dancerjodi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancerjodi) wrote2005-10-06 07:54 am
dancerjodi) wrote2005-10-06 07:54 am
Mmm
There's nothing like some Billie Holiday on the ride in to work to start the day!
I read this article in the October issue of Self by Lauren Slater titled "The Power of a Suit" (pgs 52-4). It resonated with me quite a bit earlier on in the story and takes a surprising twist at the end. I wanted to share.
I've never been good at fashion, never had the knack, as some people do, of making a scarf flung casually around the neck look somehow silken and august. I'm a rumpled person, both literally and philosophically. Over the years, my tendency toward clothes that do not fit, ugly clothes, sloppy clothes, has become ingrained. Almost every day I roll out of bed and grab for the unraveling sweater, the paint-splattered pants. I've never understood why people bother to change their outfits each day. I have always worn the same clothes for a week at a time. It cuts down on laundry and simplifies things. During the darkest periods of my life, I have even slept in my clothes, thereby eliminating the tiring task of getting dressed in the morning.
That I am a writer with no office to go to has only cemented my penchant for sloppiness. But recently, someone asked me to appear on TV for two minutes to talk about one of my books. This didn't excite me. I've been on TV for two minutes before, and I've long since lost the illusion that it will make me famous. My publisher on the other hand, viewed it as a great opportunity and the company's publicist instructed me to dress accordingly. She told me to go to Ann Taylor and buy a suit. "Expense it to us," she said, sounding a little desperate. Ann Taylor! I only shop at Target and before Target, at Bradlees, a discount store whose bankruptcy I am still mourning.
The publicist was so worried I wouldn't obey that she offered to travel from New York City to Boston - where I live - to supervise my shopping. This I could not consent to. One does not show one's publicist the unpublic places, the bulges and lumps. I thanked here and said I would go on my own.
Of course, I went straight to Target and found a red suit for $30. The sleeves of the jacket were too long and the skirt was a little too loose, but these were minor details, and besides, on TV they usually only film from the waist up. I liked this suit. The red made me look happy; it underscored the flush in my face. It lit up my skin.
I went home and tried it on for my husband. He said, "You look like you're about to go trick-or-treating."
I returned the suit to the store. I didn't want to get the publicist mad. I thought my husband was wrong, but I wasn't going to risk it.
The next day, I went to Ann Taylor. The store was in a mall, and I try to avoid malls as much as possible. I thought as soon as I stepped foot inside I would get sweaty, but that didn't happen. The place smelled of coffee and had booths selling wind chimes, wigs and glass cats. It was almost whimsical.
Ann Taylor itself had a hushed charm to it. There were a few women there slipping in between the racks of clothes like wraiths. I glided off myself and collided with cashmere, a white sweater and matching white scarf that were as soft as snow. These clothes were gorgeous, calling attention not so much to themselves as to the way they suggested the body beneath, both sheathed and open.
A saleslady drifted up to me, and I told her my situation: I needed a suit, fast. She was so gracious. She flicked through the rows of soft, stylish things and held them up to me with complete confidence. If I seemed strange to her in my big rubber snow boots with old overalls tucked in, she didn't show it. I was another customer, her mission for the moment. She brought me to a dressing room and handed me jackets, skirts and shirts. The clothing felt cool against my skin, and it all looked good. I am not accustomed to having clothes that truly fit. I have always been content with an approximation tending toward the large. These jackets enclosed my waist; the skirts were straight and slit. I was, she informed me, a petite. I thought of Thumbelina. Petite! In fact, I was extra petite. Size 6 petite didn't fit me; size 4, still to large; size 2, close but not quite; size 90, perfect. On the one hand, I was truly proud. For what woman would a size 0 not be an accomplishment? On the other hand, a 0? It was, for sure, a mixed message. Did I even exist?
But here's what really mattered: In the size 0 gray tweed suit, I looked great. I looked serious and sexy, like a lawyer in a high-rise office building, a woman with extra influence. The transformation was total, in part because of the way the suit fit. It at once concealed and revealed my shape. I had a shape, I realized. I had a little waist. I had collarbones that gave me an appropriately bony look. My throat was white and long.
I bought the suit, several hundred bucks, and on sale, too. The saleslady gave it to me in a bag with satin handles. She asked if 'd also like shoes to go with it, but I was overcome, overwhelmed and out of money. I told her no on the shoes, that I already had some. Then, on my way out of the mall, I snuck into Payless and got a $14 pair of pumps.
At home I tried on the suit before my full-length mirror. I still looked good. My waist was still small. My collarbones stood out. I had a charming freckle on my chest. The next morning, I didn't reach for the unraveled sweater and paint-splattered pants. I put on the suit. It was slightly itchy but immensely gratifying. I went to work, which for me amounts to traveling across the hall, from my bedroom to my study. My writing was sharper because of that suit. My characters were witty and my overwrought lyricism gave way to a muscular minimalism. I started to think the suit was magic.
I went on television the next day, and I was very articulate. My publicist, who herself was wearing a suit, mauve lipstick and sling back shoes, was impressed. Then it was over, and I went home. The house seemed oddly quiet, in both a creepy and peaceful way. The sheer curtains billowed with sunshine. The cat wreathed around my legs. I stripped off my clothes and hung the suit in the back of my closet.
But something was different. Even with the suit off, I felt as if it were a little bit on. My walk was more purposeful. I felt aloft, and I liked it. Suddenly, there were so many possibilities. Perhaps I should get a perm, or some smart, springy curls to accompany my new image. I began to wonder about collagen - should I try it? I pinched my lips to plump them and sure enough, that made me prettier still. I bought a fashion magazine and went to see a stylist at a neighborhood hair salon. She grabbed a chunk of my hair and said, "A perm? No way. You're much too brittle."
"But I have a lot of hairspray on," I said, which I did, part of my new experimentation. "Without it, my hair is not so brittle."
"You don't need a perm," she said. "What you need is color." Color it was. She stripped my strands of their darkness and gray and saturated them with something gold. My husband reacted exactly as he was supposed to, just like a husband on a perfume commercial. "Wow," he said.
I could go on to tell you about the tarry mascara I acquired, the lid lift I thought of getting, the fancy shampoo with a lather as rich as a racehorse's. I could tell you about the black velvet pants I bought. But these things are at once entirely and not at all the point. The point is that I began to see the surfaces of things, the shifting surfaces of people’s faces, the grainy wood surface of my desktop, the surface of the sky, all slick and blue. I saw the surface of my body and ignored the inside, the bones. And this was all very good. Not only was it fun; it was somehow healing. I bobbed to the top of life and blew a bubble or two. I began to understand that a life spent caring about appearances was not, in fact, a shallow life; it was life lived at the pitch of drama, life acted on stage. When you tend to your surface, you are making an image, and images are the essence of art. When you tend to your surface, you are making a statement of faith: I matter. The world is worth dressing for. You are engaging in the best kind of optimism, one that propels you out of bed, that directs you to the day. Putting on nice clothes is like putting on hope, like saying "here I am. Look at me." You are lifted out of your ordinary existence into possibility - the pretty, the silky, the tweedy. You are celebrating the malleability of human experience, that you can be this or you can be that or whatever you please.
Of course, at the end of the day, you have to take your clothes off. Clothes are a grand vacation, an excellent adventure, but in the end you come back to your body. And my body is aging. My hair has strands of gray beneath the saturated gold. I cannot stick to my surface. I sink, and in that downward decline, in the quiet moments lying side by side with my infant son as he falls asleep, with my suit hung up in the closet, I think of frightening things - a child kidnapped, terrorists plotting an attack. And it occurs to me that my fears are as commodified and commercialized as my newfound interest in clothes. I now dress as the media tells me to dress. I mourn what the media tells me to mourn. Even my deepest fears have a sort of surfacy feel to them.
I cannot bring myself, when all is said and done and stripped, to see the fabric of the universe as anything other than crumpled. Perhaps it has something to do with the way our faces also crumple in time, with our ends, however they happen. Yet clothes are as fine a diversion as any. They may not remake thee soul, but they give us a much-needed break. They help dress our wounds, whatever they are.
I would like a gown, pale blue, seeded with pears at the collar and cuffs. I would like to clothe my two children in everything Gap. I would like us to go forward, together, as beautifully bandaged as humans can be.
I read this article in the October issue of Self by Lauren Slater titled "The Power of a Suit" (pgs 52-4). It resonated with me quite a bit earlier on in the story and takes a surprising twist at the end. I wanted to share.
I've never been good at fashion, never had the knack, as some people do, of making a scarf flung casually around the neck look somehow silken and august. I'm a rumpled person, both literally and philosophically. Over the years, my tendency toward clothes that do not fit, ugly clothes, sloppy clothes, has become ingrained. Almost every day I roll out of bed and grab for the unraveling sweater, the paint-splattered pants. I've never understood why people bother to change their outfits each day. I have always worn the same clothes for a week at a time. It cuts down on laundry and simplifies things. During the darkest periods of my life, I have even slept in my clothes, thereby eliminating the tiring task of getting dressed in the morning.
That I am a writer with no office to go to has only cemented my penchant for sloppiness. But recently, someone asked me to appear on TV for two minutes to talk about one of my books. This didn't excite me. I've been on TV for two minutes before, and I've long since lost the illusion that it will make me famous. My publisher on the other hand, viewed it as a great opportunity and the company's publicist instructed me to dress accordingly. She told me to go to Ann Taylor and buy a suit. "Expense it to us," she said, sounding a little desperate. Ann Taylor! I only shop at Target and before Target, at Bradlees, a discount store whose bankruptcy I am still mourning.
The publicist was so worried I wouldn't obey that she offered to travel from New York City to Boston - where I live - to supervise my shopping. This I could not consent to. One does not show one's publicist the unpublic places, the bulges and lumps. I thanked here and said I would go on my own.
Of course, I went straight to Target and found a red suit for $30. The sleeves of the jacket were too long and the skirt was a little too loose, but these were minor details, and besides, on TV they usually only film from the waist up. I liked this suit. The red made me look happy; it underscored the flush in my face. It lit up my skin.
I went home and tried it on for my husband. He said, "You look like you're about to go trick-or-treating."
I returned the suit to the store. I didn't want to get the publicist mad. I thought my husband was wrong, but I wasn't going to risk it.
The next day, I went to Ann Taylor. The store was in a mall, and I try to avoid malls as much as possible. I thought as soon as I stepped foot inside I would get sweaty, but that didn't happen. The place smelled of coffee and had booths selling wind chimes, wigs and glass cats. It was almost whimsical.
Ann Taylor itself had a hushed charm to it. There were a few women there slipping in between the racks of clothes like wraiths. I glided off myself and collided with cashmere, a white sweater and matching white scarf that were as soft as snow. These clothes were gorgeous, calling attention not so much to themselves as to the way they suggested the body beneath, both sheathed and open.
A saleslady drifted up to me, and I told her my situation: I needed a suit, fast. She was so gracious. She flicked through the rows of soft, stylish things and held them up to me with complete confidence. If I seemed strange to her in my big rubber snow boots with old overalls tucked in, she didn't show it. I was another customer, her mission for the moment. She brought me to a dressing room and handed me jackets, skirts and shirts. The clothing felt cool against my skin, and it all looked good. I am not accustomed to having clothes that truly fit. I have always been content with an approximation tending toward the large. These jackets enclosed my waist; the skirts were straight and slit. I was, she informed me, a petite. I thought of Thumbelina. Petite! In fact, I was extra petite. Size 6 petite didn't fit me; size 4, still to large; size 2, close but not quite; size 90, perfect. On the one hand, I was truly proud. For what woman would a size 0 not be an accomplishment? On the other hand, a 0? It was, for sure, a mixed message. Did I even exist?
But here's what really mattered: In the size 0 gray tweed suit, I looked great. I looked serious and sexy, like a lawyer in a high-rise office building, a woman with extra influence. The transformation was total, in part because of the way the suit fit. It at once concealed and revealed my shape. I had a shape, I realized. I had a little waist. I had collarbones that gave me an appropriately bony look. My throat was white and long.
I bought the suit, several hundred bucks, and on sale, too. The saleslady gave it to me in a bag with satin handles. She asked if 'd also like shoes to go with it, but I was overcome, overwhelmed and out of money. I told her no on the shoes, that I already had some. Then, on my way out of the mall, I snuck into Payless and got a $14 pair of pumps.
At home I tried on the suit before my full-length mirror. I still looked good. My waist was still small. My collarbones stood out. I had a charming freckle on my chest. The next morning, I didn't reach for the unraveled sweater and paint-splattered pants. I put on the suit. It was slightly itchy but immensely gratifying. I went to work, which for me amounts to traveling across the hall, from my bedroom to my study. My writing was sharper because of that suit. My characters were witty and my overwrought lyricism gave way to a muscular minimalism. I started to think the suit was magic.
I went on television the next day, and I was very articulate. My publicist, who herself was wearing a suit, mauve lipstick and sling back shoes, was impressed. Then it was over, and I went home. The house seemed oddly quiet, in both a creepy and peaceful way. The sheer curtains billowed with sunshine. The cat wreathed around my legs. I stripped off my clothes and hung the suit in the back of my closet.
But something was different. Even with the suit off, I felt as if it were a little bit on. My walk was more purposeful. I felt aloft, and I liked it. Suddenly, there were so many possibilities. Perhaps I should get a perm, or some smart, springy curls to accompany my new image. I began to wonder about collagen - should I try it? I pinched my lips to plump them and sure enough, that made me prettier still. I bought a fashion magazine and went to see a stylist at a neighborhood hair salon. She grabbed a chunk of my hair and said, "A perm? No way. You're much too brittle."
"But I have a lot of hairspray on," I said, which I did, part of my new experimentation. "Without it, my hair is not so brittle."
"You don't need a perm," she said. "What you need is color." Color it was. She stripped my strands of their darkness and gray and saturated them with something gold. My husband reacted exactly as he was supposed to, just like a husband on a perfume commercial. "Wow," he said.
I could go on to tell you about the tarry mascara I acquired, the lid lift I thought of getting, the fancy shampoo with a lather as rich as a racehorse's. I could tell you about the black velvet pants I bought. But these things are at once entirely and not at all the point. The point is that I began to see the surfaces of things, the shifting surfaces of people’s faces, the grainy wood surface of my desktop, the surface of the sky, all slick and blue. I saw the surface of my body and ignored the inside, the bones. And this was all very good. Not only was it fun; it was somehow healing. I bobbed to the top of life and blew a bubble or two. I began to understand that a life spent caring about appearances was not, in fact, a shallow life; it was life lived at the pitch of drama, life acted on stage. When you tend to your surface, you are making an image, and images are the essence of art. When you tend to your surface, you are making a statement of faith: I matter. The world is worth dressing for. You are engaging in the best kind of optimism, one that propels you out of bed, that directs you to the day. Putting on nice clothes is like putting on hope, like saying "here I am. Look at me." You are lifted out of your ordinary existence into possibility - the pretty, the silky, the tweedy. You are celebrating the malleability of human experience, that you can be this or you can be that or whatever you please.
Of course, at the end of the day, you have to take your clothes off. Clothes are a grand vacation, an excellent adventure, but in the end you come back to your body. And my body is aging. My hair has strands of gray beneath the saturated gold. I cannot stick to my surface. I sink, and in that downward decline, in the quiet moments lying side by side with my infant son as he falls asleep, with my suit hung up in the closet, I think of frightening things - a child kidnapped, terrorists plotting an attack. And it occurs to me that my fears are as commodified and commercialized as my newfound interest in clothes. I now dress as the media tells me to dress. I mourn what the media tells me to mourn. Even my deepest fears have a sort of surfacy feel to them.
I cannot bring myself, when all is said and done and stripped, to see the fabric of the universe as anything other than crumpled. Perhaps it has something to do with the way our faces also crumple in time, with our ends, however they happen. Yet clothes are as fine a diversion as any. They may not remake thee soul, but they give us a much-needed break. They help dress our wounds, whatever they are.
I would like a gown, pale blue, seeded with pears at the collar and cuffs. I would like to clothe my two children in everything Gap. I would like us to go forward, together, as beautifully bandaged as humans can be.
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