I Just Wanna Look Good For You

Or, A Story About Losing One’s Style Through Motherhood

I have heard that many people had college experiences upon which they can now nostalgically reflect with genuine smiles and soft sighs of longing.

I am not one of those people. Lacking rose-colored glasses that also have the capacity to rewrite past events, I can’t think of much from my college years that I actually miss. On average, I get more sleep as a mother than I did as a chemical engineering student. Without the ever-present homework of yesteryear, my husband and I now get to spend our evenings together, and our relationship is [A LOT] healthier. Plus, mom guilt is more natural/constructive and less toxic/debilitating than student guilt — at least in my life. Overall, I am in a much better place now as a lonely stay-at-home mom than I was as a lonely top-tier ChemE.

And while it’s true that young motherhood is inherently isolating, this season has actually served to strengthen my friendships. No — that’s not quite right. It hasn’t strengthened my friendships so much as identified residual false comrades from school. For example, if we have an entire conversation and you don’t once ask about my son, odds are that we’re not truly friends — just people who know each other. In this way, Borealis has even been beneficial to the overall quality of my relationships; I just have fewer of them now.

Even so, there is one thing from college for which I deeply ache: my glamour.

I am fully aware that the preceding sentence causes me to sound remarkably like a fairy who has been flung into the world of mortals and is now unable to cast an illusionary spell upon the humans with which she suddenly finds herself surrounded. And, dear reader, I must be honest with you: that is exactly how I feel.

You see, by the beginning of sixteenth grade, I almost exclusively wore dresses. And not just sundresses, mind you. I wore virtually anything that could realistically market itself as a dress. I have a top that is literally just a large cotton-blend square with holes for my arms and head. I hid yoga pants under a voluminous dress that may have been someone’s drapes or wall tapestry in a different life. I once donned a tutu-ed, sequined wedding mini-dress for class. Prom, homecoming, and bridesmaids dresses were all on regular rotation. My closet was lush with labels like Ann Taylor, White House Black Market, Calvin Klein, Express, Banana Republic, and more. Some weird weight fluctuations had me guessing my size, so I purchased — and wore — items from size 0 to size 3XL. (It’s amazing how a belt can change the look of a muumuu.) I rarely repeated an outfit within the same month — and at one point, I counted over seventy dresses in my collection.

Almost all of these items came from either Goodwill or eBay — but I will save the discussion of my thrifting problem for a separate post. No, I believe the more pressing question at this point is a simple one: why?

Like most questions, this one is easier asked than answered. To give you a proper reason for why my life became defined by dresses, we must first indulge in a brief discussion of physical equilibrium. Don’t worry! — only cursory knowledge of physics is required here. We’re just going to peek at the difference between stable and unstable equilibria.

An example of stable equilibrium is a ball in a round-bottomed bowl. If you flick the ball from rest (assuming you don’t knock it right out of the bowl), the ball with roll up and down the inside of the bowl until it comes to rest at the same point where it initially sat. (The starting and ending places are the same, regardless of the direction of applied force.) 

Now, imagine you flip the bowl upside down and set the ball atop it once more. What will happen if you flick the ball now (assuming the bowl’s bottom doesn’t have a large rim)? Yes — the ball will roll over the edge, down the sides, across the table, and into the waiting maw of your dog, who was curious why you were playing with her toy in the first place. *That* is unstable equilibrium. (The ending place is different from the starting place and is highly influenced by the direction of applied force.)

What does that have to do with our discussion of dresses? you might reasonably ask. Well, I wanted to use the concept of unstable equilibrium, and I didn’t want to take for granted your fluency in the subject. You know what they say about assuming.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The reason I found myself wearing a different dress every day of the month was that I was in an unstable equilibrium. I would like to think that I used to dress more or less like most other girls — you know, jeans some days, yoga pants other days, and dresses on special occasions. Unbeknownst to me, however, my metaphorical bowl of fashion had somehow been turned upside-down. (I blame the nine years I spent wearing a uniform to school.)

For most of my peers, an unusual clothing choice would remain just that — unusual. Each classmate was a ball safely inside her own fashion dish. In contrast, the attention and ridicule I got for my wild outfits pushed me right over the edge of my inverted bowl.

I gave into dresses the same way I give into a Lindt chocolate bar: slowly at first, and then all at once. My choices seemed innocent enough in the beginning. A cotton sundress here, an old Winter Dance strapless number there. But then things started to pick up steam. A few fraternity formals. The athletes’ gala. A fancy dinner in Denver. My style started to spiral out of control.

The thing about dresses is that they basically change everything about how you approach your day. Sure, some dresses can absolutely be worn with Sperrys or All-Stars — just as some really don’t necessitate makeup either. I definitely owned pieces like that, but I owned even more that were *not* like that.

Consequently, I often found myself wearing heels and spending a bit more time on my makeup, although my hair typically remained a greasy rat’s nest. (Dry shampoo is a wonderful invention.) Fancy Fridays and Church Sundays were joined by Greek Mondays and Wow Wednesdays, and then the other days were slowly assimilated into the anti-pants Borg too.

I think the point of no return was just after I got married in spring 2016. The following summer, I worked a laboratory job, then completed a unit-operations-based course called Field Session. I wore a dress every day that summer — aside from situations in which contaminated water or superheated steam absolutely necessitated pants. A big reason for this clothing trend was that Colorado summers are bloody hot. A bigger reason, though, was that I just liked the shock and awe.

Picture this: It’s 9am in the microbiology lab. You’re a drowsy grad student who has just managed to drag yourself back to school to continue the interminable labor on your thesis. And as you push through the BlasterCard-access door…

“GOOD MORNING!” It’s a peppy, newly-married and newly-minted twenty-one-year old, decked out in heels and a cute cotton dress. The foil of every PhD candidate.

Shock! Awe!

Or picture this: It’s 1am in the computer lab, and final drafts are due in seven hours. A girl walks in, still huffing and puffing from the climb to the fourth floor, her arms laden with countless boxes of Scooby Snacks. After distributing the spoils of her midnight grocery run, she sits down to continue working. She appears to be wearing a rhinestone-studded prom dress and six-inch stilettos.

Shock! Awe!

Or even picture this: It’s just before 8am the next morning, and Prom Dress Girl is back in the computer lab. Her hair is up in an elaborate updo (to hide the grease), and she’s donned a slinky, backless black dress. Her wedges tap across the tile as she submits her team’s final draft.

Shock! Awe!

Why was it that my outfits caused so much shock and awe? Well, certainly part of it was that most girls at Mines don’t regularly wear dresses. I was anomalous in that I even owned more than a handful — let alone wore them. I think it’s safe to say, however, that the lion’s share of the surprise originated from my wildly audacious and borderline-inappropriate clothing choices. There was a lot of glitter. There were a lot of curves. There was a lot of skin. (Although, since breastfeeding has me accidentally flashing strangers on the regular now, I don’t feel that bad for all my classmates who saw a little too much flesh back in the day.) On the whole, I was basically like a washed-up Hollywood starlet… and I loved it.

I continued wearing dresses throughout my senior year. The sight of me in pants was so rare that it would inevitably result in someone asking me, “Are you feeling alright today?” — which only served to reinforce my uniform further.

When I became pregnant just after graduation, I compensated by buying bigger dresses, wearing sturdier heels, and investing in voluminous pantyhose. Over the long months, I became accustomed to dressing my son and me, adjusting my overly-glam style to accommodate his little body inside of mine. My maternity outfits dazzled (read: appalled) my coworkers and impressed (read: confused) my midwives. I even wore a long, striped tube-top dress and heels to Bible study the day before I went into labor.

And that, dear reader, is when things started to change. There’s this sort of willful ignorance that women maintain during pregnancy — an optimistic Pollyanna view of, “Once the baby’s born, I’ll finally get my body back!”. This promise, while alluring, is patently false. Not only does pregnancy do lasting damage on a woman’s body (goodbye crop tops, hello high-waisted everything), but the concept of individual body ownership in the mother-baby relationship is laughably misguided.

Here are some of the ways that my real-life postpartum style differed from my technicolor fantasies…

• “Now that there’s no big bowling ball attached to me, I’ll finally be able to catch up on my beauty sleep!” — Haha. Exchange expectations of rest for the reality of perpetual stress breakouts and raccoon eyes. At least I never had false hope for my hair.
• “I’ll finally be able to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes again!” — This one is true now, but not at first. The uterus takes its sweet, sweet time returning to its original size, as does the popped-balloon-textured skin of one’s baby-less belly. I was lucky in that genetics and breastfeeding helped me slough the baby weight faster than most, but some women end up carrying around the extra pounds for the rest of their lives. I now have two sets of baby-time clothes in storage: maternity (for the second and third trimesters) and “fluffy” (for the first and fourth trimesters). Even once I could fit into my old clothes again, there was the bigger issue of the following false belief….
• “I’ll finally be able to welcome Ann Taylor and Calvin Klein back into my heart and my life!” — No and no. This was the most dreadful and soul-crushing realization of young motherhood: the constant need for boob access. Especially in the first few months of life, the baby needs to be fed about every twenty seconds (give or take). Three dress necklines allow for “convenient” breastfeeding: cowl, strapless, and super-baggy-loose-fitting-no-shape-neckline. And so, although my boatneck and V-neck dresses have returned to my closet, they are now relegated to the far back, behind pieces which allow me to “whip it out” when necessary.

So where have these busted-up dreams brought me? Incidentally, back to where it all began: jeans some days, yoga pants other days, and dresses on special occasions.

Oh sure, I got away with my fallen-prom-queen look for quite a while after Bo’s birth. Since he was born in mid-February, the weather had begun to warm by the time I came out of my postpartum cocoon. I’d toss on a strapless dress, grab my muslim cover-up, and try not to show my guy friends too much nip — so newborn life was virtually no different from my college years. 

I had plenty of reasons to tend to my appearance during Bo’s first summer. Our family traveled a lot, and I did my best to seem as though: yes, I still have things mostly together (Note: I never had things mostly together); and no, this spit-up absolutely does not make me wish God had delayed our parenthood a few years. Additionally, a series of near-daily social excursions (the reason for which will probably come up in a subsequent post at some point) prompted me to keep my style young-ish, fun-ish, and flirty-ish — just as my coffee dates expected.

But then, as everything does, that time ended. People move. The seasons change. The sun dims. Tops sprout long sleeves, and hemlines creep downward as if tugged by the inexorable pull of gravity. And in the same way that I gave in to a perpetual parade of dresses, I’ve been reeled back into a world of pants.

It began simply enough. As the weather changed with the arrival of autumn, strapless dresses moved from “impractical” to “downright foolhardy”, and most of my long dresses just aren’t suitable for breastfeeding. And so, on colder days, I started wearing jeans and a sweatshirt — just as normal people do. Except, unlike normal people, I always experienced (and still experience) an intense identity crisis before reluctantly shimmying into my [high-waisted!] Abercrombie skinnies.

Lately, though, things have started to slip a little further. Like many stay-at-home moms, I have some days that take place exclusively in my house and yard. Since my time is now starkly divided into two camps — occupied/asleep Bo or needy/awake Bo — getting ready for the day is no longer the leisurely ritual that it was pre-baby. Instead, it’s now a desperate rush to wash my face and put on a bra before my son cries himself into my arms and effectively prevents me from doing any other two-handed activities. Plus, there’s not much shock and awe that can be had in the midst of our insular little lives, so the opportunity for audacious outfits has dwindled to virtually nothing. After all, there’s nothing more pitiful than getting all dressed up with nowhere to go.

If it sounds like I’m mildly depressed while writing this, that’s because… I am. I actually got legitimately jealous of the Morton Salt Girl this afternoon. 

As I ate “lunch” (a dry bowl of cereal at 2pm), I found myself becoming increasingly envious of and vocal toward this fictional character. 

“Oh, look at you in your super-short dress in the rain! What, is sky’s-out-thighs-out not good enough for you? You just get to bare your long, stretch-mark-free legs in any weather? And flaunt your high-neckline and spit-up-free long sleeves too? Well fine. I can still wear higher heels than those dinky kitten heels you have there. Also, your boobs are tiny.” (I’m not proud of that last part.)

Contemplating my current outfit, I definitely experience shock and awe — just not the kind that I like. Instead, it’s *shock!* that I’m wearing some sort of pants, and *awe!* at the seemingly unclassifiable nature of said clothing item. What are these — sweats? No, I think they’re too thin. Yoga pants? Maybe, although they’re kinda loose at the ankles and have this excess of fabric at the waist. Bell-bottom leggings? Yes, I think that’s it — I’m currently wearing fold-over-waisted, bell-bottom leggings, and I can with some confidence tell you that I have not worn this clothing item since high school. If these “pants” didn’t have a poorly-mended tear in a rather embarrassing location, they would have been donated to Goodwill long ago. Instead, they have somehow slithered back into my life, dragging down both my standards and my underwear. (I forgot to mention that the “leggings” are a bit too large on me.)

And so, to dramatically paraphrase Paul in Romans 8:31 — “What then shall I say to these things? If all clothing is against me, what style can be for me?”

None. No style can be for me.

But! There is hope. I may not be able to style myself anymore. I can’t put on eyeshadow or lip color every day. I can’t always remember to check for obvious panty lines. I can’t wear some of my favorite dresses anymore, and I can’t fit those retired pieces into the closet that I share with my borderline-shirt-hoarder husband. In short, I can no longer regularly look like “myself”.

These are all things that I can’t do. However, there is something that I can do: dress my son cute as H-E-double-hockey-sticks.

And that is exactly what I do.

I may not look cute anymore, but I can live vicariously through my son. So when old ladies compliment him on his outfits as though he had chosen them himself, I close my eyes, don an imaginary prom dress, and am a pretty pretty princess again. And in those precious, fleeting moments, I revel once more in the shock and awe that I’ve missed for so long.