The Pleasure and Pain of Looking Right
Perhaps if I looked good enough, I would fit in and be happy?
My first memory of the importance of clothing was my fear of ruffles. I was seven or eight years old and my mother often purchased clothing for me that had ruffles at the bottom of the skirt, ruffles at the top of the blouse or ruffles that flowed down sleeves. Sometimes the ruffles were shaped like flowers or letters. I insisted that I didn’t like ruffles but my mother didn’t hear me until a few years later.
After that, the dresses, blouses and skirts were plain: nothing adorned them except for a locket that I prized. Slacks appeared in my wardrobe for the first time. There is a photograph that documents me smiling and wearing slacks and a cotton shirt with a baseball bat in my hand. It was taken shortly before I hit a softball through the den window shattering the glass that fell on my mother, seated on the couch below the window.
After we moved to a new neighborhood, my mother detected a dress store that captured her imagination. It made matching clothes so that a mother and father and their children could wear clothing made out of the same material. The matching clothes were made, tried on, commented on and adjustments were made. After the clothing was purchased, the next step was the photographer’s shop for perfect photos to be taken of my parents, my brother and I in our new matching clothing. I have photos of us in our costumes with shining smiles perfectly engraved in time.
My mother’s favorite store was still in my life when I started high school, but my mother had abandoned the need for matching clothing. The summer dresses in the store were pretty and reflected the current styles. In other stores, my mother and I both bought and treasured brief cashmere sweaters like our friends wore. Like others in my high school, I had an unattractive green class sweater that I wore with wool skirts. I reached my goal, I looked like the girls that I admired — except for my hair, although I used lengthy blasts of hairspray.
There is a photo of me in high school with a skirt that’s too long and the green class sweater. My hair is tamed and my smile is satisfied. I am standing with three other girls who look like me. It’s preserved in an envelope with photos of people I can’t name.
In college, I wore dresses, pleated skirts with matching sweaters or slacks sets. I liked boys who didn’t know me and pursued a major that I eventually decided was useless. After college, I got more serious about boys. My friends were getting engaged. Invited to a party by an almost attractive man, I went to a popular department store and flicked through rows of black dresses until I found a very short black lace dress with a scalloped neckline that was on sale and made me feel attractive. For other dates with the same man, I wore hot pink or magenta-colored dresses sometimes with shoes dyed to match.
I spent hours in a beauty salon where the hairdresser fashioned a French twist with big tight shiny curls on top. Sometimes, I wore fake eyelashes and thought that I looked like a movie star, perhaps Natalie Wood. A photo from this time was taken at a wedding where I was a bridesmaid. I wore a hideous powder blue crepe dress with rows of white ruffles on the bodice.
After I became engaged, I started with three stores to find the perfect wedding gown. In each store, I found one that was just right for me. The third store was the most expensive and imposing department store in the city. The saleswoman brought out half-a-dozen dresses that swished across the floor and she would have brought more but my mother and I looked at the third one and then at each other. It was expensive but it was the right one. The material was a silky ivory satin with tiny beads on the waist and the boat neckline.
At the wedding ceremony, the dress drew a succession of oohs and aahs. After the wedding, the dress was packed into a box and I never saw it again. It disappeared in a small house fire. The wedding photos remained, but the albums were later banished after the divorce.
As an elementary school teacher in the 1970’s, my female principal expected me to wear clothing that hid my pregnancy but it was also the time of mini-skirts. I wore the same expensive grey wool jumper several times a week for months. Once I wore a short dress, but after I sat down, I realized that it barely covered me. When I embarked on the required maternity leave, I continued to shop, now for cute big clothing for dinners in expensive restaurants or lunches with the girls. Some of the maternity clothing reminded me of the dresses of my childhood with ruffles and other distractions. I don’t have photos of me in big clothing.
In the 1980’s, I discovered dress for success so for 10 years I went to work wearing black, navy or grey tailored suits with high heels. For an interview at a university in the 1990’s, I wore a three-piece suit made out of heavy emerald green silk. I was always certain the outfit had secured the job. After I started at the university, clothing became more casual and comfortable but I retained the weekly trips to the hairdresser and still enjoyed searching for the perfect clothing. There are a few blurry photos of me in an office or a class wearing casual black or navy and covertly looking at the camera.
After the divorce, I dieted and spent too much free time looking for clothes that would magically make me more attractive. I filled the empty closets with more clothing than I needed and I sorted them into categories: tennis, casual going out clothes, work clothes, dresses, slightly more dressy clothes and bathrobes. I tried on a girdle that pinched half of my body and that with an inch less material would have been a death sentence. At one point, I shopped for attractive but not too skimpy nightgowns. They sat in a drawer, neatly folded and almost perfect. In the photos from this time, I am standing between grown children or sitting down behind a desk.
I occasionally thought about why clothing was so important to me. Perhaps I believed that if I looked good enough I would fit in and be happy? Or maybe I sought compliments or approval from others? Sometimes, I believed it was because I wanted to appear better than others or that I needed to hide my imperfections.
Towards the end of my work life, there were only a few occasions that demanded special clothing. This entailed hours online at Nordstrom’s or Bloomingdale’s investigating outfits that I believed would hide, display and impress. There are many photos of me at the events, lost between women in fabulous, low cut dresses and men in snazzy suits.
After retirement, the dresses I bought were for comfort and ease of cleaning. I had three pairs of the same black slacks and hated to look in the mirror. The hairdresser banished my grey hair but I knew that it was there. I ignored the wrinkles on my face and worked part-time at home. There was no need to dress for the perfect outfit and no photographs of me working at home in a raggedy bathrobe. I was invisible at home.
After retirement, when I looked in my closet, I saw the remnants of styles that I hadn’t worn in years. Some I took to the thrift store, others were retained with the hope, the dream that someone would see me in them again.
