#1 of 3: REFLECTIONS ON MY INABILITY TO DRESS MYSELF

For about the last year - during my approach and then landing into my forties -I have really been evaluating myself and my choices, examining the delicate balance that is my life, and trying to really connect to what is important to me and to figure out how to distinguish the important from the rest of the nonsense. And I have finally come to the crux of my inability to make peace with myself at this time in my life.

Life has peppered me with experience, not to mention self-help books, magazines with quizzes that will reveal the answers to every known difficult situation (not to mention what my kissing style is), respected elders, celebrity examples and finally the internet, which, somewhere, contains the correct answer to every question anyone could ever ask, and also never lies. These and all of life’s teachers have helped me go to law school, get a job, raise my kids, meet the right guy (with the right kissing style), and even find a car with acceptable safety lessons. But, I was still left with the same sense of having a question that I can’t put into words bouncing around in my gut, smacking itself up against my stomach lining. (Quick aside: When I was little, I thought that the inside of your body was this empty black space with a big tangle of veins that looked like multi-colored wires, and that your blood was an Oscar Meyer weenie whistle that traveled around your body tooting out little puffs of smoke). But now, I have finally figured it out. The reason. The source. The answer. The underlying issue. The problem. The source of my midlife neurosis. And here it is. I’m almost afraid to put it into writing, because then it will be real, and I will be at its mercy, and its power may well overwhelm me. But here goes.

I have no fucking idea how a forty year old woman is supposed to dress. Well, other forty year old women manage it just fine. For them. But what they wear doesn’t work for me. And since when am I too old to shop at the front of the store - where they keep they cute and fashionable clothing? I mean, it’s not that I am too old. I’m not. The other forty year old women walking around in their trendy peasant blouses and empire waist camisoles with their bra straps showing? THEY are too old. I, however, am not. I may choose not to wear that kind of thing, but it’s not like I would look like I was trying to be 24. I mean, I’m fine with the fact that no one really wants to see my midriff. I don’t even want to see my midriff, but a girl must shower. But since when am I too old to wear a jean miniskirt with funky striped tights? Since when do I look stupid in Doc Marten combat boots?

I get that, as a mother, certain things are inappropriate. I should not wear my "BAD MOTHERFUCKER" t-shirt to a fourth grade parent-teacher conference. I should not let my cellulite hang out of holes in the ass of my jeans. I should not throw on a black slip and call it a skirt. Ever. Similarly, as a professional, certain things are inappropriate. I should wear appropriate foundation garments. I should not wear ladybug socks with my pumps. I should not let the strap of a thong stick out of my waistline. I should never wear a thong. Ever.
But now that I’m forty, there are a lot of things that I shouldn’t wear that I don’t know about. In my mind, my chosen style is so not how I look on the outside. I think that, weighty matters aside, life, death, world peace, global warming, blahbedeeblahblahblah, my problem? Really? Is that my outsides have stopped matching my insides and I just don’t know what to do with that. In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I have had problems with this before, even before the heinous decade commenced. I was body dysmorphic until I got pregnant for the first time. I would like awake in bed and not be able to tell how big my body was, or what shape it was, or what its proportions were. I would feel as though my feet were each about twice as long as they really are, and all blown up like blimps, and like the top of my was shrinking to the size of a dollhouse doll. Or that suddenly my arms were super long and my legs were super short. It’s like when you are lying on your bed and you close your eyes, or it’s pitch black, and you can’t figure out what direction you are lying in? Which way your head is pointing? But with your body parts. And I would have to get up and look at my body and turn on the light to assure myself that yes, I still had legs. And they weren’t displaying tire advertising on the sides.
Now I feel like that, but with my clothes. It’s like I can still put together an outfit, but I can’t seem to make it match with the way I feel about myself and the way I want the world to see me. I still want to wear what I can’t get away with, except that I don’t want to wear what will make me look ridiculous. I mean, even if I had the body I had at 23, it still wouldn’t be okay to dress the way I did when I was 23 (I don’t even own a bustiere anymore). And how much of getting away with something is really just wearing it without apology? And how much of wearing something without apology is really just going to make me look like I’ve gone and got my aging brain addled up prematurely?

In my quest to figure it out, I have actually bought magazines that I would never buy because they promised to tell me how to dress in "Fantastic Looks for [My] 20s, 30s, and 40s." According to the magazines, I am apparently supposed to be dressing in "super chic" silver tailored tops with big silver bows on the big round neckline that can "add a little glam" to my jeans or go from "office to dinner" merely by adding or subtracting a little black jacket. Seriously. A silver fucking tailored shirt with a big neck and a big bow. A bow. For those of us who, apparently, never got over the fact that no, we were not the next Shirley Temple. I guess everyone in their forties spends their lives flitting from upscale lunch date in dress jeans and absurdly pointy-toed shoes to cocktail function at the Museum for the major donors.
Work isn’t the big problem. I would love to look a little bit more chic and pulled together, but I sit in an office and don’t talk to anyone, so I can’t get all sweaty about it. Life is the problem. I showed up at my fourth grader’s pre first day of school ice cream social to meet a bunch of families I’d never met. Apparently, no one sent me the memo that said I needed a blonde bob and a Lily Pulitzer skirt, accessorized with a blonde daughter in a pink skort (half skirt, half shorts, the centaur of preteen fashion). I was proud of myself for actually changing the t-shirt I was wearing with my cutoffs (down to just above my knees, I’m not a total idiot about this stuff) and converse (not the high tops). Still, I felt underdressed to go to a playground on a Sunday afternoon. I know, I’m scratching my head too. Long jeans that are appropriately low slung, however, with a more stylish t-shirt would have been fine. If it were tucked in. If I didn’t still carry evidence of my fourth pregnancy around my midsection like it was jewelry and I was on the Titanic. If I had a belt that fit. If I had the right shoes.

I’ve tried to dress earthy. I’ve tried urban chic. I’ve tried retro vintage (hey, it worked when I was an outcast in high school in the 80s, why not now?). Apparently, no one thinks my Mao military bag is cute anymore. Apparently, such things "offend" "people." People can bite me. I’m starting to suspect that all of that time I spent looking for one of those gray Army binocular bags with the black numbers on it was wasted.

I’ve tried to get advice from friends. My friend Liz suggested finding a celebrity style role model. Well, much as I love Madonna, she just kind of dresses ugly these days. And Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer is a little bit too floral rayon dress for me. And while there are lots of folks who look fabulous, none have given off a style aura that speaks to me in a way that demands imitation. Which undoubtedly says more about my discomfort with my own inner forty year old more than it does my true opinion of what the stars are wearing. I’m not a celebrity. Things aren’t always perfectly tailored or pressed in my life. I’m not a size 0. So, while I can admire Bebe Neuwerth’s show-stopping legs and Madonna’s not-falling-down-her-legs-at-all yoga ass, it’s just not me.
Where does all this angst leave me? With the same closet full of hand-me-downs from my mother and thrift shop finds I had before I wrote it down and made it real. And while I may no longer be adorable in a bowling shirt, and while I still fantasize about finding a perfect Public Image Ltd. t-shirt on eBay that will make me look like I should be dating Sid Vicious (the pre-death version of Sid) but dumping him because I’m better than all that, at least I know that I know that I have to mourn the end of my cuteness. Because really what it is, is that even if I think that I’m the exception to every rule and that it really might work on me? It doesn’t. Most days I figure that out before I actually get out the door and too far down the road to have it be an option to turn around and take off the flared jeans with the just-a-little-too-big flare.
Of course, that leaves me wondering if I will have to settle for appropriate but not self-actualizing clothing, now that I am a woman of a certain age. And I will continue to hope for the Goodwill find that will pull my whole signature look together. And if I find that gray binocular bag, I will undoubtedly buy it and wear it. Or it will sit in my house with all of the other bags that I will definitely wear until it comes time for me to put my fashion risk where my mouth is, and I realize that I can’t possibly leave the house carrying a metal lunch box with a biohazard sign on it as a purse. Or maybe I can. Or I could. If it fit my Zoloft bottle, which it doesn’t.

So, I try to piece together a personal style. I try to trust the voice in my head that tells me when I can’t get away with something. I try not to trust the voice in my head pushing me to try to get away with something that I shouldn’t. At least, instead of spending my time congratulating myself on being the only forty year old in the world who really can get away with a plaid mini, knee socks and a ripped up black t-shirt with combat boots, I spend my time wondering how my lack of authentic personal style reveals my own lack of a sense of who I have become. I don’t want to reinvent myself, I just want to figure out what the hell to wear that will, without a word, tell the world that while I’m sophisticated, experienced and wise, that I am self-assured, funny, charismatic, uniquely irreverent, and, of course, possessed of excellent taste. And that I don’t look a day (or a pound) over what I looked like at 29.