of fashion in 180 days. They're pretty Up To Date, in my humble opinion. The real Could Use an Update club is the one I belong to - the girls who had no idea that chocolate brown skirts even existed and are still running around in Benneton sweaters from 1988. We're far more pathetic than girls who just suck it up and wear their flipping 6 month old skirts with nary a whimper.
The point is that I'm in a category that Cosmo doesn't even acknowledge. If I don't have the skirt to begin with, I can't answer the question. If I have absolutely no analogous situations to draw upon (and I don't), I really can't answer the question. I need more help than Cosmo is equipped to provide. And you know something? That's a complete relief.
I know I have no fashion sense. I revel in it. Because the truth of the matter is that most "fashion" is both appallingly expensive and horrifically ugly. I wasn't even dimly aware of the ephemeral chocolate brown skirt phase in haute couture, but the picture in the magazine next to the question made me pretty damn happy to have avoided walking through racks and racks of them at the store. That's my real problem with fashion - it's everywhere, being forced upon me at all turns and I couldn't wear a little brown skirt on a bet, so I don't even want to see them. To be honest, I can't wear most "in" clothing, not only because I'm heavier than my ideal weight right now, but because "in" clothes are designed for figures diametrically opposed to mine in the best of times (i.e. - intended for women with frail shoulders, no boobs, long waists, and no hips while even if I dieted to a size six I would still have shoulders like a line backer, an ample bosom, no waist and child-bearing hips... to be polite). Fashion is intended for waifs, and even in my downright skinny days, nobody mistook me for a waif.
But what drives me off my broom is the indisputable fact that a great many styles actually make the models look horrible! What hope do I have when the fashion industry seems hell-bent on making the "beautiful people" ugly? Take, for instance, the gigantic-chunky-heeled-shoes fad. Is that still in fashion? See - I don't even know. I hope it's starting to go out because it never looked good on anyone except possibly Ru-Paul. Woman as thin as Kate Moss couldn't get away with the look because their spindly little endless legs did end, and ended in shoes the approximate size and weight of microwave ovens. They looked like little girls toddling around in their mother's high heels, but even your mother's heels were more attractive than these clunky shoes. The shoes added 15 pounds to normal sized women because they had to clomp around like Frankenstein and that's just not appealing. And the look didn't flatter the heavier woman because while we don't want to totter around on stilettos, there's nothing slimming about ending in shoes as wide as your ass either.
It amazes me that in this day and age, we're still subjected to the Helen Gurly Brown Minions' endless deluge of diminishing adjectives for clothing and manipulative advice on men. According to the Lexicon of Cosmo, any attire worth having is required to be "darling", "adorable", or "cute". What about "comfortable", "flattering", and "well-made"? Not so critical, I guess. If the guy thinks you're hot, who cares if your outfit cuts and binds you? Cosmo is all about catching the man, after all, and making him do something - generally stick around. The message still seems to be that you must primp and sigh and be weak and superficial to catch a man - any man, because heaven knows you're not complete without one - and then you need an arsenal of manipulative trickery to keep him around, because after about 3 days he's going to figure out how vapid and shallow you are and bolt for the door and we can't have that, now can we? We know you don't want to deal with an adult relationship based on mutual respect and communication, so you'll need our secret tactics for "How to Make Your Man Commit," or "Keeping Him Begging For More", or "Getting Him To Want You All The Time But Not In A Stalker Way Because That's Really Creepy Ewwwww".
I don't comprehend it at all. Though I'm lacking the latest styles, I seem to have hooked up with a marvelous man who has very little interest in my wardrobe. My instinct tells me that most men don't notice what we're wearing, and that this idea that they do is just an excuse to indulge in a fashion show for other women. And since I long ago got over caring what other women think of me, I don't participate in the pageant. Call it fashion sense deficiency if you want, but I call it "busy with other things".
If that makes me a poor excuse for a woman, as least as Cosmo defines one, so be it. Bad girls have more fun anyway. Probably because they're wearing sweatpants.
- KNP, May 14, 2002
