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Okay, so I came in here to try and smooth a few edges I may have created in my entry from Friday. It seems that a couple of my readers, women whose journals I love and read on a regular basis, were bothered enough by something I said to devote entries to the topic themselves. (Oh, and ladies, you should have just linked it--instead, I got a slew of referrals from people searching "ribbon-bottom cropped flare pants"!)
And let me start by apologizing. I didn�t mean to offend either of you. And I�m afraid that what I said and what I meant didn�t really come out the same way.
The area that the hospital I work at is in also contains two art schools. Both very prestigious places to study art�the Massachusetts College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It�s also home to Boston Latin Academy, a hard-to-get-accepted-to publicish high school. I take the bus with students from all of these schools every day, and have for the past six years. As a result, I�ve seen a lot of crazy outfits, complete with brightly colored hair and rings in body parts I�d never thought could be pierced. I love watching the reactions they get from some of the other bus patrons�I watch the head shaking and the eye rolling, and inside I laugh. �Yeah, like you haven�t ever had a day when bright blue hair wouldn�t have made YOU happy!� I know they don�t notice me, sitting unobtrusively in the corner in my work clothes, since I don�t show them outward disdain or make barely-audible comments in their direction. Truthfully, I am a little envious. I never quite made it in that direction myself.
On Friday, walking down the hallway of the hospital, I saw a woman. She was easily in her early 40�s. Her hair was bleached and then teased way out, held down in select spots by small rhinestone clips. She was wearing the aforementioned ribbon-bottom cropped flare pants (blue jeans with burgundy ribbons) with beige socks and strappy black shoes. Above the waist, she had on a red cropped T-shirt and a jacket that was poofy in the sleeves and around the body, but tight around the cuffs and the waist. She also had what my mom used to describe as garage door eyes�eyelids so heavy with powder blue shadow that they look like garage doors going up and down when you blink�and a couple strategically placed rhinestones on her face.
If I�d seen this outfit on one of the students I see daily, it wouldn�t have even raised my eyebrows. But on a woman in her 40�s, it made me stop and take a second look. She looked less �not-obviously-put-together-but-I-don�t-give-a-shit-just-try-to-pigeonhole-me� (which is what I get from the students) and more �just-ran-from-my-tryout-for-a-spot-in-the-Big-Apple-Circus-and-didn�t-have-time-to-change.� Too many colors, too many different patterns, too many different styles, all on at once.
Kathy, I don�t think you should ever stop wearing your All-Stars! And Mimi, I�m sure the same pants would look great on you! I didn�t mean to insinuate otherwise. If so, I�d have to throw out my badass platform silver John Fluevogs and my babydoll Amazing Royal Crowns tee, neither of which I would part with for the world. But there�s a difference, I think, between feeling young and dressing the part, and not seeing yourself clearly in the mirror.
Perhaps my message wasn�t really for the women of the world, but instead just for that one woman in our hallway.
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