That poor old horse is being flogged to death again.  Thanks to an article in this weekends news, a “light hearted” piece looking at competition at the school gate of ” Slummy Mummies vs. Yummy Mummies”; we are back to the same old argument being sparked in the comments.  The so often spouted clap trap that if you give a damn what you look like then clearly you have nothing better to worry about in your life.  I’m sorely tempted to just say, “grow a brain people!” and leave it at that,  but clearly the topic deserves more attention or it wouldn’t keep cropping up.

So before you get all indignant and start writing me nasty comments (I say this not to my regular readers who already know what this is all about), let me give you a quick snap shot of my life.

Firstly, I work. I work both in the home and outside the home. I work more than fourty hours a week.  I have two children (2 & 6), whom I dote on, play with, sing with, get dirty with. This blog focuses pretty much solely on fashion related issues as it is my interest; just as gardening, scrap booking or collecting toy trains might be yours. My family didn’t sign up for this blog and so I don’t expose them or other non fashion related things here. And most importantly, I’m not interested in competing with you.  Which brings me back to the heart of the issue…

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because someone is “dressed up” that they do it to make you feel worse about yourself.  Yes, there are always those groups who are motivated by being the top of the pile in their social group and use fashion as a means of belittling others.  (Which I believe was the ‘light hearted’ topic the article wished to cover) But it would be unwise to tar everyone you come across with the same brush, no matter how conditioned you may be.  In the simplest sense this can be boiled down to one key problem – ascribing moral values to people based on what they look like. Just as certain ethnic minorities in your city are often targeted as being sinister based on their skin colour or choice of religious dress, the same principle of discrimination is at work here. For myself and many others, we dress up because it is fun and it makes us feel good. It doesn’t come at the expense of  “a life” or a happy family.  Dressing well and having happy kids /rescuing puppies/ or whatever other “better things to worry about”, are not mutually exclusive.

Back to the school gate competition issue.  Yes it does exist, but you have to choose to buy into it or NOT.  It is just another adult version of teen peer pressure and generally those that give in to it were the ones that behaved in the same manner in high school. You’d hope that we would have matured beyond that. When it comes to the big “What to Wear at the School Gate”, it is entirely up to you. Dress up, dress down – but figure out what makes you happier and WHY you are doing it. If it is to make other mothers feel inadequate – just don’t, and by the same token if you deliberately break out the old trackies  as a non verbal form of  “well f#$k you!”; then it is time to take a step back and consider the impact of that attitude on both yourself and others.

It’s only a war if you choose to be in it.

That’s enough pot stirring for a Sunday afternoon.

image by .ash on Flickr

Last night I attended an exclusive photo exhibition launch event here in Melbourne for some very talented people. It was the usual crowd of names, faces and a sea of black. Official photographers walking around taking crowd shots,talking to you and taking details. (I don’t mean that to sound wanky, it just is that way at some events)  In amongst all of this was one chap walking around with his little digital happy snap camera, taking photos.  Now being a blogger, I am all too usually doing this myself – cool lighting = photo op, great style = photo op, amazing typography = photo op. You get my drift.  So I generally have no problem with people taking photos or asking to take photos of me.

What got me though was this – as I was standing talking to a friend, she whispers to me, “Don’t look now but there is a chap taking a photo of your shoes.” I casually remarked that that was cool and didn’t bother me, until I noticed that said chap was lying down on the floor at foot level snapping away at my feet WITHOUT EVEN ANNOUNCING HIS PRESENCE! Seriously, if I had taken a step backwards I would have stood on his head!  There was nothing official looking about his photo taking activities, he just melted away into the crowd. I thought this was pretty rude given his intimate knowledge of my toe nail polish shade, but I decided to forget about it and carry on enjoying myself.

After some time, as I was leaving the event, I stopped by the door to pick up some marketing leaflets for the gallery (I had my back to the room). I should mention here that I was wearing a backless dress, so a little of my back tattoo was peaking out. Anyway, I turned around to leave just as a flash went off – and there is this guy again with his hand just about inside my dress to move it back!  He stammers and says, “Oh I just want to get a shot of that tattoo  if that’s ok?”, So trying to remain gracious I say alright, thinking that there will then be an introduction, the usual handshake (however awkward) etc..  But no.  He strokes, snaps and leaves!!

So my question is this – Apart from the infinitely inappropriate use of hands without introductions; do you think this kind of stealth, yet invasive, happy snapping is ok? I know as bloggers we often want to photograph everything we like, but there are times that we have to check ourselves.

How would you have handled this situation?    Is stealth snapping okay?

Image by Elineart via Flickr

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I have an ongoing project, a nemesis if you will. The quest to have a house filled with “nothing that is neither useful nor beautiful” in the words of William Morris.  Sure, it sounds simple enough, but for me it gets right to the heart of a daily struggle.  You see, I am a Maximalist Minimalist. There exists within me an eternal struggle for the bright,the shiny, the hoarder and collector; and yet I hate to dust and know that I would spend far less time having to tidy up if I had less stuff! Indeed, this is a luxury of a dilemma to have, but a dilemma nonetheless.  So this year I have been working ever so slowly towards getting it under control.

Being a vintage clothing collector, I often feel compelled to “liberate” pieces from their current situation. Find a beautiful vintage dress two sizes too big in an Op shop? I still have to have it in case it is ragged, or bought by someone to be cut up for a school play. There is little logic involved when it comes to collecting, and fashion even more so; as it is difficult to store, requires constant care and attention and it’s display relies primarily on your body remaining the same shape! Why on earth do we do it if not for love?  The problem is that when you start to attach such strong emotional values to your vintage clothing, it starts to extend into your regular wardrobe, which then extends into your family’s wardrobe… and on it goes.  So I find myself sitting it a storage room filled with three racks of clothes I no longer wear (or am ever likely too – maternity pants anyone?), boxes of baby clothes and toys, hats, purses etc… and each piece has a memory attached.  Somehow giving them away feels like a betrayal of those times.  As if by letting go of that little pink baby suit, I am letting go of the baby who wore it. Like I said, no logic.

It is at this point of having moved the unnecessary items into storage, that I must face this crisis of emotion and move onto the next level of enlightenment.  My very good friend Nicole has become my spiritual leader in this regard. Not to sound too serious, but unless you face a similar crisis yourself it is hard to understand its hold in you.  She tells me, (to paraphrase) ” I let go of clothes. Let them out into the cycle of clothing karma where they will find a new home and come back to me in the form of that perfect vintage dress I have been looking for all these years.” And then the penny dropped.  If I continue to hold onto all these things, they will only serve to be a burden for me.  There will be no space to let anything new in, and neither will the well be replenished for others if we all keep on hoarding it.

So I am letting go.  I have forgone the marketing or eBaying of this last lot, as it is just too much effort.  Instead, I have boxed things up and sent them on their way to new homes with my blessing.  Yesterday I took about 40 kilos of clothing and accessories to my local Op Shop. (Please – don’t ask why there was so much!) I make sure that everything is clean and well presented to allow it to hit the shelves straight away, and always hand it to the volunteers in person.  Part of my hesitation in letting many of these pieces go, is the rate at which they are simply put into land fill and treated as rubbish.  But my rational is that if I treat them with respect that the store will also, and then they will find a good new home.

After letting go of many of my personal pieces, I headed into some serious emotional territory and opened the boxes of baby clothes. I had sold off many at the local market, but still had a ridiculous amount remaining, and knew that I had to let them go to move on.  When it comes to baby gear, knowing that they will go somewhere that they are truly needed and appreciated is the only way I could part with them.  So I did a little research and found a small hospital that cares for mothers and new babies from disadvantaged backgrounds.  (The Caroline Chisholm Society in Melbourne needs your little baby gear if you have it to spare! ) Knowing that these pieces, so lovingly knitted by Nana,  would keep another baby warm, was all I needed to let them go.  I have kept a few pieces.  Things my girls wore home from hospital, heirloom pieces and one handmade piece from each family member.  The other pieces I found hard to let go, I photographed and then boxed up.

I know this isn’t the end of my quest, but just the beginning.  The day I master it I’ll let you know, but until then I will keep on working towards my goal;  heading off a future that sees me living as a  slave to stuff!

After my post last week about why I dress the way I do, even as a SAHM, I have been inundated with comments, emails, tweets etc, all asking me to expand on my thoughts and to answer so many questions you all have around this topic. One of the key issues that came out of those emails was this questions – Why do women / mothers let themselves go? To which I believe there are different answers for Mothers vs. Women in general although they do share similar territory. So here goes with my opinion on the subject…

Firstly, what is “letting yourself go”? In the most truest sense of the term, I believe that it is letting go of the essence that makes you YOU and then allowing that to translate into what we put on everyday. The hair that hasn’t been cut in months, the ill-fitting outfits, the various shades of black and grey ad nuaseum. Letting yourself go outworks itself in different ways for each of us, but the common factor is the lack of sparkle, the lack of joy and the, frankly not giving a toss anymore.

It is a usually a slow process, creeping up on us like that poor frog in the pot of warm water. It begins the first time we think, “Oh, well, it’s just the post office, I don’t have to get fancy for that,” then schlepping down makeup free and unbrushed hair.  And slowly, this slide becomes the norm until the only time we “dress up” is for work, big dates and perhaps the odd special occasion.  But the question is WHY do we do this?

Because it is HARD not to. The construct of our modern society is such that the parameters of what is acceptable dress and behaviour have slipped so markedly that no one raises an eyebrow if you head out for milk in your pyjamas. Fifty years ago such behaviour would have been looked upon as one step away from being hauled off to a rest home for a spot of recovery and a hand full of pills. Yes, what this amounts to in its simplest form is really peer pressure, Keeping Up With the Joneses, and not rocking the boat.  And when the Joneses are heading off to pick the kids up from school in their trackies, it is no wonder that so many don’t think twice about doing the same. Society’s dress code slippery slope is another big issue, but we’ll only graze the surface for the purposes of this post. So, suffice to say that if your neighbour has also let themselves go, there is safety in numbers and you don’t feel that sense of shame as you did on that first trip to the post office.  Multiply this factor times fifty and you start to see this dress code as the norm, rather than for what it is.

Because we WANT TO HIDE. When all around you are wearing green jumpers and you are the only woman in red, you attract attention and it is often attention you don’t want. Thus we chose not to challenge the commonly accepted dress code as it will mark us out from the crowd. We choose to hide as we often feel we have nothing of real value to add, that somehow should we become visible, that everyone will see our flaws, our guilt.  That by being visible we are putting ourselves up for judgment by the masses. And so, to avoid any potential embarrassment, we cloak ourselves in the uniform of the day and go about our business unnoticed.

Because it takes EMOTIONAL ENERGY and we have none left to give. Everyone in our lives wants something from us. You must be Mother, teacher, wife, friend, model employee etc etc..  And every role takes something from us each time we give it out. Constantly we hear the mantra from lifestyle mags and well meaning best friends, that we must “do something for ourselves”. And while this is 100% correct, the problem is that when we do, it is seen as a special occasion. Take for instance those pampering packages. Go on, treat your mother.  Poor old thing hasn’t had a massage in a year. Why not? Because she was too bloody busy making sure your clothes were washed and your costume was made for the school play! We should not act like slaves to our lives, with ourselves bottom of the To Do list. Because when you get to the bottom of the list, there IS nothing left.

Because YOU’RE DAMNED IF YOU DO AND DAMNED IF YOU DON’T. And that is a hard battle to fight. Letting yourself go may be something we seek to improve ourselves from, but it is also the path of least resistance. When  you get those highlights and start taking yoga, your friends pat your on the back. “You go girl.” “About time you had some me time.” But start scheduling a weekly massage, always wearing your best dress and putting on your favorite lipstick before even getting the kids out of bed, and watch them change their tune. ” Hmmm, those poor kids.  Their mother must spend so much time in front of the mirror she never looks at them.” ” Who does she think she is?”  And this little gem, ” Oh no, better not invite Mrs X. to the drinks night, or my husband will start wondering why I don’t dress like that.”

Because we JUST DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START. Life can take over so far that we no longer recognise ourselves.  We do not know what music we like, we have trouble filling in a profile page on Facebook, and our topics of conversation always turn to the minutia of our lives, as that is all we are consumed by.  The girls we were, those we spent hours indulging with gossip sessions, beauty experiments and glee clubs are gone; and yet we never really spend anything like this time exploring the women we are to become.  It just happens.  We wake up one day to a bathroom cabinet filled with eye creme instead of cherry gloss and the other shoe drops. We are not some fabulous new specimen of women handed a glittering crown and a sash as we enter the best years of our lives.  We are little girls in women’s bodies who have lost the road maps to our passions – and it sucks.

And this my friends, is why so many women just give up and let themselves go.  Because it is all just too bloody hard.  And upon reading this sad state of affairs, you pity these poor creatures in whom you may recognise a little or a lot of yourself.  It isn’t glorious to spend your days in tracksuits, and you cannot convince me that a facial once a month is enough to feed your soul.

“Do not go gentle into that good night..” Dylan Thomas

*If all this reading isn’t too much, and you ‘d like to see a space for my thoughts on being, let me know!*