If one were posed the option of whether they would like to confine some part of their body in tight elastic and metal wires, the immediate answer for most would be a resounding no thank you. But when it comes to undergarments, there is no option for most women in most work places. It states right in the dress code potion of the employee handbook that necessary undergarments are required. Breasts of all sizes are to be kept in their place, appropriately covered and secured, and that restraining apparatus is to be hidden from sight. This is mostly accepted without qualms, even by me, but I do have an issue. (Don’t I always?)
I never signed off on this uncomfortable chest piece. I was never part of the meeting where it was voted mandatory. It is the first thing to come off of my body when I get home from work and sometimes even on the drive home, I’m slipping my arms through my sleeves to separate myself from the binding garment. But I wear it, like every other woman in public and I appreciate the support and the efforts made by the expensive manufacturers to keep them cute and comfortable for our liking, being that us ladies are expected to don them at any moment we are visible to the public eye. As long as I can continue to afford the quality bras that don’t break mid-day and leave me with a metal under wire poking into the sensitive skin of my breasts, I’ll be okay sporting these things in a daily basis, as required by society.
But what I really hate and take issue with is that if a piece of this required undergarment is visible, the impression is that I am committing a taboo or being tasteless.
From SheFinds.com:
For every one person who manages to pull this look off, there are a thousand others who ruin perfectly good outfits, making them look sloppy and cheap by giving the world a view of their dirty bra straps.
From our deliberately few and short interactions, I know for sure that my boss and I are of two very different breeds. The other day we passed one another in the hall outside the office and she remarked something to the effect of, “…visible bra strap,” and, “just sayin’.” To which I responded with a laugh because I had no appropriate words to use. Since our office has been going through a remodel, a wall was put up and we lost about two-thirds of the space we once utilized. The new arrangement has a number of people in a much smaller space. The air clammy, the office is hot. I cut into an apple and within a minute, the green inside was brown. My bamboo plant started dying after three years of perfect health. It’s gross in there. So yes, I was at work in a nice, kelly green tank top with a black vest over it, and if you went ahead and looked at my shoulders, you may have noticed my bra strap peeking out if I had shifted my weight some and let it slide out from under my tank, unnoticed.
My boss’ comment was not to just let me know, as if I might have forgotten entirely that I was strapped down with an uncomfortable piece of clothing around my tits. We don’t get along and she was being a smart ass. This is a given. And it was not appreciated nor would it have been by any person, stranger or otherwise. I kept walking but wanted so much to turn around, ask her to stop for a second, and explain that cardigans and the like were just not going to work in the new jungle air atmosphere of the workplace. So yes, my offending bra strap showed and it would take the jaws of life to extract an apology for this.
As for SheFinds.com, I would sooner stick hot pins in my eyes than apologize for “ruining a perfectly good outfit.” The “perfect goodness” of said outfit being judged, I assume, by people who are so horrifically bored with their lives that taking the time to judge what someone else is wearing may be their only exercise in self-worth. If I look “sloppy and cheap” by the minor exposure of a strap of required undergarments, I’d like to have a sit down to help arrange for the lobotomy that is clearly required for you to move forward with a decent life where something so minor could easily slip by your radar and not prevent you from speaking out about some other insignificant aspect of someone else’s life that has nothing to do with you. The people taking offense or scoffing at this type of thing are so clearly deprived of decent human interaction or pleasurable, fulfilling hobbies that I feel a deep sympathy for them. Unfortunately for them, I dedicate my time and thoughts to decency among people, especially among women, so there isn’t much I can offer to help them out of such a deep, pathetic rut except a winning smile.
I was ready to resurrect the skills of fifth grade calamity me and kick some ball ass for the recent tournament. We held one practice prior to the game and I showed up ready. And by ready I mean with striped knee highs under my Adidas shorts, a bandana to hold my new short hairs, and beer in a red Solo cup.
On game day, I was generally left to pick at my fingers and configure different pony tails to capture the newly shorn strays. The ball just didn’t come my way often. When it did, someone else (read: a boy) was quick to distrust my skillz as a vagina-wearing lady type and run in front of me. I play an excellent back up and was even complimented on it. But finally, once, the ball came my way. From high up, it rained down in red rubber and I was gathering speed to get under it, certain I could make the out. And then I slammed into the only other female playing outfield.
Determined to redeem my ass kicking skillz, I kicked a line drive up the third base line for an easy single. My honeyman was kicking after me and I had full confidence he would lead me to second. As the ball flew into the outfield on the second out, I knew to run no matter what and run I did, as fast as I could, from first base to… third.
So mayhaps kickball’s not my thing. I retain that I can still whoop some serious ass in rum consumption, speed reading and spelling bees ’round the world.
A web writin’ friend responds to a Facebook comment:
comment: Women of NY, I am begging you to please wear age and body appropriate shorts and skirts. I can’t begin to express how tired I am of being confronted with extreme jiggle and cellulite each time I walk out the door! Adding an inch or two to your clothing isn’t too much to ask is it?
***
dear commenter,
this group of humans we call “women”? they have fat on their bodies. this is normal and healthy and good.
this fat? it jiggles sometimes. and due to the influences of not only estrogen, but also catecholamines, insulin, and various thyroid hormones, in 90% of post-pubertal women, it manifests as cellulite. OMG WTF HELLA NASTY, RIGHT?
you, commenter, appear to be exempt from this universal female biology. you have a tiny waist and (i assume) cellulite-free legs. this much is undeniable: you are fucking beautiful. because of that, you are privileged in ways i will never understand.
your message is personal. i have cellulite. my thighs jiggle. i can’t always find clothes to harness, squeeze, and cover my fat in aesthetically pleasing ways. i’m sure you’re oblivious to this fact: when you talk shit on women’s cellulite, you are talking about me.
i am 5’11″ and i weigh one hundred and fifty five pounds (COLLECTIVE GASP OF HORROR!). according to the fashion industry, i am a BIG, FAT FUCK. they probably think i shouldn’t even be allowed to wear clothes, which is why they don’t make shirts long enough to cover my corpulent belly.
so you know what i do? i refuse to give a fuck about fashion, or propriety, and i put my energy into something more worthy of my time. i refuse to spend hours wading through the sweatshop-sewn wares of stores whose clothes don’t fit me anyway. i let my bellyfat peek through between my shirt and my jeans, which themselves are unflattering to my jiggly thigh fat. and i march my fat ass out the door, and i refuse to think about it for even another second.
commenter? don’t you dare tell me what i can and cannot wear – what i can and cannot do — as a result of my not fitting your beauty standard. don’t act like it’s some kind of personal affront when i decide to press my untanned flesh into a two-piece and enjoy a day at the beach. i think i look fucking hot, and if you don’t agree, well then you can go fuck yourself.
i’m so sick of denying myself the opportunity to live because i’m not yet skinny enough. i have spent my whole life trying to fit my natural frame into the mold of your waifish body. i have dieted, i have starved, i have fainted in the gym and in the streets. and you know what i realized? my body will not conform your beauty ethic, not ever. there is no runway model inside of me, waiting to jump out the moment i diet hard enough. i am just BIG.
so you know what? i quit. this whole idiot dieting game, this arbitrary standard of thinness, i refuse to play. i eat healthy food and i ride my bike for hours on end and then i work to accept the balance that my body chooses for itself. and it ain’t easy, because at every turn, i am bombarded with misogynistic messages just like yours.
if, for whatever reason, you think i’m skinny enough to be exempt from your attack, then you’re certainly talking shit about my friends, who i find sexy as hell because their bodies have curves. this message is for them, too, for everyone who has been told they’re “too big to be wearing that” by some self-righteous, skinny jerk like you.
facts: a full 50% of 11-year-old girls think they are too fat. 80% of 13-year-old girls have at one point been on a weight-loss diet. girls this young should be playing with their friends, writing secret-admirer letters to boys, climbing trees and doing cartwheels. instead, they’re consumed with shame and self-hatred, that for many of them will manifest as life-threatening eating disorders in a few years. and this, this is fucking bullshit.
commenter, i have an important message for you. every time you want to criticize anyone else’s body or fashion choices, i want you to SHUT THE FUCK UP. i’m dead serious, commenter: shut the fuck up. stop contributing to this toxic environment of body hatred. step outside your bubble of privilege and read some feminist writing on eating disorders, and when you think you’ve read enough essays, i want you to choke down a couple more. try to imagine how it feels to be me, or [any number of friends, names withheld], anyone else who doesn’t have a naturally “flawless” body, according to arbitrary magazine standards. try to step inside the mind of [friend], who is the skinniest motherfucker i know, but feels compelled to eat mustard packets to lose weight. think of us every time you want to pipe up with some snarky, misogynistic comment, shut the fuck up a little more.
i can’t in good conscience let a comment like yours go unchecked. i am angry, and it’s time that i stand up for myself.
I don’t know the person who made the comment, I only know the girl that reacted to it (who pens on a personal site under l’anguish) and blessed me with deep, deep sigh of content.
Vegas chewed me up and spit me out. Because I got up at three a.m. to get there. There are laws against that hour, no?
The bride to be seemed generally pleased with life.
Despite the look of epic highz. I am stone sober in this picture.
Five of us pressed together in a surprisingly not roomy H3 with enough luggage to clothe the city and hit the freeway at 4:35 in the morning. The sun rose and the temperature climbed. By the time we hit our hotel, Caesars Palace, the thermometor hovered in the one hundred range. We hit Fat Tuesdays for half yard breakfasts and then the ridiculously beautiful pools, one of which was adults only, where we took our free passes and parked our tired asses. (“The Venus Pool Club is the most well-appointed and exclusive pool experience in Las Vegas, a sophisticated and secluded European-style retreat…”) Many beers and one epic rum concoction later, we actually checked in to our room. Dinner followed at Dick’s Last Resort (“From Rug-rats to Old Farts, from High-Class to No-Class, from the Top of the Food Chain, to the Bottom of the Barrel…”), within Excalibur, a place I’ve always wanted to check out. When the waiter asked, ‘the fuck you wanna drink?’ I felt like I was home. (The gimmick being that the waiters and waitresses are total dicks to you. Obviously this is my dream job.)
A friend of mine became a Vegas resident a few years ago. We don’t see each other much but she came out to play and catch up, which was fantastic, though brief. The early morning hours were catching up to us as we crept towards twenty-fours hours of awake when the bride’s ulcer took over. Many vomits later, we were all tucked in and snoring, passes to Pure keeping our suitcases warm. I didn’t mind in the slightest that we skipped the club portion of the evening. I’m infinitely more comfortable in more intimate surroundings (or less, I suppose, if you consider the dancing proximity) for the most part. There’s plenty of bars and venues I would have rather hit over a sweaty, meaty, schmany club. Don’t get me wrong – they’re great when you’re in the mood. I had the time of my life at Studio 54 in NYNY one year. But sometimes I just don’t want friction burns and the deafening sound of hormones buzzing to the beat of the DJs bass.
The drive home was long and hot. When I finally peeled myself from the leather seat, I was more than ready for home. The maid of honor and one of the other girls had put tremendous effort into the event with gift bags, decorations, custom shirts & champagne flutes, and a decorated car. It was quite the welcome distraction from every day life.
Sometimes though when every day life is a pretty, loud-mouthed seven year old and a shirtless boy making your favorite dinner, you sit back and smile and remember how much you love home.
I’m leaving for Sin City in about twelve hours for the bachelorette party of one of my oldest friends. I’ve left it until half a day before leaving to wonder what I might wear to the ultrafancy club I’ll be at on Saturday. I’m hoping the one frantic text I sent with lots of question marks will solve all my problems. My superswank hot ass heels may be in the mix. I gotta bring those out a few times a year. I do occassionally enjoy the uber-femme thing. I may even watch hair and makeup tutorials tonight!
gorgeous, wide hips, bleeding, cramping, lotion on freshly shaved skin – or not, combat boots or heels and the option of wearing both in the same day, making sixty-three cents to his one dollar, debating on your means to control your reproductive system and fighting teeth and nails for the right to do so, glorifying hot ass androgyny, lipstick, applauding the matriachy where you can find it, reaching out to your sister(s), owning the innate mama bear inside you, contricting your chest with elastic and wires and sighing heavily at the end of the day when the bra hits the floor, slow moving grace, clumsy tomboys, deliciously scented powders and oils from top to bottom…
Jenny Ouellet, a 24-year-old who has seen her share of hard times, recognizes [the difference between being a girl & being a woman]. She wrote to me a month ago from her home in northern Massachusetts, fed up with a lack of confidence she was seeing in some of the young women she knew.
It’s not that she didn’t know how they felt. When she graduated from high school, she traveled with rock bands, lost the man of her dreams and ended up with 32 tattoos and a baby. She went to work in a music store, started paying off debts, learned how to cook and is raising her little boy, now 3, by herself, with some financial support from the boy’s father.
Making a life for herself and her son, virtually alone, forced her to realize who she was and what she was capable of as a female.
“It’s not what I wear or how I do my hair,” she wrote me. “I’m convinced it’s that I carry myself with confidence. I don’t feel like I’m the all-around perfect catch, but I’ve been through enough to know I’m a great mother, a loving daughter, an honest friend, a great lover and someday, I’ll make a great wife. You grow into the title of woman.”
“All of the feminist theory in the world cannot prepare you for the heart wrenching, maddening and completely unexpected experience of coming to know other adult women.”
-It’s So You: 35 Women Write About
Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style by Michelle Tea
and this is the last few months of my life in the truly fucked up effort of meeting new people.
