A Swift Kick in the Pants

In an old episode of Sex and the City, cosmopolitan attorney Miranda invites her bartender boyfriend Steve to a formal event. "So you'll have to wear a suit," she says. "You do have a suit...right?" Having only recently started dating each other, it was a valid inquiry.

"Of course I have a suit," Steve replies. "It's gold."
"Gold?" Miranda asks.
"Yeah...like, corduroy," Steve says, as if implying something obvious.

At this point Miranda's facial expression registers the knowledge that her new boyfriend may not be as up to the standards of current fashion as she'd hoped.

This is exactly the emotion I felt yesterday, except I wasn't judging my significant other. Rather, I was looking in the mirror.

Before heading to the grocery I threw on a favorite pair of jeans and t-shirt. A cursory glance in the full-length mirror caused me to do a double-take. Hmmm...something's weird, I thought. Turning, looking over my shoulder at my backside, turning back around, I scan myself from all angles. Did I shrink? Are the pants too long? I roll them once; no, no, not that. They're not dirty, or wrinkled, or on backwards. They still fit, I don't have muffin top. What the heck? 

I ask my husband. He looks at me suspiciously, trying to guess what underlying issue I'm secretly asking him to dispel, a la do these make my butt look big? "They're fine," he says dismissively.

Finally it dawns on me. These jeans are old. Not in a broken-in Levi's button-fly 501 blues way, but in a fodder for an SNL skit way. Not by any means "mom jeans"; I mean, they're not high wasted, pleated front, and peg bottomed, but they are distinctly of an era past, when denim was faded...really faded. And very evenly colored. I remember that they were deemed "boyfriend cut" by the catalog, but I can assure you that no boyfriend would wear these jeans. I can't remember exactly when I bought them, but I can narrow it down to when I was still single, and I've been married for nine years.

As a means of secondary confirmation I posed a question on Facebook: How old is too old for jeans...style-wise?

Most answers were noncommittal (I'm assuming my friends didn't want to insult me), and a few tried to be funny by referencing designer brands that were de rigueur in middle school (Gitano, I'm looking at you).

When one high school classmate suggested I post a picture on myself wearing the pants so everyone could vote, I panicked. As tempting as it was to relive the teenage experience of having classmates judge my clothing choices again, I declined this option. It occurred to me that had I worn 10-year-old jeans to high school, I would have been laughed right out of the cafeteria.

How did this happen to me? I've always had an interest in, and sense for, current fashion trends. Even when I didn't have money to spend on nicer clothes, I still knew what was hip and I knew what I WOULD buy if I could. I watched Style With Elsa Klensch for 15 years, dammit! But somehow these jeans escaped all of my periodic clothes-purging marathons (probably because I was wearing them each time).

Now that I'm 40, I feel like I need to pay more attention to not falling in ruts. I don't want to be that woman who's 45 and still dressing like she's 25 because that's when she feels she looked her best, but in the end she just looks sadly trapped in the past. Just because something fits, it shouldn't necessarily be worn in public.

(For a glimpse at a pair of jeans I will never...ever...ever get rid of, read I Love the Smell of Bleached Denim in the Morning )

Comfort is the New Black

I have a love/hate relationship with dress codes. I've typically always followed them without question, seeing them as an element of civilized society. With every new job I've always asked what the code is. I think dining in a fancy restaurant warrants wearing a fancy dress. I would rather be overdressed than underdressed in practically any situation.

But as I've gotten older, I've grown to see some of the long-enduring rules of appropriate dress as both antiquated and unnecessary.

As a college senior in the mid-1990s I was required to attend a mock job interview at my school's career center. This included dressing *professionally* as one would for a real interview. As luck would have it, a snowstorm hit the night before my interview. Awaking to find my car utterly snowed in, I put on several layers of clothing and laced up my snow boots for the half-mile hike to campus.

Despite my intelligent answers and professional demeanor, the interviewer at the career center marked points off my evaluation for my "inappropriate attire." I suppose I should have trudged through the snow in pumps. A woman is only as good as her appearance, right?  

I later found out that a classmate who had an interviewed the same day was deducted points because the heels on her shoes were deemed "too fat and trendy." I'm so glad to know that our tuition money was well spent on footwear advice.

Ellen Warren is a syndicated writer with the Chicago Tribune, currently producing a weekly shopping advice column. Back in March she focused on new college grads who would soon be facing the job world. Among her Dos and Don'ts was "hosiery is a must." Are we back to this debate again? Have we not come to the conclusion that lower extremity sausage casing does not in any way indicate a woman's qualifications to be an accountant/engineer/doctor?

At a recent job interview, my interviewer walked into the board room wearing jeans and a hipster V-neck t-shirt. "Egads!", the Boomer would think. "Young man, you march back to your room and put on a necktie until you look respectable!" Oh, wait, this man had "director" in his title, and the company is a corporation with annual sales in the tens of millions. Somehow, despite the obvious lack of silken nooses, it was still a professional environment.

Sweatin' in an Oldie

Every time I watch an episode of Hoarders, at some point I think, "how can he/she possibly be attached to that (piece of fabric/empty box/magazine from 1991)?" I wonder why these people can't see that the object(s) in front of them are clearly garbage that should be tossed out. But the truth is, we all own something whose value is understood only by ourselves.

1987

One thing I can't throw out is a college sweatshirt I bought in 1986. At the time I was 14 years old and visiting my brother at his school during Parents Weekend. In anticipation of this trip I saved my allowance for weeks, knowing exactly what I wanted to buy at the student union store. Once purchased, I couldn't wait to put it on; this sweatshirt was the whitest, coziest, fluffiest sweatshirt I've ever felt. It was like wearing a cloud.

Twenty-five years later it's threadbare, tinted a yellowish-gray color, and smells musty from hiding in a storage bin for 8 months out of the year. The neck, wrists, and waistband are completely stretched out. I look like a bag lady wearing it. Still, I hold onto it. I've worn that Duke sweatshirt EVERYWHERE: on vacations (all of them), to football games, and on dates. While jogging, while sick, and while studying. Through high school, through college, through graduate school. It has traveled from Maine to Florida to California to Washington. Every boyfriend I've had has held my hand in this sweatshirt.

My life happened in this sweatshirt.

So when I consider putting it to a final rest, a flood of memories always surfaces. I've come to realize over the years that when my life is going well I tend to purge excess items, and when it's less than ideal, I hold on to more.

2012

I have other sweatshirts, mind you; sweatshirts from colleges I actually attended. And I have newer sweatshirts whose whites are whiter and whose brights are brighter. But the Duke sweatshirt...it's part security blanket, part historical artifact, like the teddy bear I received when I was three who still sits on a chair in my bedroom. I know it's way past its prime but I just can't let it go. It's my "Wooby." Every time I've tried to throw it out, sentimentality places it back in the bin. Duke's not going anywhere.

The Nylon Hurtin'

In the movie Steel Magnolias, Dolly Parton's character, Truvy, claims she hasn't left the house without pantyhose on since she was 14 years old. To this her friend Clairee confirms, "You were raised right!"

Does this make you cringe, or raise your white-gloved fist in prim solidarity?

Generation X women came of age on the cusp of the change in dress code attitudes, balancing on the cotton crotch of the Great Pantyhose Divide. We grew up when hose were still the norm, but we entered the professional world realizing we weren't so keen on spending our paychecks on clothing that had a life span of about 2 wearings. When casual Fridays became popular the first thing we tossed were the pantyhose. And yet, I still struggle with "appropriate" times to wear them, much as I struggle just to put on the blessed things.

On Friday I had a job interview, and while dressing I once again pondered my bare legs with apprehension. My stylish-yet-conservative dress fell just above the knee--the norm for me at just shy of 6 feet tall. I worried it was too informal this way. Surely the second skin of some L'eggs would solve this problem and make my ensemble more...respectable.

This is where it gets weird.

Why do pantyhose equal "respectable"?

Why did I think that going bare-legged would somehow negate the validity of my master's degree and corporate experience? Why did I place so much weight on the power of an ounce of woven nylon? Years and years of condemnation from older generations, that's why. Gen X girls were taught that to be perceived as mature, professional, and/or proper we must wear pantyhose. Without question.

I worked my way through college in about 20 different retail jobs. Most of them required me to wear pantyhose. At least one even prohibited us girls from wearing pants. That was 1992.

But we have a powerful woman on OUR side now. Our own First Lady, Michelle Obama (by broadest definition a member of Generation X herself), has been quite vocal in her disdain for pantyhose. As a guest on The View she said, "I stopped wearing pantyhose a long time ago. They're painful...it's inconvenient."

She garnered some vitriolic backlash from this comment, being called everything from "unfeminine" to "vulgar" because of it. Crazy, isn't it?

So I'm taking a stand, a bare-legged stand. Those pantyhose I wore to my interview, the ones that caused my shoes to fit too loosely and hence fly off my left foot in the lobby of said interview, they are history! Those fancy silk-like pantyhose that cost $8.95 a pair and still rip when I barely bump them with a hangnail...history! I'm done with you, you antiquated casings of synthetic torture. I refuse to allow my character to be judged (real or imagined) by the presence or absence of some Underalls. The debate continues, but I'm standing with the First Lady on this one.

Fashion News Network

Somewhere around the time of middle school I was paging through the weekly TV listing in the newspaper looking for something to watch on a Saturday morning. I was too old for cartoons, and this was decades before the advent of HGTV and Food Network.

Something caught my eye on channel 13, which was CNN. All it said was “Style.” There was no description, but as any 11-year-old girl would think, I hoped this show had something to do with fashion. I eagerly switched to CNN, and thus began a weekend tradition that lasted nearly 20 years. Every Saturday morning at 10:30 I tuned in to CNN, from junior high to college to early adulthood.

The show was Style With Elsa Klensch, a 30-minute roundup of weekly news from the worlds of fashion, interior design, and art.
Ms. Klensch is an Australian journalist who was the authority on all things contemporary and beautiful. She taught me names like John Galliano, Thierry Mugler, and Annu Sui. Because of this show, I knew the difference between Elie Saab and Elie Tahari. I understood the characteristics that identified a chaise lounge as post-modern or midcentury modern. I grew to appreciate not only the creative process of haute couture, but also what makes something a piece of art, whether it’s a ball gown or an end table. Style With Elsa Klensch had a strong influence in shaping both my knowledge of, and appreciation for, design. And, as I tried to explain to my husband, watching it just made me feel...fancy.

And while I have been known to veg on the couch during a marathon of MTV’s “Cribs”, with its rock ‘n’ roll style of profiling celebrity taste in architecture and fashion, I still long for Elsa Klensch’s presentation. She had an air of dignity and expertise of subject matter that taught me to see the profiled designers as artists and masters of a craft. The show’s regal opening theme song let us know that what we were about to view was something high class, and it always was.

Even this morning, a Saturday in 2011, I looked at the clock at 10:10 a.m. and had a fleeting thought of wishing I could have another half-hour dose of the runway shows from Milan.

Please Cancel My Subscription to Mean Vogue

If you ever took Psych 101, you probably studied the Nature vs. Nurture argument. Are our behaviors and habits innate or are they learned?

Two personality traits I've always possessed are an attention to small detail, and the perceived notion that the world notices small details about ME. Don't confuse this second trait with narcissism; I don't think the world revolves around me, I simply believe that flaws in my appearance, even the tiniest minutiae, are giant red flags that can't be missed...by anyone.

While I can credit my mom with teaching me to notice details, neither of my parents nor my older brother had a hand in my obssession with the outside world looking in on me. I can't recall ever being admonished to fix some small detail about myself so as not to embarass myself. None of them ever teased me that "everyone's going to look at you if you go out like THAT." But I can tell you that this feeling has always been with me. I present to you exhibit A:

One morning while getting dressed for kindergarten (age 4-1/2) my mom realized there was a hole in my opaque white tights. This was back when little girls still had to wear tights with dresses, as we didn't have the much more comfortable and realistic cotton leggings that little girls have today. So she had to improvise and dress me in a pair of lace-pattern tights. This might have been fine for church or with another dress, but with the flower print dress I was already wearing, lace tights were ALL WRONG. Too fancy, the patterns clashed, it just wasn't right. But time was of the essence, and despite my protests, off to school I went with my lacy legs.


In kindergarten we always opened the day with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing a few patriotic songs (it was 1976, the year of the Bicentennial). Normally I loved to sing along, but this particular morning I couldn't participate because I was bawling my eyes out. This was unusual so a teacher tried asking me what was wrong, but between my gasps and the noise of the other students singing, she could not understand me. Escorting me into a quieter room, Miss Sherry knelt down and attempted to help me catch my breath so I could tell her what was wrong. Bewteen gasps I finally stuttered, "My...tights..(gasp)...don't match..(gasp)...my dress!!!"

Miss Sherry immediately dropped her head, and at the time I thought she was looking down at my tights to confirm that they indeed looked ridiculous with my dress. But in hindsight I realize she was probably hiding her face so that the hysterical child wouldn't see her stifling a smile.

I don't remember what she said to me then, but somehow I was convinced to go back to class and that everything was going to be okay.

So where did this appearance obssession originate? Why was a 4-1/2-year-old histrionic over legwear? Did my mom read a Vogue magazine while pregnant and the information transferred to me in utero? Did some random older kid laugh at me as a toddler when I had rice cereal drooling down my face and it flipped an appearance awareness switch in my brain?

Looking at me today (or even much of growing up) I'm not the innovative fashion maven, and I was never voted Best Dressed. Even now I don't wear a lot of makeup because I never learned how. But if you could see into the little factory that is my brain, there would always be a department devoted to analyzing incoming potential insults, and a tandem department devoted to damage control and neutralizing those perceived insults.

Sometimes purposely going out in public "looking ugly" (a phrase my husband hates) is therapeutic, sometimes it makes me feel worse.

The feeling of having eyes on me is always there and always has been. It's like an accessory I can't take off, a barrette stuck in my tangled hair. Most days I can hide it, but it still pulls at me.

I love the smell of bleached denim in the morning...

I loved my ‘80s-era bleached and ripped jeans, I really did. I took a pair of nondescript Zena brand jeans and turned them into a creation of holes and stains like nobody else. That first rip was so liberating…I felt like such a rebel! I made the first cut after careful examination of where it would end up as it grew and frayed. I cut, and then put them on and sat down to allow my knee to protrude through and make an authentic rip. Once in elementary school I had a power push with my mom over wearing my favorite jeans to school because I’d fallen on the hardcourt and ripped a small hole in the knee. I didn’t care, I wanted to wear them. But my mom I guess thought they made it look like I was unkempt or uncared for…I really don’t know, lots of kids had a hole in the knee of their jeans. But in high school, I would win the battle. I bought the jeans, I ripped the jeans, and dammit I would WEAR the jeans to school!

Of course, despite my anticipation of fashion glory, nobody really noticed my jeans, probably because half the school was already wearing the same thing themselves. They weren’t impressed with my admittedly cautious attempt at rebellious style, and I received no accolades for my wares. No, what I needed was more panache, more defiance to the preppy domination that defined my high school. I needed bleach!

Off to the utility sink in the garage I went, armed with nothing more than a spray bottle and a dream. Utilizing the spray bottle’s various squirt options I created a masterpiece of faded streaks, blotches, and spots. Yes! These…these are what the 1980s are all about! These jeans will get me featured in a cute candid shot on the fashion pages of the yearbook! (They didn’t.) These jeans will make little sophomores look up to me as a truly cool senior (Mmmm, if they did, they never mentioned it to me.)

In all honesty, nothing magical resulted from destroying said denim. But I wore the heck out of them, feeling all hippie flower child and Edie Brickell every time I did. I rolled the cuffs and paired them with my Reebok Freestyle hi-tops and Vuarnet sunglasses T-shirt. I was it, man; I was the ‘80s personified…in my own mind.

Twenty years later, I still have those jeans. It’s amazing what 20 years will do to bleached denim. They’re now an unappetizing shade of dingy yellow, with holes where I never intended due simply to chemical breakdown of the fabric. Somewhere along the line I sewed on some flower appliqués in an attempt to make them more hippie style. At one point the seat ripped open and had to be patched. But I kept them all this time for a few reasons. One was vanity: If I could still fit into my high school jeans, I knew I hadn’t gained weight. I didn’t need a scale as long as I had my Zena jeans. The second reason was that I wanted to wear them to my 20th high school reunion, which is next month. Trying them on last week I came to realize that’s not going to happen. Again, vanity wins. These sad pants just aren’t as flattering as they used to be. For one, they’re REALLY high-waisted and there’s no disguising that unfavorable feature. And, sadly, the few pounds I’ve gained since high school are in all the wrong places for this style of pants. So I won’t be showing up in public looking like I just stepped out of a DeLorean originating from June 3, 1989. And while the scent of bleached denim still transports me back to my teenage years, my beautiful personal-stylized jeans will remain where they are, in a storage bin under the guest bed. Unless, of course, I decide to construct a life-size shadow box in which to display them. That wouldn’t be weird, right?