September 29, 2006

Fashion Friday

This week I had an e-mail from Jillian, and I’m stumped. I know, hard to believe! But there it is. She wrote, “I am currently stationed overseas and have come to realize that most German women have no curves. Where is a good place to order jeans, etc, for a curvy person that don’t cost an arm and a leg?” She added that her soldier husband has suggested that she just wear his old jeans.

I can answer half of Jillian’s question: do NOT wear your husband’s (or boyfriend’s or male roomate’s or brother’s) jeans UNLESS you happen, by some cosmic fluke, to ACTUALLY wear his size. Men’s jeans are fine for the girls–I have friends who swear by them–but for the love of all that is denim, buy your own. There is no rule that says you MUST shop in the women’s department, but it is IMPERATIVE that whatever you buy fit properly. No disrespect to Jillian’s soldier husband (God love him and keep him safe) but no, no, no! His jeans are his jeans, and that’s how it should stay.

In fact, this holds true for pretty much everything in your husband’s closet. Every time I read an article suggesting that you borrow his dress shirts to wear with your ball gown, a la Sharon Stone at the 1998 Oscars, I want to scream. Sharon Stone has an army of stylists getting her ready for events; she could wear a grocery sack and look stunning. The rest of us, however, have only ourselves, and I guarantee you that wearing clothing borrowed from the man in your life will make you look less like a celebrity and more like someone who forgot to do laundry.

Okay, enough said.

Now we get to the part that stumped me: where can Jillian find affordable, curvy jeans that can be shipped to Germany? I suggested gap.com, although I’m not sure about their international shipping policies, but I’m sure you all have other favorite sites. So let’s hear about them! Curvy girls, where are you shopping? And why do you love the sites you love?

I also had an e-mail from the always-lovely Melissa, which I read and responded to and deleted (and then restarted the iBook, thus forever losing the deleted e-mail. Argh). The point, though, was this: Melissa recently cashed in an Ann Taylor gift card. She wound up with a beautiful camisole, a jean skirt, and a necklace. I loved the skirt and LOVED the camisole, but I was the most excited about the necklace (which I can’t find the link to) not specifically because of anything about the necklace but because SHE BOUGHT A NECKLACE.

It’s all about accessorizing, baby.

I am firmly convinced that no one needs a LOT of clothes; what you need are the RIGHT clothes, clothes that work for your body and your lifestyle. Having a closet full of basic pieces that mix and match and FIT makes getting dressed easy. Having a few beautiful accessories makes getting dressed fun.

As with clothes, you don’t need a lot of accessories, and you don’t need to spend a lot on them. I like one-of-a-kind jewelry, so I tend to shop in little galleries rather than department stores, which is honestly not as pricey as it sounds, although it can be hit-or-miss. But recently, I bought a necklace at SuperTarget (on CLEARANCE, even, aren’t you proud?) and I get compliments on it every time I wear it. I also wear my pretend diamond earrings most of the time; I found them at Old Navy for $7.00. SEVEN DOLLARS, people!

Jewelry can make your everyday clothes seem more festive and special. A necklace is a simple way to dress up a t-shirt, as is a pair of dangly earrings (but not together–too much is just TOO MUCH). Necklaces are also good if you have very small children; Melissa was pointing out that her baby is less likely to injure her by pulling on the necklace than, say, on a pair of earrings. Bracelets, if you don’t mind them, are also easy around babies, although they tend to get chewed on. And then there’s my house, where Charlie just wants to WEAR my bracelets all the time. But maybe that’s not a problem for you!

Moving on.

Think about your jewelry like you do your clothes; try not to segregate things into Everyday and Fancy. I have some lovely faux pearls that Wade gave me for my thirtieth birthday; I wear them with a t-shirt and jeans and my suede jacket. In the same way, a funky necklace can be really cool with a cocktail dress. I have jewelry that I wear every day–my mother’s white gold wristwatch, my silver locket bracelet (or my baby names bracelet, which is silver and gold), my wedding rings (gold). I almost always wear earrings. I keep my jewelry where I can find it easily, in case I get the urge to wear something different, but I tend to go for the same pieces all the time, mostly because I get dressed BEFORE I have coffee, so my decision making skills are not really at their best.

It is important, thought, to think about how your jewelry goes with what you’re wearing. A turtleneck calls for small earrings, and for a longer necklace (if any). A boatneck is great for dangly earrings but not for a necklace. Three-quarter length sleeves are perfect for a bracelet. I prefer a choker-length necklace for every day, something that falls right where the crew neck on my t-shirt hits me, but other people like something longer. Think also about color. You can match things (blue beads with a blue sweater) but that can be boring. Mix it up a little; wear the blue beads with a brown t-shirt, or some black beads with your white tee. Have fun with your jewelry.

As with clothes, don’t wear jewelry you’re not comfortable with. Don’t like bracelets? Don’t wear them. Pearls make you feel like June Cleaver? Don’t wear them (unless you like the June Cleaver thing, then have at it). Mixing gold and silver is fine, as long as you do it thoughtfully. If you have one piece that you love, wear it every day. Getting dressed shouldn’t be hard; the idea is to look nice and to FEEL like you look nice.

Okay! So tell me where Jillian can find some jeans, will you?

September 28, 2006

Love Thursday: smelly, scratchy, and snuggly

I bought Henry some new pajamas last weekend, with space ships on them. I stood in front of the display forever, trying to decide between a size 6 and a size 8. Finally, I bought the sixes because the eights seemed like they would be way too big. How could Henry possibly need anything bigger than a size 6?

Charlie may be getting those pajamas soon.

Oklahoma City Zoo, summer 2002

I used to laugh at women who said, “Oh I can hardly remember when my kids were that size,” whatever size it is that your child is now. I would think, how can you NOT REMEMBER this size, this age, this incredible cuteness and snuggliness? But I also thought that all the baby cuteness and snuggliness would go on forever, forgetting, as my friend Nancy says, that our little boys will grow into “smelly, scratchy men” some day.

Some day soon, apparently.

I look at pictures of Henry from three or four years ago, and I’m startled by how little he looks. I have always thought of Charlie as the baby, and I think I forget what a little guy Henry was. I love the big boy he is turning into; I love his laugh and his millions of questions and his quirks. I love that he can name all the planets and can add and subtract in his head and that he writes an R by attaching two legs to a circle.

I love that he looks exactly like the teeny baby they handed me in the delivery room at the same time that he looks like a mini Wade.

I love that my baby is growing up, moving closer to the smelly and scratchy part of his life. But I also love that he has started hugging me again, after not wanting to for what seemed like forever. Because I want the snuggly part to last forever.

Love Thursday is brought to you by Karen and Irene. Links to more Love Thursday posts can be found at their sites.

September 26, 2006

who’s afraid of Arianna Huffington?

I am fascinated by Arianna Huffington, primarily because she is famous solely for being Arianna Huffington. I admire her for her outspokenness and her incredible ability to continuously recreate herself (she’s a Republican! no wait, she’s a Democrat!). She is the founder of the Huffington Post, and currently has a new book out, On Becoming Fearless. I wanted to like this book, I really did. Really.

Huffington’s claim–which I agree wholeheartedly with–is that we live in a culture of fear, and that women are particularly vulnerable to fearmongering. We are constantly barraged by reminders of all the ways we are failing–at home and at work and everywhere in between. Every choice we make is met with criticism and over time, we internalize that critical voice and allow it to control our decisions. We become fearful, and this fear infects our lives. We fear that we are failing our children and our spouses and our parents. We fear that we’re not working hard enough or making enough money. We fear that we are ugly. We fear that we will not succeed, and so we don’t.

“The most common response to this crisis of self is conformity,” Huffington writes in her Introduction. “So, ironically, the woman who appears to be well adapted may be the one who simply has become the most comfortable being governed by her fears, while the ‘neurotic’ one is still gamely struggling to reach her fearlessness.” As I read this, I thought instantly of the minivan driving soccer mom, and of my resistance to that stereotype. I think, in this moment, that Huffington is right; one way of allaying fear–or at least of creating the appearance of allaying fear–is to conform to the group. Once you are part of the group, there is nothing to fear. Except, of course, that the fears don’t vanish once you’re part of the group; they just eat away at you while you drive your minivan to soccer practice. Huffington identifies the places in our lives where we are most likely to be fearful–our relationship with our bodies, for example, or with work or money or love–and offers strategies for overcoming these fears. She looks at other literature in this area and quotes interviews with friends and Huffington Post readers and cites her own personal experiences. She is confident that women can, indeed, become fearless.

I like the idea of this book quite a lot. But the book itself left me puzzled and more than a little irritated. While this is not a Mommy Wars book, it employs that same us-against-them rhetoric. Huffington is critical of women who chose to approach the world in any way that differs dramatically from the one she is advocating here. She writes about an Oscar week party at which she found herself seated next to Hugh Hefner and his entourage, “the three pneumatically endowed platinum blondes on his arm.” She describes them as “horrifying . . . . At some point, they must have been lovely. And most likely, they still would be–but we’ll never know. That level of heavy construction and demolition can never be undone.” I am not a fan of plastic surgery, but I am even less a fan of this rhetoric. What divides women, what keeps us fearful and guilt ridden and angry about our inability to advance and succeed is, often, the criticism of other women, or at least our sense–our fear, if you will–that we won’t measure up in the eyes of other women. I think Huffington has a point about the Playboy bunnies and their desire to recreate themselves as Every Man’s Fantasy, but rather than attacking these young women (and they are young, very very young), I would have preferred she deconstruct the ideal they represent.

Too often, the book devolves into Practical Advice From Arianna, which is of little if any “practical” use in my real life. In the book’s first chapter, Fearless About the Body, Huffington asserts that “we can never really be fearless until we stop judging our looks and accept them.” Agreed; her argument is dead on. But her application falls short, particularly when she advocates solutions such as “Never get up from the table feeling stuffed or guilty, but never get up without feeling satisfied” and “Get enough sleep. . . . I try to get seven to eight hours of sleep a night as often as possible.” Quite honestly, I try to sit down at the dinner table whenever possible and I will take any sleep I can get. Reading about Huffington’s lunch hour hikes with her girlfriends or her yoga practice didn’t really give me any new insight into loving my body; instead, it left me feeling like I needed to get a whole new life, one that included a yoga instructor and a house in the California foothills.

Ultimately, I found this book unsatisfying and frustrating. The myriad references to Huffington’s own life–intended, I imagine, to be enlightening and charming–were incredibly irritating. She writes about her dear friend Sherry Lansing’s gift of a session with the aesthetician Mila Moursi, and goes on to rhapsodize about how “my regular facials include microdermabrasion . . . But even the simplest home facial can cleanse and freshen up our skin and our spirits,” she adds, in what seems to be an afterthought intended to include readers who don’t have a standing appointment with a famous Hollywood aesthetician. Huffington talks about returning phone calls during a seaweed wrap and checking her Blackberry during yoga classes. I tried to imagine what the equivalent of these might be at my house, but all I could come up with was eating M&Ms in the laundry room while the kids watch Clifford. I couldn’t connect with Huffington, although I wanted to; I wanted to feel like there was some real practical take-away message, but it seemed that the message was that when you’re Arianna Huffington, you CAN stop being fearful.

I think Huffington is right: we live in a culture that barrages us with reminders of how we are failing and imbues us with fear. I think that her message–that women CAN overcome fear, that we CAN succeed, personally and professionally, that our lives will be more rewarding if we take risks and make decisions based on what we KNOW not what we fear–is crucial, particularly for young women. But I think there is not enough of that message and too much of Arianna Huffington in this book.

This review is part of BlogHer’s first virtual book tour. You can find more reviews–and get your own review copy of Arianna Huffington’s book–at BlogHer.