When I was a girl --
back in the days when Elvis was discovering that guys could bump
and grind, too -- getting dressed was fun.
Clothes were pretty
in those days. I can still remember some dresses I loved:
white linen
sleeveless sheath with a blue and aqua silk jacket and matching
bow at the neck
black lace
over pink net evening dress with a pink cummerbund that tied in
a huge bow in the back
a charcoal-gray
princess-styled wool dress.
And you knew what sort
of thing to wear, because there were rules for dressing. You wore
a hat (or a veil with a bow that sat on top of your head) for
weddings, funerals, church, job interviews, and formal teas. You
wore gloves whenever you went out: lined black kid for winter,
white cotton for summer, and above-the-elbow white gloves with
a formal dress. You wore a suit for work and lunch with the girls.
You wore a dress for dinner, a date, or the theatre. You dressed
up for the theatre and dressed up even more for the opera.
You gave a lot of thought
to accessories -- your gloves matched your hat and your purse
matched your shoes -- and wanted people to know you'd done your
best to look good.
But it's all different
now.
I remember when I first
realized that none of the rules applied any longer. I was invited
to the wedding of a friend's son. It was an early evening candlelight
ceremony with a reception at a country club. I wore a taupe chiffon
knee-length dress with a beaded Peter Pan collar and cuffs. And
the only one more dressed up was the bride. The mother of the
groom wore a plain cotton dress. And at least half of the guests
were in blue jeans and t-shirts.
I haven't given up
completely -- I still try to look my best, but it's so much harder
now, because you have to look as if you didn't try at all. You're
supposed to look as if you grabbed the first thing in the closet
and the colors just happened to go together.
It's okay if your belly-button
shows; it's okay if your clothes are torn, and it's okay if you
have pieces of metal in weird parts of your body that also show.
Even the designers have failed us. I saw an ad a year or so ago
for a dress that was designed to show your panties. It's been
so long since I've worn a dress I don't even know what my size
is. I do my best but these days, I never hit the mark. I'm always
too dressed up or not dressed up enough.
And if I still had
that white sheath with the blue and aqua jacket and bow (and if
I could fit in it), I'd wear it and not give a hoot who knew I
loved it.
Laura W. Haywood is
a graduate of Finch College. Her career includes representing
newspapers for national advertising when she was the only woman
repping papers in New York at the time. Stints in public relations
and development followed at Jacksonville and Princeton Universities
as well as one in public relations for a major corporation. Laura's
fiction and poetry has won a number of prizes and has appeared
in The New York Times ("Metropolitan Diary"), Ellery Queen Mystery
Magazine, Galaxy, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and
a number of other magazines and anthologies. She edited or co-edited
(with Isaac Asimov) two science fiction and one mystery anthology.
Laura is the author of the recently published novel "The
Honor of the Ken."
