I’m a rumpled person, both literally and philosophically.
Almost every day, I roll out of bed and grab for the unraveling sweater, the paint-splattered pants.
I’ve never understood why people bother to change their outfits each day.
I have always worn the same clothes for a week at a time.
It cuts down on laundry and simplifies things.
That I am a writer with no office to go to has only cemented my penchant for sloppiness.
This didn’t excite me.
She told me to go to Ann Taylor and buy a suit.
“Expense it to us,” she said, sounding a little desperate.
This I could not consent to.
One does not show one’s publicist the unpublic places, the bulges and lumps.
I thanked her and said I would go on my own.
Of course, I went straight to Target and found a red suit for $30.
I liked this suit.
The red made me look happy; it underscored the flush in my face.
It lit up my skin.
I went home and tried it on for my husband.
He said, “You look like you’re about to go trick-or-treating.”
I returned the suit to the store.
I did not want to get the publicist mad.
I thought my husband was wrong, but I wasn’t going to risk it.
The next day, I went to Ann Taylor.
The store was in a mall, and I make a run at avoid malls as much as possible.
I thought as soon as I stepped foot inside I would get sweaty, but that didn’t happen.
The place smelled of coffee and had booths selling wind chimes, wigs and glass cats.
It was almost whimsical.
Ann Taylor itself had a hushed charm to it.
There were a few women there slipping in between the racks of clothes like wraiths.
She was so gracious.
She flicked through the rows of soft, stylish things and held them up to me with complete confidence.
I was another customer, her mission for the moment.
She brought me to a dressing room and handed me jackets, skirts and shirts.
The clothing felt cool against my skin, and it all looked good.
I am not accustomed to having clothes that truly fit.
I have always been content with an approximation tending toward the large.
These jackets enclosed my waist, the skirts were straight and slit.
I was, she informed me, a petite.
I thought of Thumbelina.
In fact, I was extra petite.
On the one hand, I was truly proud.
For what woman would size 0 not be an accomplishment?
On the other hand, a 0?
It was, for sure, a mixed message.
Did I even exist?
But here’s what really mattered: In the size 0 gray tweed suit, I looked great.
The transformation was total, in part because of the way the suit fit.
It at once concealed and revealed my shape.
Ihada shape, I realized.
I had a little waist.
I had collarbones that gave me an appropriately bony look.
My throat was white and long.
I bought the suit,several hundred bucks, and on sale, too.
The saleslady gave it to me in a bag with satin handles.
I told her no on the shoes, that I already had some.
At home, I tried on the suit before my full-length mirror.
I still looked good.
My waist was still small.
My collarbones stood out.
I had a charming freckle on my chest.
The next morning, I didn’t reach for the unraveled sweater and paint-splattered pants.
I put on the suit.
It was slightly itchy but immensely gratifying.
My writing was sharper because of that suit.
My characters were witty, and my overwrought lyricism gave way to a muscular minimalism.
I started to think the suit was magic.
I went on television the next day, and I was very articulate.
My publicist, who herself was wearing a suit, mauve lipstick and slingback shoes, was impressed.
Then it was over, and I went home.
The house seemed oddly quiet, in both a creepy and peaceful way.
The sheer curtains billowed with sunshine.
The cat wreathed around my legs.
I stripped off my clothes and hung the suit in the back of my closet.
But something was different.
Even with the suit off, I felt as if it were a little bit on.
My walk was more purposeful.
I felt aloft, and I liked it.
Suddenly, there were so many possibilities.
Perhaps I should get a perm, some smart, springy curls to accompany my new image.
I began to wonder about collagenshould I try it?
I pinched my lips to plump them and, sure enough, that made me prettier still.
I bought a fashion magazine and went to see a stylist at a neighborhood hair salon.
She grabbed a chunk of my hair and said, “A perm?
You’re much too brittle.”
“Without it, my hair is not so brittle.”
“You don’t need a perm,” she said.
“What you need is color.”
She stripped my strands of their darkness and gray and saturated them with something gold.
My husband reacted exactly as he was supposed to, just like a husband on a perfume commercial.
“Wow,” he said.
I could tell you about the black velvet pants I bought.
But these things are at once entirely and not at all the point.
I saw the surface of my body and ignored the inside, the bones.
And this was all very good.
Not only was it fun; it was somehow healing.
I bobbed to the top of life and blew a bubble or two.
When you tend to your surface, you are making a statement of faith: I matter.
The world is worth dressing for.
Putting on nice clothes is like putting on hope, like saying “Here I am.
Look at me.”
You are lifted out of your ordinary existence into possibilitythe pretty, the silky, the tweedy.
Of course, at the end of the day, you have to take your clothes off.
And my body is aging.
My hair has strands of gray beneath the saturated gold.
I cannot stick to my surface.
And it occurs to me that my fears are as commodified and commercialized as my newfound interest in clothes.
I now dress as the media tells me to dress.
I mourn what the media tells me to mourn.
Even my deepest fears have a sort of surfacy feel to them.
Yet clothes are as fine a diversion as any.
They may not remake the soul, but they give us a much-needed break.
They help dress our wounds, whatever they are.
I would like a gown, pale blue, seeded with pearls at the collar and cuffs.
I would like to clothe my two children in everything Gap.
I would like us to go forward, together, as beautifully bandaged as humans can be.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Rausser
