leave the yoga pants for the studio, you’ll be just fine…trust me

with a few hours left of 2011, i was debating the two outfits i brought to a friends house to get her thoughts on what would look stellar, fab, and city new years appropriate. as she rummaged through her closet, a black, baby doll, light flower design, very ‘sarah’ dress was lightly hanging on its hanger. the love was immediate, prompting my friend not only to loan it out for the night, but as a donation to my ever growing dress collection. i told her ‘hey, i can wear this on my flight back’. A bit of shock and, not awe, but surprise came from her face. A bit of confusion over why I would forgo the common comforts of yoga pants on a plane for something as ‘dressy’.

This reminded me of a recent article I read where Scarlett Johannson listed people in pjs at the airport as one of her pet peeves, something that prompted me to shout ‘yes!’, in enthusiastic agreement.

I can understand the need to be comfortable while flying, trust me. With 31 flights in 2011 alone, ranging from 1 hour to 14, I can respect the fact that economy seats never recline enough for a solid nap, that the toilets will always have wet floors, and that you will inevitably spill some of your veggie pasta on your lap during turbulence.  I used to stick to my fake birks, cargo pants, and loose top to make such journeys, but with more and more travel I’ve found that I actually want to separate from my prior backpacker ways. I have already given a post on this (see sarah’s guide to dressing like a classy broad while traveling) but then I stumbled on the following video by chance and i felt this is an ‘issue’ i need to revisit.

Miss Jenna Marbles, I can respect the fact you want to be comfortable, but hey now, style is style whether your at sea level or peeing 20000+ feet in the air.

But I put the question out to the faithful viewers, what is your go-to airport wear?Do you agree with Miss Marbles, or of the ‘bringing back style to travel’ persuasion?

Looking forward to your replies! Best and blackouts from India*

ps. On my last flight I did wear said new black/flower baby doll dress, black opaque tights,flat mary janes, and a cozy but still stylish black and white cardigan. I was wiping a few tears away, so I didnt think of taking a photo. Next time though!

Handbags, Now and Historically

Isaac Cruikshank (1756–1811) - "Parisian Ladies in their Full Winter Dress for 1800", an over-the-top exaggerated satirical Nov. 24th 1799 caricature print by Isaac Cruikshank, on the excesses of the late-1790s Parisian high Greek look, and the too-diaphanous styles allegedly sometimes worn there.

Earlier in the year I heard about a book following the evolution and history of the handbag. I was intrigued. I was also never able to remember or find out what the name of the book was. Handbags, historically, are intriguing to me. Prior and into the 18th century, handbags were mostly satchels worn inside your clothing. They were akin to underwear. So purses and handbags of today, are a relatively new accessory.

In high school I was always drawn to more utilitarian purses or bags, and never wanted to stand out too much, teens are generally self conscious and I was no different. Looking back I could have made some much better handbag selections. In my second year of university I had a roommate who had a huge handbag selection, triggering me to realize that I too could rock multiple handbags, and they could look awesome too.

I only consciously started looking for the perfect handbag on later shopping excursions with Katie. And there were some beautiful handbags seen on those excursions… So, I find myself looking for a new bag, the search is on, and I am nothing if not discriminating. I actually expect this to take many months.

Do you settle for any handbag, or do you stick to your guns and wait until you find the perfect one? Do you change bags weekly, seasonally, or to go with your outfits?

Want to read more about handbags and how they are truly essential to our existence as women? Read Rebecca Willis’ article Applied Fashion: Handbags, Essentially.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Chelsie’s Decorating Inspiration

I’m no mad genius, but I’ve slowly been decorating my house, which we moved into last June, on a budget. The whole process started about two years ago, when we started blogging, and I started following decorating and other DIY style blogs. We were living in a condo in the city when I started finding items by the trash outside (the furniture trash found outside apartments and condo’s can bring you some great free finds, just like cruising the curbside on certain garbage nights – I would probably stray from picking up upholstered goods though, unless I tore the guts out of it outside before letting it into the house). First I painted a cabinet bright green for the television to sit on, then we found an old French door, being ripped out of a condo being gutted, and refinished it and gave it the stained glass treatment and hung it above the bed as a floating headboard.

Here is what my living room looked like when we first moved in:

And this is what I living room looks like now. The biggest kick start to pulling the room together was getting new couches, editing out furniture, and bringing different pieces in (like sewing machine tables for side tables):

The rooms in my house are by no means finished, and there are always little things that get on my nerves, but my goal is to find things I love, or see potential in, and jazz them up. Like an ornate piece of woodwork you usually find on a piece of furniture, like a hutch, painted and hung on a wall.  I also cruise the thrift stores a lot, go to garage sales in the warmer months, sometimes attend auctions, and visit antique stores. And I try to never buy things unless I actually need them, and even then I check for quality first – solid wood, dovetailing on drawers, quality materials, etc.

Initially my colour scheme started with a print I acquired five years ago, modern with bright avocado green, black and white, and kind of expanded from there. Personally, I’m currently loving mid-century modern, mixed with more modern prints. I like the simplicity and clean look of a good mix of whites and soft gray shades. Sometimes though you just have to make a list (I like to keep mine in my head), mull it over, and keep an eye out. That’s how I finally found curtains I liked at Wal-Mart of all places. Other times you just have to be creative. I could not find curtain rods long enough to hang curtains in my front window, so instead of buying a more expensive extension rod, I used an extra curtain rod I had, that was a bit slimmer, and fit it in the middle of the rod that was already there.

I have been finding if difficult to find fun, bright and modern prints, so I have taken to purchasing outdoor fabric, which I have found especially great for upholstering furniture, as well as its affordability. Its magical cleaning properties should also be noted – this stuff is tough. We had a guest spill red wine on a cushion and it came right out with a light wipe! The heavier canvas texture might not be for everyone, but it’s working for me right now.

Where do you get your decorating inspiration? Artwork, magazines, blogs…? I find posting things on Pinterest helpful. Are you also addicted to Pinterest? Do you always have a multitude of projects on the go? Me – GUILTY! I’m also guilty of reading multiple books at the same time though.

Fancied Up Plants

It has started to get a bit cooler outside in the evenings, even though my prodigious tomato plan is unaware of this and continues to bloom and provide lots of cherry tomatoes. About two weeks ago I threw in the shovel (literally) and dug up my rosemary for it’s indoor wintering. The greenhouse lady said to take off a third of the roots from the bottom, and give it a similar haircut. I also kind of pruned and shaped it for good measure (and looks). Next to it is a very sad looking pot of lavender. Initially I had them sitting in their own dirt, but that started getting a bit messy, so I took out some glossed up ornamental rocks and really liked the result. I bought my fancy rocks from the dollar store.

My avocado plants really need some new pots, I think they are outgrowing these. Of course the ones I have my eye on are much too expensive, so I will wait. I also put these hens and chicks in a pot with tiny pebbles. Putting the fancy rocks in the planters was an easy thing to do, and visually it looks quite a bit nicer now.

Thoughts on a Pair of Beaded Earrings

I love these earrings, but wearing them comes with some thinking. Once upon a time I wouldn’t have thought so much, but with the baffling continuation of hipster headdresses, Spirit Hoods and J Crew decorating their store windows with tipis, I’m careful.

I’m careful because I don’t want these earrings to invite others to interpret me as another misappropriating hipster, with beads just the gateway accessory that leads to dreamcatcher tattoos and ironic face paint.

I’m careful because I understand the messages, manifest and latent, that earrings like these could send. While other accessories have ambiguity in their cultural and racial identity (e.g. the multiple cultures associated with hoop earrings), the materials and pattern of these earrings is very specific. And with the popularity of the mis-named and generically defined “tribal style“  (also called “neo native” and “Navajo nouveau”) this summer and fall, I don’t want to blindly follow a culturally inaccurate and outsider-interpreted trend.

I’m also careful because I don’t want to be read as trying to advertise, assert, or connect to my Native heritage. Even if the style and pattern of these earrings were culturally appropriate for my own genealogy, I have no ties to that community or its members and therefore do not claim it as my own.

Because I have seen the frustration and anger that colleagues and friends feel towards these actions of careless cultural cherry picking, I’m careful about my actions what they can say about me. Much of this is about perception, it’s true, but because we live in a world where we are observed and interpreted everyday by those around us, I think a lot about how others will “read” me.

And it’s after considering all of that, that I do wear these earrings.

I wear them because I know the concerns I have about how others might interpret why I’m wearing them are unfounded.

I wear them because they’re beautiful.

I wear them because I purchased the earrings from a talented Lakota artist licensed under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act who, by selling them to me, gave me permission to wear them.

I wear them because, to the best of my understanding, the design of the earrings does not inappropriately imitate or incorporate any colors or patterns that I should not be allowed to wear. I don’t feel that these earrings are a trend that compromises, bastardizes or insults cultural or spiritual practices.

I do not wear them as part of a costume.

Have I over thought all this? Probably. But I have been fortunate enough to be welcomed into an environment where many Native scholars, activists and professionals far smarter than me have helped me learn. I claim no expertise, but am committed to continue learning. And so I think. What I have learned so far has helped me understand the frustration and anger felt as diverse cultures have been distilled into a whitewashed, historically-centered, pan-Indian stereotype suitable for public consumption.

Under other circumstances, these earrings could be used as a small part of that. For me, they’re my beautiful earrings.

For more discussion on the presence and interpretation of Native art in fashion, check out Millie’s post on cultural misappropriation in the Miss Universe Pageant and the fantastic blogs Native Appropriations and Beyond Buckskin.

Do you have any jewelry that makes you think?

The End of DADT

To pass the time before I begin my new job next week, I’ve been spending my days on an Air Force Base working at my mom’s museum (yes, my mother also works at a museum. She and I are job twins. I would say she’s my brother from another mother, but she’s my mother so I’ll just say that).

I’ve only been there a few days, but it’s been an adventure. So far I’ve:

• Bottle fed a kitten
• Been slightly involved in a “nuclear incident”*
• Explored a 19th century cavalry stable
• Taught two security policemen about Mick Jagger
• Accidentally ate candy intended for a ghost

*Totally not my fault this time.

But I think today was the best day yet. Today “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed and, for the first time in US military history, I drove onto a base where it is against the law to use a service man or woman’s sexual orientation in retaliation against them.

Raised in the military by queer-positive parents, I never agreed with the guidelines of DADT, rules that forced good, honorable and dedicated members of the military to live in secrecy and fear. While DADT openly banned homosexuality for the past 18 years, the policy against gays and lesbians in the military is much older than 1993 and has been a source of pain, shame, blackmail, harassment and dishonorable discharge at best, and violence and murder at worst.

And today, at least on paper, that ends. In the official memo released by the US Army, it was stated that, “From this day forward, gay and lesbian Soldiers may serve in our Army with the dignity and respect they deserve.”

There’s been little fanfare inside the military for today – the law has changed and people are going about their lives as usual. But now, some people don’t have to keep their lives hidden. As I drove down the base’s main street, Queen’s “We Are The Champions” began playing on the radio, and I admit I turned up the volume and gave a fist pump.

Ten Years, Museums and Memory

Today I think about memory.

I remember it being the second day of my sophomore year. I remember waking up far too early to go to a physics lab.

I remember the radio in the lab being on, with the beginnings of a story none of us fully understood.

I remember when we finally understood.

I remember realizing I didn’t know where my father was, a MSgt in the Air Force who traveled along the East Coast. New York? Possible. Washington? Also possible. I remember the phones to our base being blocked so I couldn’t reach my parents for hours.

I remember walking to Invertebrate Zoology class, not knowing what else to do, and meeting a girl who held my hand and became my friend.

I remember being scared of what this all would mean – what we and other countries would decide to do in response – and thinking about my former classmates in military academies and newly enlisted.

And I remember wondering where the story would lead and how we would tell it. Suddenly history was present and tangible – visceral – for my generation in a way it hadn’t been before. History had happened to us. How would we remember that and who would be our memory keepers?

I’ve watched the narratives about September 11th that have sprung forth from that day: grief, conspiracy, love, anger, resilience, retribution. From the beginning, the narration was fragmented and full of half-knowns to be (mis)interpreted. How could it be otherwise? You piece together what you can, and the story keeps growing.

In the museum world, there’s been heated debate for years now about the role that the WTC Memorial Museum, and museums in general, need to play in telling the stories of that day and world created after. Who decides content? Whose stories do we tell? Do we attempt to explain? Justify? Do we simply recount, or do we advocate? If so, for what? How do you tell this story?

One of my professional touchstones is a quote by museologist Elaine Heumann Gurrian:

Museums should be safe spaces for unsafe ideas.

Museums are where you should be able to embrace that which enlightens you, confront that which scares you, and oppose that which threatens you. Will the experience change you? Perhaps. But no matter the outcome, you should be safe. The stories that spiderweb out from September 11th need safe spaces because objectivity doesn’t exist within them. The sharpest emotions are embedded in the “truth,” and they will never fully be removed. That is why museums are necessary: they bear witness and strive to do what is so hard for us: find balance. And I hope we can.

As the National September 11 Memorial and Museum opens today, I think about the 1994 Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian. In an attempt to try and tell a whole-picture account of the bombing of Hiroshima and the end of World War II, the museum expanded their story.  Instead of the talking points of nationalistic history, the Smithsonian told a story of scared soldiers on all sides, of desperation to end a war, of innocent civilians, and of the far-reaching ripples of consequence our choices create. The Smithsonian did what a museum should do: attempt to tell a balanced story.

The Air Force Association, veterans groups and even Congress disagreed. The organizations accused the Smithsonian of “revisionist history,” with the later threatening to close the exhibit and remove federal funding. Making choices such as asking “why was the bomb dropped?” and connecting that moment of warfare to the postwar legacy of the nuclear arms race that followed was seen as inappropriate, ungrateful and un-American. The exhibit was forcibly altered because even after fifty years, that story was still too recent for a change in history.

On days like today, I think about our resistance to letting stories change. I think of the classmate who still believes the planes and falling towers were a government conspiracy. Or the neighbor who is convinced that every Muslim is a terrorist. Or all the people who embraced the mantra that “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” and now see the world through divisionist glasses. Our own history shows that ten years is nothing in terms of memory, and it will take generations for the stories that began ten years ago to settle into something akin to balance. What we remember today is still raw, even a decade later. I hope museums will always be challenging and encouraging their communities to explore those evolutions of balance. I also hope we can do that ourselves.

Go here to visit the website of the Nation September 11 Memorial and Museum, whose mission is:

…to bear solemn witness to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993.

Body Positive Narrative on ABC Family

When I was finishing my masters thesis, there were a lot of late nights with the Disney Channel on for background noise. While I’m ashamed at how many episodes of Hannah Montana are now permanently lodged in my brain, I had a little bit of secret love for That’s So Raven (in part because Raven Symone’s personality has always reminded me of our very own Sarah’s).

Symone has a new show on ABC Family, State of Georgia, and since my love of cheesy shows doesn’t just stop with the Disney Channel, I watched it.

Symone as "Georgia"

In the show, Symone plays Georgia, an aspiring actress in New York City. Six minutes into the pilot, as Georgia auditions for the role of Lola in Damn Yankees, this scene happens:

Casting director: You’ll never be a star. Listen, honey, no one will buy you as a seductress because in Damn Yankees, when they talk about the “big seduction” scene, they don’t mean the size of the actress.

Georgia: What do girls say when you say stuff like that to them? Do they get scared? Do they cry? Not me, sir. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself, speaking to a lady like that. And it’s not “honey,” it’s Georgia. With a “G.” Georgia. And, trust me, you won’t forget it.

(Dialogue begins at 5:20)

About this, I have feelings.

It’s frustrating that the plus-size issue is addressed right out of the gate. How much nicer would it have been for Georgia to not be defined by size, but rather have it a point so unnecessary for discussion that it isn’t discussed? For example, one of the (MANY) reasons I love Gilmore Girls is that the character Sukie’s weight is never brought up. There was no special episode where she struggles with her body image and comes to love herself – she already does and, as such, it’s a non-issue.

On the other hand, well done. Well done for writing a dimensional character who uses that moment to stand up for herself with conviction. I hope this representation of self-love and pride will continue to be a theme throughout the show. Granted, there’s a later scene involving some very disturbing “food seduction,” but I can forgive them that.

P.S. The shows music is by Liz Phair! The 13 year-old angsty grunge wannabe within me feels all warm and fuzzy (while still being jaded and misunderstood, of course).

Revolution Through Sweaty Apathy

If you compare my style posts between this summer and last, there’s a difference. The cheesy poses and never-ending love for late-90s pop music are still there, but the clothes I wear while listening to my awesome BSB/Take That/Robyn mix CDs have changed.

For as long as I’ve been the driving force behind dressing myself, I’ve had rules. Things that, because of how I viewed my body and anticipated society reacting to it, I wouldn’t wear:

• No tank tops without a shirt/cardigan over top to hide my arm jiggle/cover my keratosis pilaris/keep my bra straps from being visible
• No form fitting shirts without a tank top underneath to slim the lines of my stomach
• No short shorts or skirts that show where my thighs touch

The point of the rules was to camouflage those parts of myself that I felt didn’t live up to universally determined social standards of beauty. For me to be beautiful, I had to cover up what was not.

It’s worth noting that these aren’t rules I arbitrarily made up – they’re in ever fashion magazine and every makeover show. And even as a feminist and body-positive advocate who sees the falsehood inherent in the “one beauty fits all” model, I still allowed myself to subscribe to that message and dress in a fashion that fit it.

This pattern continued until…well…last month, when something significant happened: IT GOT FREAKIN’ HOT. I know most of North America has been suffocating under an electric blanket this summer, but my northern European sensibilities have a limit and that limit is 90+ degrees every day.

It was so hot for so long (and still is) that suddenly my wardrobe no longer worked. Cardigans and layering shirts were ridiculous, knee-length skirts were suffocating, and all I wanted to do was lounge around in a tank top and shorts. But I had to leave the house eventually, and what was I to wear? A tank top and shorts? But I couldn’t just wear that, could I?

I could. And it was then that I decided to stop caring. I don’t care if you see the red bumps on the backs of my arms. I don’t care if my stomach isn’t flat under my tank top. I don’t care that the tops of my thighs wiggle when I walk. It’s too damn hot and I just don’t care. I’m still clean and well put together, I still look nice and am subscribing to my own parameters of modesty, but it stops there. No more additional camouflage dressing.

It’s funny. I always assumed that my moment of sartorial empowerment would come after months, nay, years, of intense reflection and self-love. I thought my new attitude would be militant and charge out into the world, defiant and unstoppable, but it’s been much quieter. Truthfully, there’s nothing really to be defiant towards, except that judge-y voice in my head that’s grown too weak with heat exhaustion to put up much of a fight.

I will not be so naive as to assume that this change in attitude and dressing was spontaneously conceived. I know that my engagement and belief in body-positive discourses (including this blog and many of yours) played a pivotal role in bringing me to this point. I just didn’t think the month of July would be its catalyst. Or, perhaps it was simply time for this change to occur and my continuing temperature torture is merely correlation and not causation.

Whatever the cause(s), there’s a quiet revolution occurring in my closet – a revolution fueled in equal parts by confidence and apathy. I don’t pretend to believe my image issues are all completely gone, and who knows what my dressing instincts will be once the weather stops all its crazy. But I’m happy with this new-found freedom and how I’m dressing my body to fit within it.

Have you had a similar moment of choice? Was yours fueled by the weather or are you all made of tougher stuff than I?

For a similar train of thought, be sure to read A Dress a Day‘s “You Don’t Have to be Pretty.”