Wardrobe Malfunction
29 May
In the presence of other girls, I sometimes feel like an alien — or perhaps it feels like _they_ are aliens, speaking an alien language, performing alien rituals, speaking about subjects completely alien to me. Why, I ask myself often, is it that they do not talk about things that are comprehensible? Things such as computers and football, last night’s match, where you can get a pint of fresh Belgian beer? Instead, because of the strange nature of things, how we came to possess anatomically similar, err, organs, I am assumed to possess such characteristics alien to me until proven utterly inept.
Such as shopping.
Shopping. On its own, nothing threatening. I can fathom it — and especially enjoy it — when it’s about shopping for camera gear and computer accessories. I can stand inside a hardware shop and admire, say, a shiny new faucet, a set of universal travel adapters, all kinds of cable extensions, power drills (though I don’t use them — so no jokes about dykes and power drills please!). But inside Zara, I’m at a loss. I go from dress to dress, searching for one which triggers the “I want this so much I want to buy it now” feeling, the one similar to how I feel when I’m holding a Canon 5D with a 24-70L in my hands. I feel nothing. I go to a top I’m told looks smashing — nada, nothing about it gives me the feeling of smashing-ness, except for how my head imagines itself against the mirror. Rather the strange ritual of queuing up in a line with 20 other women, each holding “3 pieces of garments”, then given a number tag while staff size you up on the likelihood of being a shoplifter, all of it makes me want to scream at the Zara salesgirl: what, you think I want to steal THIS thing which does absolutely nothing for me?! Every time I look at the price tags I think of what I could buy with that money. My thought process goes like this: look at price tag, register shock on face, think “for the price of this piece of satin-ish something I don’t understand, I could buy my B+W circular polariser.” My preferred shopping routine is not much different from your average straight male’s. Walk into store(s), analyze what’s on offer with one quick cursory glance, pick up series of mismatched pieces, don’t bother to try them because it’s too much of a hassle having to strip and remove my shoes only to put them back on again, buy everything I need for a year in five minutes. Of course, I’m highly aware of the strong possibilities that there are straight men out there who are better at this than I am.
Every once in a while though, I have to care, or try to. Like prom. I had willed myself not to think about prom, and its many troublesome details, until the day before. Who had time to think about hair, nails, accessories, shoes, when all I wanted was to be done with high school? Thanks to S., the straight man who is better at this than I am, I managed to turn up “looking fine”:http://flickr.com/photos/skinnylatte/6607435/. He swept through the department stores and boutiques while I tagged along, still utterly uninterested, and I swear if he could he would have tried on the dresses for me, just to spare us both the agony. He bought my dress and shoes and necklaces the day before prom, and scheduled hair and nail appointments for the next afternoon. I am useless.
So. My brother gets married this weekend, and I’m half determined not to look like a tramp; the other half is inertia and resistance. Because of how I seem to live a good part of my life on the road, my wardrobe really consists of “stuff I can wear while crossing an overland border”. Most girls have wardrobes compartmentalized into stuff they can wear to the clubs, formal wear, school clothes, etc. I am not exaggerating when I say my clothes are divided into “stuff I can wear on a short bus journey”, “stuff I can wear on an overnight train in sleeper class”, “stuff I can wear on an overnight train in 3AC”, and “stuff I can wear for 40 hours continuously — on a train — and which won’t be icky until I find a hotel at 7 am after day 3 of my train ride”. I’m sure you’re all beginning to see my problem.
It’s not that I’m not interested in clothes. I just hate the process of scouting for them, and of locating them. My aim is to be rich enough to hire a personal style dictator advisor, personal shopper, and someone who lives permanently in my wardrobe and can find what I want at my command. Z succeeds on the first two counts (which is partly why I don’t look like that much of a tramp these days), but I’m not sure she’s keen on the last. One day, I promise this to all of you who feel the same way (all four of you), I will set up a reform nudist colony in a secluded island, and clothes will be banned. The only shops we will have are camera shops and computer shops. Um. I think.
