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In Which the Eccentric Flower Gets Damp
Gentlemen. Listen up. I will now tell you a Great Truth, one which all the ladies in the audience already know.
Rain is hell on glamour. Rain and glamour simply do. Not. Mix.
It wasn't my hair getting wet - no, no, keeping my hair dry hasn't been a problem ever since I bought my beautiful multi-colored oversized umbrella (which has to be so large to keep more than two square inches of my body dry that I often feel the Boston wind will just pick me right up off the ground while I'm holding it, yea, like Mary Poppins, and verily I shall fly away and probably end up deposited on the Mass Pike somewhere, where I will immediately get hit by a semi).
No, now my hair stays dry. Or would have stayed dry, had it ever rained more today than this persistent drizzle which wasn't quite enough to get me to actually use the damned umbrella, so I kept my hair dry until I got to the salon - best appearances, you know, gotta get all beautiful before you're ready to go get beautiful - and then just carried the umbrella closed for the rest of the day.
However, the cool, moist atmosphere made my hair even more prone to kink and snarl than it usually does, and the wind obliged by snarling it, to the point where drastic measures were required to untangle it when I got home this evening. And when I walked across the Charles, the wind and water whipping over the Harvard Bridge literally blasted the foundation from my face. Honest. I had makeup on when I got onto the bridge; I did not have makeup on when I got off.
And it was too cold with my coat off, too hot with it on, and it gradually got wet either way. This was the one with the fur collar, too, because I was being femme today and my L.L. Bean coats just don't work as well. No, the coat's not ruined or even slightly damaged. But when it's wet, it gets heavy.
You know, I didn't get to know any Northern women until I was at least in my twenties. When I first met a Northern woman in the South, her heritage was pretty obvious. She wore pants. She wore functional coats (when she needed a coat). She wore practical shoes. She favored dark colors - forest green, navy, black - or earth tones. She was never seen in hot colors or wearing white. She never wore makeup. She kept her hair short and maintenance-free.
In short, everyone assumed she was a lesbian. This annoyed the hell out of her. When I got up to the North, I realized why. Up here all the women are like that.
Okay, okay, I exaggerate slightly. But as a general rule the Northern woman wears less makeup, less jewelry, and fewer pinks, reds, and yellows than her Southern counterpart. She seldom wears clothing with appliqué, sequins, gold/silver lamé trim, or work done with a paint pen - things that older Southern women, in particular, wear to assert their individuality, carefree spirit, and/or lack of taste.
(My mother, bless her, has a collection of shirts that require sunglasses to look at properly.)
In general, Northern women don't style their hair in fancy ways, make it all poofy, or take much trouble with it at all, unless they're going to a fancy party. Southern women check their coiffure before going to the grocery store. A Southern woman may be in the cereal aisle in old jeans, a T-shirt, and house slippers - but by god, her hair and her nails are immaculate, and she probably has done her face.
The only time I can recall my mother leaving the house without some sort of facial makeup is when she was driving to the hospital emergency room or some similar disaster. And my mother is not a vain woman, nor is she especially concerned about her appearance. In her generation, that's just What You Do - you put on makeup before you leave the house. My aunt, her younger sister, is the same way.
My other aunt, the youngest of the three sisters, has avoided this trend - but that's because she's married to a career army man, and travelling the world, packing kids and caboodle and changing duty posts every four years, has changed her priorities somewhat. You might say my aunt has become more worldly. Southerners are insular people.
Anyway. I moved north, surrounded myself with these practical-minded Northern women - but I never really understood it. Partially because of my birth, and partially because I always want to present myself in the best light possible when I go out in public, so why shouldn't everyone else? Either everyone around me was way more self-assured than I was, or they had somehow learned not to give a damn how they looked. Either way, it was a trick I couldn't do.
Today I remembered the third reason: Winter, real winter, is hell on glamour. It's hard to have a figure under four layers of clothing; it's hard to find mud boots that look stylish (and carrying another pair of shoes with you is a true pain, although I see women do it); it's hard to keep on makeup (and sometimes even earrings) in the searing wind ... and so, for many of these women, I'm betting it just doesn't seem worth the maintenance required.
That doesn't explain why they don't get gussied up more often in summer, though. And don't give me that "heat" jive. Women in Louisiana can keep on makeup in one-hundred-degree weather ... although they pay for their sins doing so.
Hmm. Maybe they just have more brains up here.
All this weather griping aside (and the real winter hasn't even begun yet), I consider today a good day for femminess. I began it by getting my legs waxed (something I should have done a month ago, but I haven't had time), and at the end of the day I stopped by Teddy Shoes and found, after twenty minutes of experimentation, two pairs of women's shoes that actually look good, look feminine, are suitable for wear with jeans, and fit comfortably.
Okay, okay - one pair fits very comfortably - it has square toes. The other pair is point-toed, and they do pinch a bit. On the other hand, they actually make my feet look more like the size I'd like my feet to be! I will never have petite feet, but these shoes make them look at least two sizes smaller somehow. A little pain is worth that. Sometimes.
And I remembered that Teddy is also a dancewear store. Hooray - my leotard crisis is solved! I got two black leotards in the same cut as the Danskin one I own - short sleeves, high legs, scoop neck - but extra-large instead of large, which is a little more comfy (the large fits tightly, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad). And I got a black velvet leotard, because I could.
(By the by, they carry basic black leotards in XXXL. As if the size-14 shoe selection wasn't a big hint - and the fact that they don't bat an eye when I'm trying things on in the ladies' shoe section.)
The other thing is that some of my shoes are not designed to be worn over socks, but over hosiery. Although I have a drawer full of hose and tights, I don't always want to wear such (especially in warmer weather), so lately I have been experimenting with knee-high or calf-high stockings - you know what I mean. Sometimes they're called "pants stockings" or some other term.
Well, I like them, but they're pretty flimsy - basically, if your shoes rub against your feet at all (and I'm still breaking several of these pairs in), they're good for maybe one or two uses before they get big holes. So I have to start thinking of them as a semi-disposable thing (as opposed to my tights, which I like keeping around for a while).
The pairs I was experimenting with were $2-something a pair. Tonight I realized that another brand was selling knee-highs for the same $2-something for two pair. Bingo. They're not black, my preferred color for leg coverings, but given that you see about two inches of them at most, I can live with nude. Reinforced toe, please.
So, on the whole, a good shopping day, rain notwithstanding.
© Columbine
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This has nothing to do with the main text (just in case you were wondering).
I mentioned in the last entry that Molly Ivins didn't have an online archive, as far as I knew. I got that information from Jette - blame her - but didn't bother to check it. Forsooth, the Ardent Readers have sent me a slew of Ivins URLs. Instant retribution for my sins!
The Other Mary Anne says:
"Molly Ivins' columns are at http://www.wald.com/opinion/columnists/index.cfm weekly - there's a link to archives but it doesn't seem to be working."
Lynette M. says:
"Not a complete archive ... but has stuff going back a couple of months: http://www.sacbee.com/voices/national/ivins/."
And Iain-Padraic says:
"I think you were looking for this:
http://www.star-telegram.com/columnist/ivins2.htm takes you to the current column.
http://www.star-telegram.com/columnist/ivins.htm takes you to an error page. Follow the following steps:
1. Click on the arrow next to 'Current Star-Telegram Articles,' then select 'Star-Telegram.com Free Back Issues.'
2. type 'ivins' in the space underneath FOR:
This gives you all of her articles available on the Star Telegram web site."
I haven't checked any of these myself, but they're here if you feel so inclined - and you should be; Ivins is a hoot to read. Thanks, everyone!
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