pinstriped pants and pearls

today i am wearing pants that make me feel like a man. they are pinstriped and a little too short.

i've tried to feminize them with lipstick, and hair that has a little bit of swagger and sway. i made sure my pocketbook was a matching shade of camel, and that my vintage belt hung low enough on my hips as to say, yes i am a woman.

but that's just it. i am a woman. i contain multitudes, to paraphrase. i can be sharp-edged and slick, and i can be crumbly and so soft its devastating. in my closet hang dress slacks and evening gowns. i'll blast backstreet boys in my car then quote rilke. it's the contradiction of it all that makes it so very beautiful.

just yesterday, i developed a powerpoint, wrote proposals. calmed frantic salesmen. and in my little office, the one right next to the highway, with the window beside the parking lot that catches the late afternoon sun, i was at home in my corporate corner. then, i came home to a dog stricken with allergies, and spent twenty minutes bandaging him up and cooing into his wet nose. and again, i felt at home.

so today my pants flap a little in the breeze and would look more appropriate on the legs of the man sitting in front of me. it's nothing new and nothing a fresh swipe of lipstick won't fix. and compared to the girls wearing teensy shorts, ushering the summer out in a special style, i like to think the modesty of them makes me a little mysterious.

and what is a woman if not mysterious, no?

thoughts from a bathtub

last night, i lowered myself down into the bathtub. it was late and the hallway was perfectly dark and i left the lights off. and as my feet became wet, i felt them sting and burn. they are blistered, these painted toes of mine. these piggies i shoved into the narrow recesses of my new flats. i sat there and looked at them, peachy against the steel of the faucet.

and i stayed there long after the water cooled and sunk down a bit. sometimes i do that, you know. just sit in the tub and let the cool rush in and think. there's really only so much one can do in there, so after a while it's easy to give in to daydreaming and remembering.

i bought new flats on saturday. at my favorite thrift store on a cloudy morning. they are too small. it's just that simple and just that hard. simple because i love them. hard because i shoved myself into them and wore them to work. hard because i had to take them off just to walk to my car. hard because when i got home at six, all i wanted to do was hurl them across the linoleum floor and watch them slam into the television stand.

and women do this all the time. mold, shove, squeeze, adjust and shift. our bodies. our clothes. our expectations. in an effort to please? perhaps. out of vanity? certainly sometimes. but more often than not, it comes from our overwhelming desire to please. to fit a mold and fill a niche. yesterday, i wanted to be the girl in the cute flats. and today i am limping on bare feet.

so i sat until i shriveled. and let the skin loosen and float. and promised myself tomorrow would be different. that tomorrow i would let myself breathe, from my muddled head to the tips of my beet red toes.

i'm looking for something in red

i used to have a little change purse. a vintage one with blue and white swirls and a pretty tortoise shell zipper pull. in it, i kept all my lip goods. my high-shine glosses and creamy balms. my mama's tube of the now-discontinued revlon exotica. the lip stain i wore on my wedding day.

a few days ago, i left the purse on the back of robert's car while doing a photo shoot for my etsy shop. robert reminded me about it as we walked inside and i shrugged it off. i would get it later, i figured.

but then i didn't. and then we drove away.

and somewhere, my little change purse sits on the side of the road. we did many drive-arounds but never found it. and with it, i lost something else.

my femininity. because nothing in this world makes me feel softer, sweeter and more put together than a good swipe of lip color. as i walked around with just burt's bees on my lips, i felt not only naked but un-prepared. i read somewhere that victoria beckham said she can't think when she wears flats. that's how i felt about my missing lipstick.

so i went to the drugstore, and bought the cheapest, brightest lip color i could find. a deep magenta perfect for summer. a shade that looks like i just drank about fifty strawberry slushies. and so what if it doesn't really last longer than about ten minutes? it was $2.50 and i can always get another.

so i drove to work today. my windows down and my sunglasses on, and as i rubbed my lips together, i smiled. because whatever it takes to make you feel like you is entirely worth it. worth more than $2.50 actually. worth driving around after supper for hours looking for a little change purse. you know it when you lose it, and recapturing it feels like such a victory.

p.s. you think lipstick will help that awful cowlick/horn that i've got going on with my hair? goodness gracious.

like a pair of bookends

xxx

the older i get, the more i realize the importance of self-preservation, often unfairly veiled as selfishness, though it's anything but.

it's stepping back and exaimining the many hats, roles and personalities we women are blessed to carry. and saying no to some of them. not comitting to every bake sale, jewelry party and volunteer activity that happens to make its way onto our path.

as a pleaser, i struggle. how to i maintain my sense of likeability and sweetness while putting my foot down? how do i say yes to some and shake my head at others without looking like i'm picking favorites? how do i maintain professionalism without becoming a professional doormat?

{the very fact that we ask ourselves these questions and carry the struggle within us reveals so much about our desire to please.}

yesterday was a day when i just couldn't do it. not for the life of me could i commit to one more thing.

i stayed up until 3:00 in the morning sunday staring into a work assignment glowing at me in the dark. i got to work and realized my hair was held up by a rubber band. not a hairband. a.rubber.band.

i logged into my online classroom and saw a sea of forum posts. i looked at my yoga mat rolled up in the closet. i stared guiltily at my tomatoes, rotting before i had time to make sauce with them. 


so many stresses and challenges and commitments and requirements and expectations.


so i let them go. instead, i went to a pizza restaurant and stuffed myself silly. i took a long shower and stretched deliciously under the water. i snuggled into the nook of my couch and watched the bachelor until my eyelids sunk. i needed a good cry, a good man, and a good dog.

because we're not bookends. we can't always hold ourselves together. rather, i like to think of women as the books in between. the beautiful, adventerous, tragic, happy stories that make up a pretty fine collection. 


even if we're not always collected.

the pains and gains of womanhood

she seemed glad to see me when i appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her i began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.

-to kill a mockingbird

 xxxx

it happened on wednesday. standing in line for my frappe. white chocolate mocha with a shot of caramel. at a new coffee shop. across the street from the post office where my dad works. a little lunch break reprieve.

i felt a tiny hand on my shoulder, and turned around. a middle-aged woman, with graying hair, modest slacks and an oversized sweater looked through her glasses into my eyes. "i just don't know how you do it," she spoke to me in her southern voice not unlike my own. "those high heels. don't they hurt your feet?" 

i looked down at my shiny brown pumps, a little bit of toe cleavage emerged, then sunk back into the leather, as the tips of the shoes made a sharp point. she was right. they were uncomfortable. too high. too pointy. a bit too small. "i don't know..." i trailed off. "the things you do for fashion, i guess!" i smiled to close the conversation, grabbed my sweating coffee, and hurried out the door, careful to walk precisely, to demonstrate to her that i could, indeed, navigate my way on the cobblestone wearing these awful shoes.

it happened again on thursday.

i came home yesterday evening and even before kissing robert or rubbing pablo's ears, i unzipped my dress. and took a deep breath. for the first time all day. a real, good, from-the-gut inhale. and it felt delicious.

because all day, i had squeezed my upper body into this outfit that hugged me, squeezed me, controlled me.

robert just shook his head. "i don't know why you girls torture yourself like this" he said as he helped me lift the dress over my curls.

but what he doesn't know, what he can never realize, is that i do it because i want to.

because that dress was from h&m. it was silver and purple. flowy and ruffly on the bottom. only seven dollars on sale. one of my favorite new finds. heck, one of my favorite new dresses period. and i was willing to suffer a little for it, i suppose.

because femininity is sacred, and takes many different forms.

for some, it's sinking into a bubble bath, nose deep. it can be cooking. dancing. wearing your husband's button-down shirt. rocking babies.

it can also be playing sports. getting muddy. dirty. sweaty. 

for me, it's all these things. and more.

and on some days, especially days like this week--with all the stress over family health, starting graduate school, and work pressure that came with it--yes, it was high heels and a terribly uncomfortable but ultimately beautiful dress.

and who cares if no one understands or appreciates it besides me? that's what makes it special.

and, i suppose, pretty skillful.