Slumming It

I just got back from the beginning of holiday shopping with the family---my head is spinning, I feel dizzy and on the verge of collapse. I know I am supposed to enjoy shoppping for fashion items like other women , but I hate it. Perhaps I am just a hopeless closet geek who cares as much for shoes as I do for a trip to the dentist. I don't understand how Manolo the shoe blogger can have a whole blog on...shoes. Thank goodness there are others out there to support this blog (although he is quite funny and I love his writing style). I just watched tons of shoppers sifting through a shoe store at the mall where I was taking advantage of the empty seating. "What", I thought, "could they possibly see in a pair of shoes that would command such a hunt?" Did I not get the shopping gene? Are women really supposed to care about shopping and whether a particular bag cost $21000? Apparently, fashion is important to many people.

Ed Driscoll talks about the importance of clothing, and finds the following rules from Manolo's shoe blog to be salient:

5) The clothes they are important. They say important things about your identity, even if you pretend that they do not.

6) The fashion it is not the nuclear rocket brain surgery. One does not need the grounding in the theoretical sciences to know how to dress well.

Sorry guys, but I only care about how I look in relation to what others expect of me--left to my own devices, I would dress like I was auditioning for a part on Ambush Makeover and feel fine about it. Even when I was younger, dressing up meant little to me. I once went to the first meeting of a formal psychoanalytic externship in gym clothes (hey, I just got out of the gym and I took a shower). I walked in on a group of over 30 people all dressed in professional clothes glaring at me. Afterwards, the supervisor came up to me and said that I would need to wear more appropriate clothes to actually see patients and I played the part while I was there. I wore whatever nice skirt or outfit I could scape together but I never felt good because of it or felt that I had any of my identity tied to my clothes.

I think because my identity is tied up in being the observer and not the observed. To me, being the observer is more fun. I love watching people and have from a young age. If you do not not stand out in any way, people act more naturally around you and let you know more about them. I found this true in my work as a psychologist and I find it true in everyday life. People do not try to impress or connect too much to people who are "slumming" it the way I do most of the time out in public. At the office, it is different, I will dress to meet the needs of my job, of course. But in my regular life, you will probably not notice me for my fashion sense because I will be the one slouching in the corner with the too large purple sweat pants, ripped t-shirt and oversized down coat from the 1980's that belonged to my husband when he was in college.