Wardrobe Imaginings

I need a wardrobe intervention.  I need Stacy and Clinton to swoop in with their $5,000 and save me.  This fact shames me, though, because I used to pride myself on being someone who would've never needed their help.  I used to style myself quite well, actually.

Have you heard of or followed anyone who's done the 30 for 30 project (tagged #30x30 on Twitter)?  Long story short, you choose 30 items from your wardrobe (not including shoes, handbags, and other accessories) and mix those items and only those items for 30 days.

I love this idea - what a challenge, right?  So I got to thinking that I would love to do this but then I realized two things:

1 - I would need clothes that fit in order to do this, and

2 - I probably do 10x10 already, meaning that I think I wear the same 10 items of clothes every two weeks, basically.

I don't have a lot of functioning clothing right now.  Most of what fit the last two winters is now too big.  I have to wear a belt on my pants nearly every day and it's cinched so much that the strap is through the second belt loop, by my left hip, almost around to my back.  And it's the only belt I own.  I own NO skirts that fit (how did that happen??) and only a couple of workable dresses.  I only have a few sweaters and no long sleeve button-down shirts, just short-sleeve ones.

I have an ugly pair of black loafers that aren't even comfortable, a pair of black shoes I wore while pregnant because they offered great arch support, and two pairs of black mary janes.  I have many, many more summer shoes, but the days are frigid and piled high with snow lately so I'm not about to wear flats (and I don't like the look of flats with socks and I'm generally too lazy to carry a pair of shoes to work).

I own one true pair of heels - a really nice looking high-heel black mary jane-ish pair of Isaac Mizrahi for Target.  My new hairdresser is tall but is always wearing heels and I said to her a couple of months ago that I only owned one pair and hadn't worn them in a few years.  She laughed, looked at me and said, "Seriously?  Do you need me to tell you where to go buy more?"  Come to think of it, I do have a few dressy pairs but I never wear those either.

I need wardrobe rehab.  My wardrobe is sad and in no way reflects how I feel about myself right now.  It actually reflects how I felt after putting weight on during and after grad school, which was sad and embarrassed.  Now, of course, I know that I had developed a thyroid problem.  Of course, I also wasn't eating well and was completely sedentary.  Now that I'm medicating my thyroid, eating a bit better and a bit more active (although mostly because I play with Nate and walk the dog, so nothing big deal), weight has come off and continues to come off, albeit slowly.

About six years ago, I had a wardrobe I loved.  Gap jeans, NY&Co sweaters, DSW shoes, Target odds and ends, Kohl's shirts.  Everything fit and I felt attractive in it.  Then the weight started coming back on and the clothes got tighter and tighter, until I had to put them away and buy new clothes.  I didn't feel good about needing to buy those new clothes so I probably put minimal effort into choosing them.

So now I'm left feeling unexcited to get dressed, every single day.  The only exceptions are the days I get to wear something that fits (some pairs of my jeans or this one pair of wide-leg pinstriped trousers I have for work).  And, of course, when we're barely able to pay the bills, going clothes shopping isn't even a non-priority; it's simply an impossibility.  I want to remix, but it's like trying to mix with broken records.  My clothes, plainly, do not work.

And I'm still hoping to lose more weight - hopefully another 15 - 20 pounds (which is a crazy small amount for me to even consider because when I was over 100 pounds overweight, I would get so aggravated at people who talked about needing to lose 15 pounds).  Losing even 20 pounds will still leave me 1 - overweight and 2 - at a weight higher than my adult low, but I'm okay with that.  I want to find a weight where it takes me a little bit of effort to stay there (can't pig out daily, have to make sure I get my fruits and veggies, have to be at least a little bit active) but that doesn't require the four-day-a-week-three-hours-at-a-time gym routine I had going when I was a size 12/14 (my smallest adult size).

This is me at that size:

I don't think I "look like" a size 12/14.  If I saw that girl, I'd think she was a size 10, maybe an 8 (if not sitting down and so smushing my hips out to the sides).  Maybe I'm crazy or deluded, but that's how it feels to me and what I learned from being that size is that the number on my pants really doesn't matter to me.  I always thought that was bullshit, but it's not.  I know now what it feels like to be happy in my pants.  (Wait, that doesn't sound quite how I mean it. Ha.)  What I mean is that I know how I feel on the inside when I'm happy with myself and when I'm not; I don't need to look at the tag on my pants and have that determine my happiness.

I've been looking at a few personal style blogs and have been getting really, truly inspired by them.  These ladies put together really great outfits and they aren't spending hundreds of dollars on every single item.  Similar to how I'm building my own personal cooking style by first following other people's recipes and tweaking them in time, as I grow more comfortable putting food together, I think I'm going to do the same thing with clothing.  I might try copying some other folks' outfits or styling choices at first so that in time, I can learn how *I* like my clothing to look and begin to build my sense of style back up (I used to have one - a pretty decent one, actually - even at my heaviest).

Here are some of the personal style bloggers I'm loving right now:

Kendi Everyday (she runs the whole 30 for 30 Remix Challenge)

Archives

Miss Vinyl Ahoy

Snappy and Savvy

Law Mama

By Hillary (I love love love that she takes her pictures in the library and I have been thinking obsessively about her red sweater from this post since she posted it)

So that's the way I'm headed.  I'm hoping the scale keeps moving down.  As soon as I have some expendable income, I'll be buying a few clothing items (especially pants) and I'm going to continue to go through the containers of "too small" clothing I have to see if anything newly fits.  As time passes, I'll continue to add to and edit my wardrobe until I get to a point where I can do a 30x30 and challenge myself to dress creatively and, most importantly, dress like myself.

Got any good personal style blogs you want to recommend?

My body is a moving object.

I was eleven when my brother started kindergarten.  My mother volunteered for some class activity and when I got home from school that day, she was crying.  I asked if she was okay and she explained that she heard one of my brother's classmates say, "Wow, Ken, your mom is FAT!"  Even now, nearly twenty-five years later, that memory stings enough to bring tears to my eyes.  I remember my mom telling me this was why I had to lose weight: she didn't want me to go through the same things she had to go through.

But I gained weight, and gained weight.  My weight steadily grew until I had gastric bypass surgery at the age of 28.  And then my weight dropped.  I went from hating my body to being bewildered by it.  This is what I looked like with less fat?  There were hip bones under there?  I had a collarbone that could show itself?  What would I look like if I didn't have all this excess skin now?  Why had I let myself irreparably damage my body by getting so fat that my skin wouldn't shrink back?  So then, at 30, I had plastic surgery and had some parts nipped and tucked, and that helped - but then weight slowly crept back on over the next four years.  And then I got pregnant and gained only 10 pounds in those 40 weeks.  Then I gave birth and, in the following six months, lost the 10 pregnancy pounds plus another twenty-five without really trying (I thank the thyroid medication I'm on).

But what this means in reality is that my body is a moving object.  I can't put a finger on it because it won't stay still.  Its shape won't stay.  I have absolutely no reference point for what my body's "norm" is.  Since giving birth, my hips have gotten (seemingly permanently) wider but my already reduced and lifted breasts have gotten a bit smaller (no complaints about that).

So what's happened? I no longer think about myself as any body type.  When I was fat, I identified as fat.  When I was thin, I identified as a former fattie.  It was a part of who I am that I knew I couldn't shake.  Now?  Now I cognitively recognize that I am overweight (technically obese) but I don't feel like it.  It's like my mind has simply given up trying to categorize the body that carries it around.  It's been quite freeing; I feel better about my body now than I did at some points when I weighed 35 pounds less than I do now (near my lowest adult weight).

So I was snapped out of a seeming fog when at a deli the other day, as I was buying a soda, a bag of pretzels, a candy bar, and a pack of gum, the cashier asked me, "Is that all for you or is someone else in the car?"

Immediately I was seven years old again, being told I looked like a fat lollipop in my new dress.  I was nine years old, being told I shouldn't tuck my shirt in because fat people don't look good when they do that.  I was eleven, watching my mother cry about hearing a five year old say she was fat.  I was fourteen with spitballs in my hair and tacks on my chair.  I was seventeen, wondering if anyone would ever be generous enough to love me despite my appearance.  I was nineteen, being called, "FATTIE!" by a passing car of guys in front of my friends.  I came rushing back into myself, filling up the body that I can't even get a hold of anymore.

And then?  I lied.  "Yes," I said, "My husband is in the car."

Why did I do that?  I can eat a damn bag of chips and candy bar if I want to.  Instead of instantly feeling ashamed, I should have been pissed off that this guy felt he had the right to ask me that.  But all it takes is one question to make me feel like I gained a hundred pounds in an instant, like I went from the real Gwyneth Paltrow to the Fat Suit Gwyneth in Shallow Hal.  It's those moments that I realize my growth hasn't been as full as it sometimes seems.

Tori Amos used to sell t-shirts that said "Recovering Catholic".  I should have a "Recovering Fattie" shirt, even though I'd never wear it and most people wouldn't understand how someone still fat could be a recovering fattie.  But that's how I feel.

And, so, here I am and here's my body.  I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I do finally feel like I own it, even when a short question sends me reeling.

These two things, however, I do know:

1. I like who I am and that will never again be dependent upon my body size.

2. That deli has lost my business.

This post is an entry for the Living Out Loud project.  This month’s theme was “It. Was. Awful!”.  If you’d like to take part in future projects, click here!

Have you heard of FatBooth?

FatBooth is an iPhone/iTouch/iPad app that lets you take a picture of your face or someone else’s and make it fat.

Ohhh, hahahaha, oh boy!  How funny!  What a brilliant use of anyone’s free time!  Let me go run out and get an iPad right now so I can make people fat.

This app has been out for a month but I don’t have any of the above products so I was unaware of it until it was recently reported that Whitney Port (of The Hills and The City) posted a FatBooth photo of herself.

Ms. Port wrote on her website, “Seriously every time I look at this photo I giggle uncontrollably! [. . .]  What do you guys think of my extra chins?  Is it a good look for me?!”

Somehow I don’t think she’d be giggling uncontrollably if she woke up that size one day.  But if you do a quick Google search about the app, you’ll find a large number of reviews or informal postings talking about how funny this app is.  One blog post wrote, “Whether it’s your own picture, a friend’s, a family member or anyone it’s hilarious to see them obese.  Though I must add it’s much more humorous when the person is thin.”  This is then followed by a picture of a hamburger saying, “Yum Yummy.”

Oh, yes.  Boy am I laughing now.  Hilarious, indeed.

Continue reading here...

7 Quick Tuesday Takes - really trying edition

The point of "7 Quick Tuesday Takes" is that they be just that - quick.  Being naturally verbose, I never seem to quite hit that mark.  But we try again.

1 - Is it weird that I like to look at my baby registry on Babies R Us and imagine using all the things?  I honestly don't think I looked at my bridal registry this much, but I could look at the baby stuff every day.  (Um, okay, I do look at it every day.)

2 - Current dislike: People who tell me "Oh, you just wait!" when I say I'm tired/busy/always out of time/whatever.  Yes, people, I know life gets harder when you have a kid.  I'm not a friggin' moron - but that does not devalue how tired or swamped I might be right now.  (I'll add that I hear this most from stay-at-home-moms who don't work or go to school.  I know they work VERY hard and it's incredibly exhausting work, but there's also got to be understanding for the fact that going to work every day and taking grad classes plus managing a new puppy and being tired is a lot.)

3 - Still on my lime kick.  Bought lime ice pops this weekend.  Mmm.  I sit and smell one for a solid minute before I even taste it.

4 - Junk food might be addictive.  Duh.  I learned this AGES ago.  Our bodies were built to stock up when we "find" fatty foods because they'd have been rare when we were hunter/gatherers.  Now they're everywhere and we're not equipped to have them all the time.  Doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

5 - After spending a zillion thousands of dollars on my car last week, I got in it yesterday morning and the check engine light came on and the car shuddered all the way to work. *sigh*  A coil had shorted out.  It was replaced and I didn't pay for it.  At this point, I'm debating biking to work.  Too bad my commute is entirely on the highway (and NJ is so not bike friendly).  I told the guy at the dealership I was getting tired of seeing him.  He responded, "Yeah, I have that effect on women."  Cute. :)

6 - We got no work done on clearing out the office-to-be-nursery this weekend.  Oops.  It's close to cleared out, but we really need to get cracking.  Just have to sort through things and move/store them otherwise our son will have a desk chair for a changing table and guitar parts as rattles.

7 - This weekend was my nephew's "kids" birthday party at the local Little Gym.  I learned: I could never work there; I admire the people who do; watching kids play is exhausting; and two year olds aren't great at waiting their turns.  I said it's like outsourcing your kid's birthday party - I think it's fantastic.  Everyone (kids and adults) had a great time.  Here's my nephew, TJ, catching some air on the bouncy thing:

I love that you can actually see space between his feet and the bouncy thing.  And speaking of feet, look at those chubby little feet of his.  I love them!

More photos to follow tomorrow... (I said I was keeping this "quick," right?)

Moose: A Memoir

16. Read 30 books I haven’t read before and blog about them. (19/30)

Moose: A Memoir
by Stephanie Klein

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Stephanie Klein.  I really adore some of the things she writes/says (sometimes she video blogs) and I get really annoyed or turned off by other things she writes/says.  Not surprisingly, my reaction to her fat camp memoir is the same.  In Moose, "Klein shares the cutting details of what it truly feels like to be an overweight child, from the stinging taunts of classmates, to the off-color remarks of her own father, to her thin mother's compulsive dissatisfaction with her own body" (Amazon).

So many of the details and events in the book resonated with me.  I went to summer camp; it wasn't a "fat camp" yet many of the details were achingly familiar (except I never made out with anyone at summer camp).  The Amazon review is right in that Klein shares a lot of remarkably familiar details of what it's like to grow up as a fat kid.

That said, most of Klein's story is different from my own and was truly fascinating to read.  She mentions several times how she was interested in sex much younger than many of her classmates and friends and I couldn't help but link that to later issues with body image and eating.  Klein, though, never explicitly makes the link which makes me wonder if we, the readers, were meant to make it or if it just really hadn't occurred to her.

My main issue with the book, the one that left me feeling unsatisfied with it, is the writing - in particular, the choices made at the end of the text.  The book is called Moose because that was a name the kids at school called Klein, but it feels like a stretch when Klein extends this into her college years at the end of the book.  The book is primarily about her summer "fat" camp experiences and the end feels like it betrays this purpose by meandering into other topics.  The story deserves a much better wrap-up than it has.  Even framing those final scenes/anecdotes/reflections as a prologue would have been an improvement.  It makes me wonder about her editor(s).

I did mostly enjoy the book, though, and will continue to read her blog.  She has a unique take on life that I haven't seen anywhere else and I am interested to see what else she has to say.