I was in a fashion show. *I* was in a fashion show?

So I attempted to post this last week, but apparently my catwalk-strutting skills are far superior to my blog-posting skills. I posted on the eve of the Go Red Fashion Show, at which I was a “celebrity” model. Oh, dear…
Me? A celebrity model? Visions of Carrie Bradshaw, the girl-about-town-writer, danced in my head. In all, my ego felt inflated for approximately five minutes, until I crept into the hair/makeup room and saw actual local celebrities being fitted for gorgeous gowns, festooned with loaned jewelry and glamorous handbags. As for me? My hair was curled within an inch of its life by a perky stylist from Salon Red. My forest of chin zits were spackled away by a sympathetic makeup artist (“Eet is becauze you have-ah the women’s problems!” he told me in a thick accent), and then I was presented with the outfit I was supposed to model.

A tiny white jacket ringed with red fur cuffs, a red miniskirt, and a paisley shawl. Hmm.

The outfit, dear reader, did me no favors, as my mother might say. Bearing in mind this was for charity (or was I the charity case?), I gamely suited up and strutted my stuff on the runway. If I was going to wear red fur cuffs, I had to own it, right? The other women, many of them heart-disease survivors, looked absolutely amazing. The other models looked incredibly gorgeous, especially local news grand dame Natalie Jacobson, who weighs approx. three pounds. All in all, I had a lot of fun. I didn’t trip on the runway. I was tempted to throw one of my red fur cuffs into the audience, Gia-style, but held back. I am 5′1 and fierce. Work, supermodel, work!

I am totally hot

I am a the result of lots and lots of self-help, self-discovery, and now total self-absorption.

There once was a time where I didn’t feel so cool and cute. Between ages 12 and well into my 20’s I grappled with self-doubt and self-love. I thought I was pretty-ish but didn’t comprehend why I didn’t have countless suitors begging for my affection. I thought I was smart-ish, but assumed everything I knew or did was common, contrived and wrong. And although my sweet jr high dance moves seemed to tell another tale…

…I hardly felt remotely sexy-ish.

I assume this tale of woe rings true for many. But now I am moving away fromthe period of one’s life where you are getting comfortable in your skin, style and sense of being. Those formative years where your try on various persona’s hoping for the perfect fit. The years in which you try so hard to love yourself, which is fiercely challenged since you hardly know who you really are.

And you thought YOU were crazy…

Oh my word. This is just twenty different shades of wrong:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/business/04tobias.html?pagewanted=print

Longing for the days when I was wispy and willowy, cry, cry, cry

Oh, how I long for my sartorially splendid days of yore. I used to be so into fashion. I was the best-dressed girl in high school (or so I thought–aside from my unfortunate paisley phase in 1992). I laid out my clothes the night before, making sure everything matched perfectly. I never wore the same thing twice, and yes, anal retentive freakazoid that I am, I even kept a running list of my outfits for this very purpose. I had problems.

In college, I relaxed my standards a tiny bit, if only because for the first time I was in charge of my own laundry and wearing an outfit only once was highly impractical. I also attended one of those East Coast liberal arts bastions of fleece, LL Bean, Patagonia, and pajama pants. I also went to school surrounded by women. I was dressing to impress no one. Still, I always wore a bit of blush and a spot of eyeshadow when trekking cross-campus, and I prided myself on my ability to fit into a size 2 Hooch Pant. (For those of you unfamiliar with Slutty Party Wear circa 1997, a Hooch Pant is a tight pair of black, stretchy pants, which clings to the derriere and is best paired with a tank top and platform Steve Maddens. The ideal hooch pant is easy to remove should the possibility for amore drunkenly present itself).

Fast-forward to 2008. I am no longer a size 2. Hell, I’m no longer a size 6. I can no longer fit into my catalogue of prepster finery, which now taunt me from their plastic hangers. This is due to many things. 1: My pathetic eating habits have caught up to me. 2. So has my disdain for exercise of any kind. 3: I’m getting old and my metabolism is slowing to a crawl. 4: I take Zoloft.

Now, I take Zoloft for panic attacks. However, if I continue to gain weight at my current rate, I’m going to check myself into a mental hospital anyway, and god forbid they throw me into a straitjacket, because it probably won’t fit. Me, the girl who always used to fancy herself a fashion maven, is now reduced to wearing stretchy Yoga pants in public and unbuttoning the top button of her jeans and hoping no one notices. I know, I know, if I’m in the yoga pants, I might as well…do yoga. Right. But if I have to wear those pants to work, what, oh what, am I going to wear to work out?

A Poem About My Chin Hair, since I didn’t really get it all off my chest the first time.

Ode to my chin hair

 

You first arrived on prom night

Strong, black, and proud.

My friend leaned over and said, “You’re growing a beard!”

I wondered if she was speaking aloud.

 

I ran into the bathroom

While everyone else danced and smiled

And there like a limp, wet noodle

Was my firstborn hirsute child.

 

I jutted out my chin and pulled

Pulled, and tugged, and cried

And finally I lunged for the tweezers

My prom date thought I’d died.

 

At last, out popped the hair

Black and at least three inches long

Afterwards, oh the smoothness

Felt so right, but also so wrong.

 

I returned to the dance floor victorious

But my glee was fleeting indeed

For the next morning I noticed another

As though on my chin I had planted a seed.

 

I began to pluck on the daily

Noticing hairs where there really were none

And then they’d grow back even darker

And I’d pull them out shouting, “I won!”

 

Today I have at least ten hairs

I name them like they’re my babies

My friends all think it’s hilarious.

My husband thinks I have rabies.

 

As a girl I razored my legs so close

And lathered them lovingly with lotion

But I was an outcast, a leper

All salt and no pepper

A modern-day Hester Prynne.

Oh, what a sad sin

(Please pass the gin)

While I was shaving my gams

I grew a beard like a lamb.

I should’ve been shaving my chin.

Welcome to the Crazy.

Four crazies. One blog. Many, many lonely nights of typing and crying. Enjoy!