Today, I
tried on WAY too many glittery things.
Think, glitter-mania
in a dressing room with blaring non-secular Bloomies-tunes in the background.
Oh, and it’s
Hannukah.
How apropos.
A festival of lights bouncing off my body as if there were 8 million days without oil instead of
eight.
Flash back
to Friday’s “Festivus” celebration with colleagues-turned-friends and I find
myself marinating on the elusiveness of “glitter.”
Snowflake
table décor became an instrument to sparkle ourselves silver as we lured in
fellows for a dose –three friends, three strangers dusting each other with table
flakes as if it were fairy dust.
What is it
about the holiday season and glitter? Sequins. Sparkles. Something that shines
bright under light?
What is it
that happens to me when time and time again, season after season, I buy random
sparkly tops that I wear ONCE a year and then spend hours in a dressing room the
following year trying on additional unflattering sparkly garments that reflect
nothing of my personal style and in actuality make me look like one big ass
ornament. But seriously.
I had a
theory once that bridesmaid dresses were really for women to serve as real life
floral arrangements, you know, to decorate the wedding venue—hence the color of
the dresses like periwinkle, coral, and shimmery taupe. I was a
“flower” of the aforementioned colors and then some --so I can almost prove
this theory. But that is neither here nor there.
Now I am
starting to think that holiday fashion much like bridesmaid dresses has a
hidden agenda: to turn us all into inanimate objects—glitter balls resembling
those hanging on a tree. “Ugly-sweater” parties to boot though mocking the
tradition of “the Xmas sweater” also substantiate this point as they turn us
into those twinkled up post cards you get in the mail from distant cousins or
college friends you haven’t seen in ages. Glitter balls and post cards.
Inanimate objects.
So as not to
sound like a Grinch, I should actually share that I kind of LOVE glitter. In
the late nineties (wow, I am getting old); glitter was a-plenty in my make-up cabinet.
For reals. I used to pepper my brow line with sparkly colors a clown might wear
– green, purple, and hot pink. And I would shimmer up my chest with bronzer and
sometimes, SOMETIMES, I would even place a rhinestone in the corner of my
exaggerated lined eyes.
This is
true. Who was that girl?
My college
roommates can testify that painting my face was a past time, one that may have
started as some sort of skewed artistic expression, but one I owned nonetheless
and have ever since repressed.
It is true I
have minimized the body bling. The silver glittery nail polish has turned
“minimalistic” (the real name of the polish color!) and my attire has faded. I am not sure if all of this was a mere consequence of adulthood, or the
byproduct of studying gender studies in graduate school, but either way, I shut
it down. It has been squashed.
Well, kind
of.
Every year I try on those dresses (as I said earlier), I laugh at myself when I imagine my face dangling from a tree or my body drowning in red sequins. Every year now, I huff out of the department store feeling defeated because the holiday dresses make me look like I belong in a Saturday Night Live skit. And every year, I cloak my defeat in sarcasm by teasing the masses in my mind at parties for their lack of originality or ingenuity in their holiday wardrobe. I mean, I learned in college that “fashion” is a way of constructing our identities…so what does it mean if we all go to holiday parties glitter? And what’s more, why is it more fashionably correct to wear a sequin top in December, for example? I mean, what if I decided to go to a spring BBQ in a gold sequin top? Or a green sequin dress? Why do the bells ringing, the snow glittering, the sweets sprinkling need to be superimposed unto our bodies?
What am I
really getting at anyhow?
In an
attempt to find an outfit for a holiday party this weekend, I tried on way too
much glitter. I came home in holiday overload and acknowledged that I might just
have to wear one of my many black party dresses – however they may fit since I
have a ways to go on this darn challenge. I came home, frustrated, ready to
surrender to jeans and a black lace top. My uniform.
When I found
one. I found one.
I found one
that didn’t fit me three months ago. (Thank you, challenge). I found one that
is very party-appropriate with a little chiffon. I found one that is a year or
two old but still fashion-forward. (Or not, the host will tell me).
Importantly,
I found one that will look fabulous with my glittery gold heels. Or my pewter
sequined heels. Or my nude heels with rhinestones and spikes.
Wait, what?
