Women in Clothes

by Sheila Heti

  CARMEN JOY KING I wish I didn’t need to wear makeup all the time, but I do. It just feels completing and reassuring. I noticed that in Paris, the more pared down and simple my look was, the more attention I got. I find the opposite in Montreal. If I’m not wearing makeup, no one looks at me. Do I need people to look at me? Yes. I mean, what’s the point of being in the world if we’re not looking at one another? You don’t have to want to fuck me, but I want you to notice me.

  JENNIFER WINEKE I dyed my hair cotton-candy pink yesterday. The lady behind the counter at my coffee shop complimented me on it. She basically compliments me every morning, even when I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes and no makeup. A stranger saying, “Hello, beautiful,” to you at six-thirty a.m. is the best.

  AMY BRILL All my life I’ve been subjected to comments about how tiny I am. How petite. How small. Even when I was pregnant, I had strangers approaching me and telling me that I couldn’t possibly have a baby in there. “I have an eight-pound baby in there,” I wanted to say, and often did. I think this lifelong diminution fostered in me an aggressive presence, a persona that favors appearing “tough” as opposed to fragile—leather over lace.

  SOOK-YIN LEE I have found it helpful to dress like a saint because then strangers are nicer and more respectful to me, and I am never cruised by annoying men.

  FATIMA G. I once met an elderly woman on an airplane and we started talking. I told her how much I liked her outfit, which I can’t remember in detail now but which I definitely remember as being quite fabulous. She thanked me, then said, “Every morning that I wake up and realize I’m not dead is a chance for me to say ‘Fuck it.’ So I dress like this.”

  RITA TRONTI Now that I am out there on the Internet on account of a book I wrote, and I see misogynistic comments going both ways (she’s getting attention because she’s photogenic, because she’s not photogenic, etc.), my inclination is to be more self-confident and self-protecting, and to bury my own dislike of how I look in pictures. I’m more inclined to be easy on myself, now that I’m being exposed to the judgments of strangers.

  HILARY PROSSER In 1993, when I was working in France, an elderly lady who was a friend of my client arrived, then went straight out shopping. She returned from her shopping trip and handed me a ring which she thought was perfect for me—Art Deco–ish, brass, set with three bits of diamond-shaped black-and-turquoise Bakelite. It is still my favorite piece of jewelry.

  PENELOPE C. In my early twenties, I was walking down a street in Sydney with a female friend and we were holding hands. A man walked past and said, “Who gives it and who takes it?” So I said to my friend in all innocence, “What does he mean?” She said, “I think he means you’d take it because you’re short, and I’d give it because I’m tall.” I said, “I’m not short.” But as the words came out, I looked up at her and it was as if she grew taller before my eyes. Suddenly, I was painfully aware that she was really tall (six feet) and that I was really short (just over five feet). It was as if I never knew how short I was until then. It was a sad moment. I lost some confidence that I’ve never gotten back.

  VANESSA BERRY A few years ago, I was in Berlin and was wearing one of my great dresses—a black dress with big red poppies printed on one side, and big white polka dots on the other. I passed a woman who met my eye with a warm, happy look. She said something I didn’t understand (I don’t speak much German), but I knew she was trying to communicate that she loved my dress. My dress made her happy that day. I felt released from the lonely anonymity of being in a city where I knew almost no one.

  AURELIA BELFIELD I want to insinuate myself in somebody’s life, no matter how I look. A stranger doesn’t even have to speak to me—I just need to know that I look good enough that you are now thinking about me. Like, you’ve fallen in love with me a little bit. You’re maybe not creepy enough to write a Missed Connections, but you thought about it for a second.

  MEG BARKER I bought my favorite cap for £10 on Shaftesbury Avenue. As a kid, I wasn’t strongly identified with femininity or masculinity, it wasn’t possible to hang out with the boys who were interested in the things that seemed exciting to me—drawing, computers, role-playing games. And I had little in common with most of the girls. After moving to a single-sex school where there were girls who were more like me, I found my way toward versions of femininity that fit me better, and I adopted a uniform of jeans, baseball boots, a red-check shirt, and a denim cap with a hole for my ponytail. In recent years, I’ve moved away from a “feminine” appearance toward being more masculine-of-center and nonbinary. The cap is read in different ways. A quick glance often gets me a “guv” or “sir.” A smattering of those, mixed in with “lady” and “madam,” feels good enough for now in a world where I can’t just be seen as a person.

  HALEY MLOTEK As a child I insisted on wearing dresses and skirts every day. Once, another mother, a total stranger, confronted my mother on the playground. She said that her daughter was only allowed to wear dresses on Fridays and that her daughter was complaining that I was allowed to wear dresses every day, and could she please stop me from wearing dresses every day? I don’t know what my mother said exactly, but I’m pretty sure it was along the lines of “What the fuck are you talking about, my daughter can wear whatever the fuck she wants,” because that’s how I’ve dressed myself ever since.

  PROJECT

  WEAR AREAS | MARGO JEFFERSON

  1 In the fifties, amber and bronze skin was best. Sienna, chocolate, saddle brown, umber (burnt or raw), and mahogany worked with decent-to-good hair and even-to-keen features. In these cases, the woman’s wardrobe must feature subdued tones. Bright colors suggested she was flaunting herself. Generally, for women, the dark skin shades like walnut, chocolate brown, black, and black with blue undertones were off limits. Dark skin often suggested aggressive, indiscriminate sexual readiness. At the very least it called instant attention to your race and could incite demeaning associations.

  2 The noses nobody wanted were broad and flat with wide nostrils. A narrow tapering nose that ended in flared nostrils was acceptable, even alluring. An aquiline or hooked nose suggested American Indian ancestry. It could also be called Roman. Small, pert upturned noses were invariably welcome.

  3 Dead-straight hair could be grown into thick, lustrous braids that stretched to the middle of the back, even to the waist. Glossy hair with waves and curls suggested Moorish Spain and Mexico. With light hair cream it could be brushed straight. Hair with tighter waves and a less glossy texture could be brushed almost straight, but had to be maintained with light hair cream. Humidity made hair frizzy and slightly rough around the face and in the back (“the kitchen”). Light hair cream and quick, light strokes with a hot comb were needed. Nappy hair, stage one, required heavy hair cream daily and regular hot comb use. Usually did not grow past the shoulders. Nappy hair, stage two, required applications of hair cream and constant hot comb use. Usually did not grow past the middle of the neck.

  4 Obtrusive behinds refused to slip into sheath dresses, subside and stay put.

  5 “Ashy skin” meant white sediment on the surface of brown skin (especially on knees and elbows) that had gone too long unoiled. “Elbow grease” was not a metaphor.

  6 High arches were more desirable than flat feet.

  COLLECTION

  ALICIA MEIER’s blotting papers used over the course of one week

  ON DRESSING

  AT THE CHECKPOINT

  SHANI BOIANJIU

  Here are my ten fashion Dos and Don’ts for the teenage Israeli female soldier.

  1. Don’t wear lipstick. It’s not allowed. It will get stolen. You’re no Angelina Jolie. Your guy is no Brad Pitt. He is a dude whose interests are balancing plastic spoons on his nose and clapping. Above all, this is a guarding post, not the red carpet. Wake up and smell the ninety-two-year-old construction worker peeing on your spare helmet.

  2. Do lick your lips every ten seconds when you are stationed in the eastern guarding tower. It’ll ma
ke the eight-hour shift pass more quickly, and thanks to the hot air and strong winds in the tower, your lips will swell up and their color will transform into a luscious cherry red.

  3. Do keep a Zippo lighter in your pocket. Nothing is hotter than you, bending over to light his cigarette when you two finally sit down at three a.m. after everyone has left the checkpoint gate. Particularly if it’s a full-moon night, and particularly if it’s windy and your hands meet as you shelter the fire.

  4. Don’t smoke like a chimney. Nothing is less attractive than you, dead. It’s as simple as that.

  5. Do wear a linked dozen 7.62 bullets as a necklace. You’ll look tough, confident, and maybe a little like the Terminator, but in a fun way. Your dark hair will glow against the golden sparkles of the dirty-copper color of the bullets. To make those bullets really shine, you might want to spray them with water. You risk ruining 200 shekels’ worth of ammunition, but war is too retro anyhow.

  6. Don’t place the strap of your rifle on the back of your neck like they tell you to. It will mess up your posture and clash with your bullet necklace. Sure, carrying your rifle any other way will make it harder to aim and fire in case you have to respond quickly, and will seriously risk your life. But just think—what a way to go! You’ll forever be remembered as the supercool girl who got a bullet in her head because the strap of her rifle got all tangled because she didn’t carry it around her neck because it looked so lame. In short—a legend.

  7. Do wear the strap of your rifle diagonally across your chest, right in the middle. Make sure the strap is a bit tighter than it ought to be. That way you’re emphasizing what might be left unnoticed in the uniform—you are a female! Call it cheap, call it low, call it silly, call it “I look so hot and I don’t look like I am trying,” call it brilliant. Whatever you call it, it works.

  8. Don’t eat. We have yet to meet the girl who can keep down a rotten egg and a ten-day-old bean soup. Even if he volunteers to hold your hair when you throw up, everyone will get grossed out by you. Yes, even the Palestinian with the spiky mustache will give you a nasty look.

  9. Do smile. You are beautiful when you smile. Dare to be different. Smile like you know all of your dreams are going to come true, like a better tomorrow is only a day away.

  10. Don’t actually believe your dreams will come true. Look at you, you are so dirty, even mosquitoes stay away. Look around. Do any of the adults seem like their dreams came true? Face it, you are eighteen, a grown-up, over the hill. Come on, girl, don’t tell me you really think you are going to “make it after all,” or do you?

  ON DRESSING

  THE MOM COAT

  AMY FUSSELMAN

  I’m a stay-at-home mom, so I don’t dress for any other milieu. I dress in what I think of as my mom clothes, for my mom job.

  I have created a uniform for myself. I wear cotton because it’s easy to clean, pants because they are easier to move in. I have a few T-shirts in my drawer and I wear them until they are full of holes and then I get new ones. If Jackson Pollock were a mom, he would wear my clothes.

  I don’t like any kind of language or insignia on my clothes, yet for a while I wore a pink T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a New York theater company I very much admire. It was light pink with a small black unicorn head and NYC Players in small lettering. No one ever asked me about it, but I liked having that connection to this theater company in my uniform, especially because so much of mothering involves dealing with children’s playing in a way that is like being a stagehand or a director to their ongoing improv. So I was a New York City Player, in my way, in that shirt.

  I also have a Mom Coat. The Mom Coat seems unavoidable here in New York City. I wear it as part of my uniform from November till March. I have very mixed feelings about the Mom Coat, which is a down coat that has a hood, completely covers your ass, and is black, gray, or gray-black.

  The Mom Coat is a sleeping bag you walk around in. It turns you into a pod. I almost cease to be human when I wear it: I am just a shroud with pockets. And of course, because I have kids, my pockets are always stuffed with Kleenex, hair clips, Goldfish, et cetera. The Mom Coat is like a minivan in that way. You are inside and piloting a receptacle for your kids’ stuff.

  I wore my Mom Coat every weekday morning this winter during the fifty-block commute I did with my kids on the subway. My kids are eleven, nine, and four, and for the first four months, from September through December, my daughter (the four-year-old) would start asking me to pick her up after we had walked a mere half block. (It’s a block and a half from our apartment building to the subway.) In the beginning, a lot of the journey was about not picking up my daughter, then it was about not buying the children candy, even though our commute included a waiting period near an underground newsstand with an enticing display. I was toeing the no-carrying and no-candy lines (although we occasionally bought cough drops because of their medicinal properties), and that was hard enough. Then you throw in the wind, cold, rain, snow, and finally the other things you couldn’t prepare for—like the week when a giant, candy-eating homeless man started occupying “our” bench. He would sit there like Jabba the Hutt, eating noisily from a jumbo bag of M&M’s. (Did he know our no-candy rule? Was he taunting us?!) I had to keep my daughter from eating the stray pieces he was spilling on the platform. Then there was the man we walked past daintily as he squatted by a garbage can and defecated.

  We had many adventures, let’s leave it at that.

  Climbing into my gray Mom Coat every morning felt like hunkering down to get through this journey. This part of my day, from 7:45 to 8:45 a.m., was always gray, black, or gray-black, and I needed all the Kleenex, Altoids, and Squinkies I had floating around in every one of my Mom Coat pockets to get through it.

  I was even jealous, some days, of moms above me, on the street, driving minivans, because I imagined that the minivan freed them from the Mom Coat. The minivan itself served the Mom Coat purpose. Those moms could step out of their minivan in some little Chanel jacket because they had twenty-two cupholders full of crap nearby, double-parked.

  All of which is to say that I think of this uniform—the chinos, the Mom Coat—as temporary. There will be a day when I no longer wear this, and I have started collecting pieces for that time. When I am older, I am going to wear only Comme des Garçons. I will have a correction for this time when I was lost in a lollipop-and-tissue tornado. I will wear clothing that makes people’s heads hurt with difficult questions: Why must a pair of pants have two legs? Is a lumpy-sculptural shirt beautiful? Are two halves of two different shirts stuck together a whole shirt?

  Writing this makes me realize that I am a bit like someone who is on a very strict diet, who is craving things that are off the diet, and I wonder if that’s not a sign to ease up. I am not really sure who is being helped by my uniform. It’s not my kids, I don’t think. I wore a cocktail dress one evening recently, and my younger son saw me and declared, “You should wear that every day!” My kids are in on the severity of my uniform, and really, how does severity ever help anyone? Yes, cotton is easy to clean, but who cares? Why don’t I wear my shirt that is two half-shirts stuck together and ask my kids difficult fashion questions on our way to school? Didn’t I come to New York in the first place so I could be around freaks—people dressed in plastic bags directing traffic? Didn’t I come here so I could have the freedom and courage to be the freak that I am? So how is it that I now find myself so deep inside my Mom Coat?

  I think this is something that happens as you get older—you begin to think that fashion, like so much else in life, is only for young people. I am from Ohio, and one thing I love about the Midwest is how the middle-aged moms there bedazzle themselves. The holiday season, in particular, is a time to bring out a whole range of sweaters and sweatshirts adorned with rhinestones and other sparkly gems. Sweatshirts and sweaters with football or hockey team logos on them—also with gems, where possible—are accepted as casual and even semiformal wear anytime of year. This is a ver
y different approach from my mom-community in New York, where women wear a lot of black, and gems are not fun or fake or splattered all over your Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt. Gems are on your fingers or in your ears, and they are real and serious.

  I think what I am facing now is the fact that I need to get the “Player” off my mom uniform and into my life. I need to get back to bedazzling—not because a bedazzled Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt looks better than a black cashmere sweater, but because bedazzling is itself a beautiful activity.

  I’m reminded of Emily Dickinson’s words, “Beauty—be not caused—It is.” I think this speaks to the trickiest thing to embrace about fashion and style, which is that the product of all the effort is ultimately not that important. This is hard to accept because it’s absurd. But I think it’s the truth: you can’t actually make yourself beautiful.

  It’s similar to writing: what’s beautiful about writing is not the words. The words are a recording of the beautiful thing. The words are a recording of the beautiful thing in the person, the thing that becomes beautified only by action, and ultimately becomes most beautified only by the most beautiful action of all—love. This thing, this transmitter of beauty, is ultimately unadornable and undecoratable. It is invisible and it bedazzles. That we can’t see or touch it should not stop us from paying homage to it, and we do this by imitating it. We do this by sincerely and wholeheartedly beautifying to no end.