This Woman In Clothes

I’m reading the mesmerizing book Women in Clothes, and it’s making my brain dance.

The book is based on this survey about women’s thoughts on clothing, fashion, style and beauty.  The survey includes such questions as “DO YOU NOTICE WOMEN ON THE STREET? IF SO, WHAT SORT OF WOMEN DO YOU TEND TO NOTICE OR ADMIRE?” and “IS THERE ANYTHING POLITICAL ABOUT THE WAY YOU DRESS?”  The survey was sent to many women, both famous (Lena Dunham, Miranda July, Tavi Gevinson, Molly Ringwald…) and non-famous.  The editors then compiled the surveyees’ responses and interspersed them with photos of “collections” (one woman’s clogs; one woman’s white pants; one woman’s week’s worth of false eyelashes); with poems; and with “compliments,” mini-plays in which a woman tells a stranger that she likes something she’s wearing.

I can’t stop reading it.  Every page makes me think about some aspect of my “style” (or lack thereof), my history with clothes, my relationship to “fashion,” in a completely new way, a way that I want to write about.  And so I thought maybe I would.

Over the next while, I’m going to publish a series of posts responding to some of the questions on the “Women in Clothes” survey, and I would love it if you would respond with comments or even posts of your own.  In fact, given that this book is a pretty big deal, some of you may already be doing this on your own blogs, so I hope you’ll point me there!

And if you haven’t yet picked up Women in Clothes, please do.  You may think you don’t care about fashion, but this book will probably convince you otherwise.

Tomorrow’s post: “ARE THERE ANY CLOTHING (OR RELATED) ITEMS THAT YOU HAVE IN MULTIPLE? WHY DO YOU THINK YOU KEEP BUYING THIS THING?”

A Question About Losing Weight the Wrong Way

Let’s say you wanted to lose a small amount of weight.  Let’s say, oh, seven pounds.

Let’s say that you had recently lost a lot of weight and kept it all off for a couple of years, but due to recent very stressful life events – like, say, finding your first home and negotiating a mortgage and buying said home and moving to said home and repairing said home – you’d put a few pounds back on and would just like to take them off again please.

Let’s say you had a lot less money than you used to – because of, say, the extreme financial smack in the head you had suffered due to recent purchase and repair of home – and so could not afford to re-join the effective but expensive weight-loss program that had helped you take off and keep off the aforementioned large amount of weight.

Would any of this be an excuse for indulging in the kind of weight-loss program – say, some sort of protein-shake-based or ultra-low-carb or jackfruit-only type thing – that you previously would have just rolled your eyes at?  A program that you know is insane but that might result in short-term weight loss?  Is there any hope in hell that you could take weight off with such a method and then keep it off by returning to the healthier habits you had established through aforementioned expensive but effective program?

I would like to hear others’ experience of such scenarios.  Please leave your thoughts!

Image by Sanja Gjenero