RSS

Category Archives: Style

What’s What Walk

04 Oct

It seems that squeezing my eyes shut and mumbling; “la la la la” is not going to make the “slut walk” go away.  The fact that it has spanned two continents (already) means it can no longer be ignored.  For those of you in the enviable position of knowing not of which I speak, do let me elaborate.  Under the guise of feminism, women are organizing walks to protest the sexualization of women.  They engage in these demonstrations while dressed as scantily as weather, the law, and their own wavering sense of decency allows.  They have christened these protests: Slut Walks.  The organizers claim they are “reclaiming” the word.  (To the ghost of Elizabeth Cady Stanton; “I’m really sorry you have to read this.”)

For fun, let’s dissect the obvious, feminists never owned the word slut.  In fact, no woman, feminist or not, ever owned the word slut.  The word was created and flung by men who resented any display of female sexual power or choice.  I have no problem with the word per se, in fact I think far too much is made of political correctness of language (which in essence is putting an artifice on top of an artifice.)  I suspect this “reclaiming” claim is to give political resonance to an action that is difficult to explain.

Sexual (or any) violence against anyone is never excusable.  The walkers are attempting to point out that there is no such thing as “asking for it” which of course is accurate.  I support any attention to violence (sexual or otherwise) but I’m not comfortable with the intentional linkage of a woman’s appearance and her risk of victimization.

Unless you live in a very religious community, you’ve probably noticed (ahem) a certain shift in fashion, over the last ten years or so.  We’ve all bemoaned (and by “we” I mean Bill Cosby) the wearing of a gentleman’s trousers far below his gentles.  I’ve yet to hear anyone posit that men are more subjected to violence (sexual or otherwise) by virtue of the fact that they dress like an idiot.  But what of the women? This summer I have seen frontal, backal, gentles, everything a woman has to offer on the streets of the city.  In the workplace I have seen shirts cut so low they could only be called pasties.  I have been seated across from women and could discern what style of waxing she preferred.  Oh, if only I were exaggerating.  Let’s face it, private parts are no longer private.

I will never be convinced that dressing uber-scantily has anything to do with sexual empowerment.  I also don’t believe that teenager girls servicing teenage boys has anything to do with sexual empowerment.  I do believe that we are experiencing a crushing backlash to the second wave (1970s) wave of feminism.  One need only listen to lyrics, or tune into one more sitcom in which the sloppy overweight unattractive doltish man is married to a gorgeous pin-up, to get the message.  It’s no coincidence that women are sexualized and marginalized in pop culture while making earth (and glass ceiling) shattering progress in the real world.  Being a man is not the greatest guarantee of lifelong success and dominance, it was once.  Is it any wonder that television is bubbling over with 1950-1960s shows (The Hour, PanAm, Mad Men, Playboy?)  We could package them all in a dvd boxed set named; “remember how great it was to be a man?”

So while I applaud the notion of women coming together to march for political awareness and cause, I don’t think this is a well thought out endeavor.  Has violence towards women spiked?  I don’t know.  But I do know it only adds to the objectification of women to even suggest that her appearance has anything to do with potential victimization.  I would be thrilled at the opportunity of dusting off my protest shoes, but will not do so if that is all I’m wearing.  The current phenomenon of dressing sexually is too distressing to take lightly.  It is irresponsible and unseemly to equate the phenomenon to victimization, and violence is abhorrent and should never even remotely be suggested to be incited by the victim.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 4, 2011 in Cultural Critique, Style

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Fashion Mistakes – They Can Be Lessened

27 Sep

One of the hallmarks of maturity is knowing what’s right for you.  My childhood (perhaps like yours) was peppered with “well, if everyone else was jumping off the George Washington bridge…” Which of course is code for “it’s not really you, dear.”  In theory, as we mature, our inner “it’s not really you, dear” voice becomes strong and clear.  Of course, many many mistakes must be made along the way.  Most of us are not born with the gift of clarity.  Some must slog through several academic majors, or colleges, before they find what suits them.  Some, must do this sorting and shifting with romantic partners.  And of course what suits us at one point in our lives is bound to feel ill-fitting at others.

Nowhere is this more visibly apparent than in fashion choices.  What suits us, physically and emotionally, changes over the years.  Ideally.  I won’t pretend that the world isn’t filled with people who are wearing acid washed jeans and shoulder pads; unironically.  I chalk that up to one of two things; 1) complete lack of (inner or outer) resources) 2) associating their decade of choice with a happier time in their lives.  The rest of us, for better or worse, are more susceptible to the siren song of marketing and retail.

Unless we are in possession of a coloratura inner critic’s voice or an indispensable insightful and candid friend, we need a little outside help in navigating the myriad of wildly inappropriate choices out there.  There are some simple (although perhaps, not easy) steps to take:

  • Know oneself – not necessarily in some meditating on a mountaintop, or involving a hand mirror way.   Know what you like about your body.  Have a realistic sense of your life (there’s nothing so sad as a closet full of gowns with price tags still attached.)
  • Own a full-length mirror and use it.  I bought my first one ten years ago after an unfortunate “patriotic clown” work outfit that just slipped by me (until I got to work that is.)
  • Unless you make a career of reinvention in the public eye; know the difference between costume and clothing.  If the item enjoys a prefix, that is your hint (ex. Running/Tennis/Athletic shoes, Yoga pants, Gardening clogs, Bathing suit, Cone bra, etc.)  These clothes will tell you where and when to wear them, you don’t even need to cultivate your inner voice.
  • Cut, Clarity and Color, it’s not just for diamonds.  The cut of the pant, dress, skirt, blouse, jacket, MUST flatter.  (The goal is always to look better in clothing than one does naked!) Please note: Flatter is NOT synonymous with Camouflage.  Nobody, and I mean nobody, is looking at someone in an oversize garment and thinking; “Wow, I bet she is really tiny under there!” Clarity: Is the piece/outfit you?  Does it make you feel fabulous?  Does it clearly express what you’d like to express about yourself?  Color; it’s not an abstraction.  Liking color is not the same thing as color liking you (think back to that elusive guy in high school.)  The color, like the cut and clarity, must do something for you.  Clothes must earn their keep.

Simply put, life is too short to not feel fabulous as often as one can.  If you have never experienced the bounce in your step a well-suited outfit can give you, get moving.  The most effective way to train your inner voice is to use it.  Try on new things.  Often.  No doubt, mistakes will be made along the way.  However, if I had never spent the day as a patriotic clown, I would not realize how important the cut of a pant really is.  Or that red, white and blue, should rarely be combined in the workplace, unless one is in the military, or circus.

 

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 27, 2011 in Style

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

What Is Our Blue Eyeshadow?

10 Sep

When watching an old movie, how long does it take you to pinpoint the decade?  How long before you can identify the year?  Maybe I possess a (previously unidentified) talent, but I can guess the time period in about 2-3 minutes.  The women are the very first barometer.  Even in a women’s prison film, the style of dress, eyebrow and shoe should speak volumes.  If there are no women handy, men will do.  Hair, hats, cut of the pants, will all point to a decade if not a year.  For the more advanced player, do try a period film.  Cleopatra is a good example of such an exercise.  I’m no anthropologist, but I’m going to venture that there was no blue eyeshadow before the common era.

Parlor games aside, I am struck by the notion that I can not identify any style of dress or hair after the 1980s.  Of course I can still pinpoint a film’s time period.  Sort of.  By the cars and size of the mobile phones.  But the fashion and style?  Not really.  I would be willing to concede that one never notices what will eventually become iconic, while actually living in the period.  But, and this is a big but; I am referencing over 20 years of indistinguishable style and fashion!  If you don’t believe me, try it yourself.  Your assignment is to describe to me a working woman in 1998.  What is she wearing?

Now, I don’t necessarily think a loss of iconic time specific style will be the death of our society.  I just wonder how it happened.  Is it the result of cheaper mass marketed clothing?  Perhaps this is what comes from sanitizing the design process for competitive cable television?  Is it the result of brand worship?  Did America even know which shoes to fetishisize before the 1990s? Perhaps it is more positive: could it be that the fashion playing field has become so democratic that there is not one style we can pinpoint as that of a recent decade.  Or, is fashion now like public behavior; anything goes?  Does a generation of women who think nothing of styling their hair in public (often in the vicinity of my dinner) feel a specific style would stifle her spontaneous, chip clip creativity?  Is style just too committal?

Life will go on, no doubt.  But it makes me a little sad, that in my doterage, when I turn on my subcutaneous video imagery receptor and watch a film from my “youth” I won’t be able to imagine myself in the time period.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on September 10, 2011 in Style

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

LOVE! Labor’s Loss

02 Sep

I have never particularly bought into the zeitgeist of summer, so it should come as no surprise that I feel hallow on this Labor Day’s Eve.

I have made my lemonade out of the lemons of summer fashion opportunities, embracing cotton brights to the point of resembling said lemons.  I have purchased belts in a feeble attempt at heat resistant layering and visual interest.  I have alternated straw hats as if they were wigs as a stab towards accessorizing.  In other words, I have made my peace.

So what is it exactly that has me giddy as a school girl this hallowed eve?  It is the silver lining on the cloud, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the light at the end of the tunnel that is cool weather.  It is just a matter of weeks now that people will have to start wearing actual clothes.  That’s right.  Set your watches dear reader.  Soon the bathing suit cover-up will go back in the drawer (or mercifully, in the beach bag) and off the streets of New York.  See-through blouses will be packed away; of course not before we share a word or two about see-through blouses.  Are you that proud of your bra?  Why?  Did you make it yourself?  And please don’t try and tell me that is not your bra, it is a bathing suit top.  Think about which dresser drawer you keep your bathing suits?  Where in the department store do they sell bathing suits?  Are you going to suggest that the visual merchandisers of America have it wrong, and bathing suits are in fact clothing?  Well, than ask yourself; “what am I wearing UNDER my bathing suit?”  If it’s touching your personals, it IS personal!

With that first cool breeze will also come the realization that one’s shorts are very very short.  Newsflash: clothes should cover where the cheek meets the leg.  And maybe, just maybe, if we have all been very good this summer, the cool autumnal breezes may banish the paper-thin white legging.  Dare to dream.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 2, 2011 in Style

 

Tags: , , ,

The Joys of Summer (Fashion)

20 Aug

I am a four-season girl.  I cannot imagine living anywhere where time cannot be marked by nature.  I do not, however, love all seasons equally.  I’ve never been much for summer.  This is not entirely due to the heat nor the humidity, but rather how those elements play havoc with the desire to accessorize.  It’s only after I embraced the joy of the enormous floppy hat, earrings, and heeled sandals, that I started to enjoy donning a swimsuit.  For years, it was not embarrassment which kept me from socializing in the equivalent of water resistant underwear, it was how incredibly boring the outfit was!  Where is the creativity or joy in pulling on two pieces of clothing?  A bathing suit cover-up doesn’t really count as the third piece as all it really conveys is that one has something they’d prefer to cover up.

So here it is, mid-August, and I have done my due diligence with a drawer filled with colorful shorts and flirty cotton skirts.  I have collected a bevy of attractive and highly functional sandals, and several straw hats.  I have handbags and even a few pieces of jewelry which scream Summer.  And I have found my peace.  Now this state should be its own reward…


But it is challenging to be putting concerted, and not necessarily intuitive, energy into an endeavor that clearly is solo.  Have you seen what is walking the streets of this city?  (“Street walking” is an apt imagery.)  It is not clumsy attempts of seasonally appropriate ensembles that have sullied my soul.  I accept that appearance is not a priority for all.  It is instead the promotion of private parts to public parts that leaves me horrified/dejected.  For months, I have seen every size and shape of breast, spilling out of “not meant as outerwear” apparel.  The summer top or dress is ostensibly a set of pasties.  I am not referring to décolletage or snug fitting cotton blouses.  I am referencing the custom of 50-75% of the area in question to be al fresco.  Why?  Do they really suffer such heat exhaustion, they can’t be covered?  Is it simply the epitome of lazy, to use ones own parts as an accessory?

In the interest of fair and balanced, I must point out that the population’s nether regions have had their fair days in the sun as well.  Oh, the things I’ve seen.  And on public transport!  No doubt these women are the same who sanitize a public toilet seat within an inch of its life.  The hygiene contradiction is boggling.  For those who do not live alone or whose mothers are still living, they choose instead to wear see-through clothing.  Most of the transparent garments I have seen are not haute couture, but instead very cheap off the rack clothing that is meant to be worn with underpinnings.  Some choose to disregard this intention entirely (oh my eyes!)  Others see this as in invitation to wear the boldest most incongruous mass-market under things.  This might be a good place to mention that if one is old enough to pull up one’s own pants, one needn’t have underpants festooned with imagery.

I will trudge through the next month, donning sundresses, wearing silver jewelry and white pants, and pedicuring like mad.  But I will do so while longingly eyeing my sweaters, boots and scarves, and reminding myself that biology will win out: private parts do shy from the cold.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on August 20, 2011 in Style

 

Tags: , , , ,

Newer posts →