FASHION 101
Imagine, if you will, a woman of a certain age and the body issues that normally accompany that age. She is not fat, but neither is she thin. Her flesh doesn’t wobble mercilessly, but neither is it taut. Her breasts have grown over the years, and if she had had in high school, what she has now, she would have been very popular indeed. Her belly, unfortunately, has tried to keep up with the breasts.
Now imagine that this is a woman for whom fashion has always been a hobby. She segued gracefully from Seventeen to Glamour to Vogue to, now, More. She has always known what is in and what is not. As often as she could, she wore what was in. Not because she needed to, but because it was fun, kicky, and sometimes her life was such that dressing in the morning was the best part of the day.
Now think of the current fashions and picture this woman in them. There are the jeans that come to her naval, and the wide belt that accompanies them, which she has the choice of wearing pulled up and resting on her belly or, a la the local plumber, under her belly. See her in those cute little sweaters, the ones that tie at the midriff. They’re worn with a longish top underneath, so that the sweater defines both the breasts and the belly.
This is a woman who is now locked out of the fashion candy store. She can look, she can admire, but she can never, unless she wants to become a Fashion Don’t herself, enter. Feel sorry for this woman. Pity her. And for those of you who are blithely wearing those cute little sweaters and low rise jeans, beware. For she was once one of you. And as she has gone, so may you.
All Top Stories 
a thought!
Ah, many and many and various are the books that have been/could be/should be written on the dichotomy of Fashion Dressers -v- The Rest of Womankind… the polarisation of young women between those who can and do dress fashionably, and The Others. It is a huge and rarely-bridged gulf. As a social phenomenon, one could study the reasons for whether or not a person dresses fashionably – is it only figure, is it upbringing, is it an innate sense (as posted above) of when dressing fashionably will bring the accusation of Mutton Dressed As Lamb? And why does it matter, who MINDS if a girl is fashionable or not? ‘Clueless’ is my immediate frame of reference. Image. Social ranking. Conformity to group pressure. The transformation from Geek to Chick in ‘Grease’. Image conveying sexual availability.
I could go on… but as it’s 1am and I’ve been writing all day and my eyes are out on STILTS, I won’t.
I’d love to do a longer article on the socially equalizing effects of ageing on female society, but what magazine would buy it? Nothing that relies upon advertising revenue from fashion retailers, that’s for sure!
brilliant–my journalist’s nose says: where can we sell this dialogue????
Yes… perhaps there are benefits to never, EVER having been thin enough and bold enough to wear anything remotely fashionable, to having had a lifetime of Sensible Clothes and only a modest plunge to the top to display the enbonpoint without too obviously indicating the belly below?
Alas for you fashionistas, formerly slim and taut-thighed ones… this is the age when your larger sisters, they who were objects of pity and derision in high school as they sweated through summer in pants because their thighs were too heavy for skirts, as they plodded invisibly along the school corridors in baggy T-shirts and thick sweaters, in the miserable certainty that no boys worth adoring would ever give them a second glance, with the Pretty Girls fluttering in the spotlight ahead… this is the age when the Sensible Larger Women stride out, comfortable as ever in Sensible clothes, finally no longer the invisible underclass of female. We are equal at last.
Oh what I’d have given to just have one summer of being able to go into a fashion store and select a few outfits, in the happy certainty that they would fit. Being Too Large (not particularly fat, just Large) for fashion clothes was acid on the seventeen-year-old soul.
No, I do feel pity for the no-longer-able-to-be-fashionable women. I do, really. You’ve lost something I never had, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand. The pain of having had and then lost must be worse than the pain of never having had at all.
I too ha[d]ve yoga intentions. Perhaps we should go together…
This woman remembers a brief interlude in her early-to-mid-thirties when she was excruciatingly thin. She wore shortshortshort skirts and when her mom asked why, she said, “Because soon enough, I will never be able to wear this stuff again.”
I hear tell yoga helps. I have a vague recollection of going, before acid indigestion wrecked my entire schedule.