You’re not going out like that, are you?

To say that I am not exactly on the cutting edge of fashion would be fairly generous, I think.  For the most part, fashion strikes me as scary, confusing, and stupid – politics, too, and for that reason I do my best to avoid both.  The only item of clothing that I’ve ever bought ahead of the popularity curve was this pair of shoes, because I needed closed-toed footwear for a lab course I was taking, and I thought they were cute.  (They were cute, and only a half-size too small – a fact that was woefully unapparent in the store, but made itself known to the tune of four separate blisters the first time I actually wore them.  We suffer to be beautiful.)  

The vast majority of other items in my wardrobe were purchased a year or more after their particular style first hit the stores; it’s usual that I need to get used to seeing a look before I’ll consider wearing it, and some things (think shrugs) I refuse to buy even if I like them, because it’s obvious how stupid they’ll look once the fad ends – and I will wear something I like until it falls off my body in shreds, I don’t care how last year it is. 

Don’t get me wrong; I like clothes very much, and I love to shop.  But my body is kind of a caricature of itself; I have the upper half of a six-foot-two runway model and the lower half of a 5-foot-nothing garbage man, and finding clothes that fit can be challenging.  Summer shopping is easier and more gratifying than winter shopping, because below-the-knee skirts hide all my municipal waste-collector attributes, while tank tops and fitted tees allow for long thin arms and neck.  Add a good push-up bra and we’re set. 

The big problem is the timing:  you have to shop for summer while it’s still technically winter, and vice versa.  It’s a pretty simple matter to walk into a store in, say, September, and step out of your flip-flops and shorts to try on a pair of corduroy pants; it’s another thing altogether to go shopping in March, and have to take off your coat, scarf, knee-boots, over-the-knee socks, and that pair of cords you bought last September, to try on a pair of shorts (or try to, since the ultra-low waist barely makes it over your ample ass…) 

And in the end you can’t really gauge how you look anyway, between the cruel and unusual glare of the overhead lights, the funhouse (now with 75% less fun!) dressing room mirrors, and the fact that it turns out you couldn’t be bothered to take off those socks after all, so you’re standing there with your garbageman butt barely covered by the biggest joke the Paris catwalk ever played on the female asscrack, while the item that was meant to be shorts is ending somewhere below your knees and damn those short femurs anyway, and the rest of your legs are covered in green-and-orange striped socks, because who really thought you’d be taking off those boots after you left the house – and the overall effect is kind of like if you stuck legs on a gourd and sent it off to clown college. 

I think I’m just going to start showing up for work wearing a sandwich board and those cute little shoes.