Monday, July 18, 2022

I'VE TOTALLY GIVEN UP ON TRYING TO LOOK FASHIONABLE

 

I hate to say it, but my wardrobe ever since the pandemic first began has been nothing but sweatpants, sweatshirts, T-shirts and lounging pants (which basically are sweatpants made of T-shirt material), all in a couple sizes larger than my actual size, for the sake of comfort.

 I also haven’t kept up anything as far as my hair is concerned. No conditioning, coloring, trimming, etc.  I just pull it back into a ponytail and shove a baseball cap over it.

In other words, I have chosen comfort over fashion…or “shabby chic,” minus the chic.

When I looked at myself in the mirror the other day, I was reminded of a TV show called "What Not to Wear" that I really got a kick out of watching during its 10-year run from 2003 to 2013.

Perhaps it was because I could empathize with the poor victims who were unmercifully taunted every week by Stacy and Clinton, the show's fashion experts. Stacy and Clinton’s mission was to scope out a person who dressed in a style that most people never would classify as “fashionable” and then secretly videotape that person in the most unflattering positions imaginable: bending over, getting out of the car, yawning and stretching, adjusting underwear. Even a fashion model would have looked less than attractive in those same situations. 

Finally, Clinton and Stacy would ambush the unsuspecting victim and show her (or, on occasion, "him") the embarrassing video footage. 

Just as the person was on the verge of suing them for invasion of privacy, they’d make amends by handing her/him a complimentary credit-card worth $5000 toward the purchase an entire new wardrobe. 

There was a catch, however. Every piece of the victim's current wardrobe had to be tossed out, and Stacy and Clinton had to oversee the purchase of the new one (in New York City, no less) just to make certain the person didn't rush out and buy a gross of sweatpants with the money. 

When I first started watching the show, I thought it might be fun to get $5,000 worth of clothes for nothing other than a bit of national humiliation and a few close-ups of my cellulite, but after several weeks of observing Stacy and Clinton in action, I changed my mind. The two of them were, well...pretty brutal. 

"Did you get dragged behind a stagecoach while wearing that outfit?" Clinton asked as he critically eyed one of the victim's baggy sweater and pants. 

“Tell your great-grandmother she can have her sweater back!" Stacy would add as she and Clinton shared a wicked cackle. 

STACY & CLINTON AND ONE OF
THEIR VICTIMS

They then proceeded to snatch the clothes from the victim and toss them into a trash barrel, which conveniently happened to be sitting in the middle of their living room. 

"But my aunt in Scotland stitched that skirt by hand for me a month before she died," the victim protested as they crumpled the plaid, woolen skirt and heaved it as if it were a basketball, into the trash can. 

"Well, too bad your aunt didn't have better taste in clothes!" Clinton, who was wearing a purple flowered shirt, snapped. 

The whole experience was pretty intimidating for the chosen victim, but what I always found the most intimidating was Stacy and Clinton's obsession with legs. 

"Why are you hiding your legs in pants?" they’d ask all of the women. "Would it kill you to wear a skirt or dress and show the world that you actually have ankles and calves?"

 Whenever they said that, which was just about every week (except when their victim was a guy) I’d think of my mother-in-law, who frequently reminded me that she hadn't seen me in a skirt since Amelia Earhart had boarded a plane.

The fact is, I don’t like my legs because they’ve always been pretty shapeless, so I prefer not to show them off.  I think I've received only two "nice legs" compliments in the past 50 years, and one of them was from a farmer who was at least 85 years old and probably had spent too much time staring at cows.

So even now, with the temperatures soaring into the 90s, I still won’t be baring my legs in shorts or skirts. I will just continue to wear what has become my normal, everyday attire.

After all, they don’t call them “sweat” pants for nothing.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.

 





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1 comment:

  1. I’m sure that you are exaggerating because people in our age bracket don’t really like their bodies ,” well at least my bracket” Legs or not I find a well dressed woman very attractive.

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