Put Together
2 October 2006
It has come to my attention, because the best friends have told me so, that I give the impression of being totally put together.
And this is despite regularly anointing myself with food spillages and professing that a napkin the size of a tablecloth is my only salvation.
It doesn’t matter that I often feel like a walking, talking olive-oil stain. Apparently people believe the illusion I weave with what I wear.
ILLUSION is the operative word here, Bloggers!
I am an illusionist with fashion: I work it so that the end result, my look, is merely a façade - the image I wish, at any given time, to present to the world.
And this is fine. Since that’s what fashion is all about, creating an image d’jour!
I mean didn’t you ever play dress-ups when you were a kid? Fast-forward 20, 30-plus years and really that’s what we’re still doing with our clothes, playing at trying on different personas.
But for God’s sake, don’t over-identify anyone with her persona. We are not the image we project when we dress up.
We are not what we wear or how we appear!
There is always more than meets the eye such that putting the emphasis on appearances alone negates all the really good stuff, and perhaps some really dark stuff, going on behind our personas.
Think Princess Diana: When she was at her skinniest, but nevertheless designerly glam, my mum Beaty, refused to believe she was bulimic. “What are they talking about? She looks gorgeous! She’s thin because she’s running around looking after a young baby!”
Gawd, was Beaty hypnotized by the illusion of appearances, or what!
When fashion and the accompanying image become a means to mask dark stuff, that’s when best friends need to say something. Well, that’s if you’re aware something dark is being masked.
One way to find out is to spend equal amounts of time talking with your girlfriends about dressing up, image, and what’s going on behind the “look d’jour.”
Call it a BMI for our psychological Selves where the ratio of time we devote to fashion and then talking about it, should not exceed the time devoted to exploring and sharing our inner world with trusted friends.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:49 pm