Bling tells me I need to know if I represent my business well. Like in what I wear. She told me she took a test in Maine Women's Journal, a magazine that’s free at Hannaford, that asked if you “represent your business in what you wear” and she found out that maybe she doesn’t dress right, like she’s a success. She told me this because I showed up at the gym in a long john shirt that had more holes than coverage. “That’s a rag,” she said and tossed it into the trash. She’s right. Why would I wear that, even to the gym?
For a few years I’ve been worrying if wearing jeans that have somehow managed to shrink with stained, ripped T-shirts that could never be considered scruffy stylish, just ill-fitting — even ugly — really is a very good idea. Like, why would I do that? Would it be that hard to put on something a little nicer? I’m not talking about “going out” nice. I’m talking about the day-to-day, run around town stuff for shopping, the post office and errands. A little over a year ago I went through my closet and made piles of everything I’d never in a million years look good in again, no matter how few carbs I eat. I made Cowboy help me. I tried everything on for him in breathless frenzy.
I tried a roomy blue-collar shirt that I thought was kind of shabby chic even though it actually bagged out at the breasts in little teepees of shapelessness with a pair of old black Levis that I’d cut off at the too-tight waist so that my larger than 20-something gut could fit into this homemade version of “low rise.”
After some wheezing and hiding his face in a pillow, he offered, “OK, you look like you belong in a trailer with a Bud in your hand.”
Sometimes I know I’m putting on something that’s uglifying. And I do it anyway. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I don’t really care. My work should represent me, not the way I look, I think, throw it on, and march out the door. I’m actively challenging anyone to refute me. But the world, it seems, wants more from us. It wants us to look our best, because, lest we forget, looks, it seems, are 90 percent of the battle.
Last summer my mother sent me long e-mails telling me that she worried I was not dressing my age, accentuating my beauty. She wanted me to get looser clothes, sportier, cleaner. I deleted her e-mails and told her to stop. But I knew she was right. Part of me just didn’t know what to do. I don’t have a lot of money, and starting over seemed like pushing a rock up a hill.
Now, summer is here and I’ve pulled out all my old summer clothes. I have a huge stack of shabby stained tank tops, shorts that I’ve had since 1990 and I know I must go through them and find the stuff that best represents me, my work...and yet those old things are all so soft, so comfortable, so full of the way I see myself most of the time, which is flawed and shabby, a little worn, a little tired. I guess the trick is to see myself differently. The more stuff that’s old and I toss out, the more of my old self I chuck, and the more I can evolve into a brand new me.
