A Letter to My Younger Self

Dear Sixteen-Year-Old Emily,

First off, let me prove to you that this letter really comes from your older self: your favorite thing you've drawn since high school started is actually just a crummy sketch of Pete Scheck and a saxophone. (And let me sort of reassure you, after such public embarrassment, that until publishing this letter, you never told a soul about that.)

#tbt to being sixteen.

What I've Learned From My Parents

One thing you might not know about me is that I'm quite close with my dad. I've written quite a bit about the women in my family before, but recently I realized that surprisingly, I haven't really shared too much about my dad.

Style vs. Fashion

Given that this is primarily a blog about retro-inspired style, you might not be *too* surprised to learn that I'm not much for keeping up with fashion trends. I know what I like (full skirts, the color red, anything and everything space-related, sparkly brooches) and I'm totally a creature of habit. 

This outfit includes many of my sartorial faves: red, full skirts, a fun print, sparkles, and more red!

On Living One's Life as a Work of Art

One consequence of adopting a more retro/vintage-inspired manner of dress is a serious uptick in the amount of attention your clothing attracts. Thus far, I've been lucky enough to avoid any unkind, unpleasant remarks from total strangers, but even positive attention can be a bit overwhelming if you're shy or just not interested in dealing with comments from the general public. While I don't much mind occasionally being stared at, for some, this attention is enough to put them off dressing as they'd like, which makes me terribly sad.

One Year in Chicago

One year ago today, Jeff and I arrived in Chicago. Over the past few days, I've spent quite a bit of time marveling over how much difference a year makes. When we left LA, I was terrified. All my earthly possessions (save the ones I jammed in Jeff's car) were on a truck, my parents had taken my car to New York to live with them indefinitely, I was moving to an entirely new city with no job and no firm plans, and after eight years on the academic track, I was preparing for a major career change. Seeing as I'm a major creature of habit, this move to the Midwest was a massive leap of faith.

A Body-Positive Manifesto

Lately, I've been pretty much eating and wearing whatever I feel like, and let me tell you, it's pretty glorious. It's also somewhat unprecedented in my life. For almost as long as I can remember, I've spent a lot of my time thinking about what I'm eating and mentally counting calories, or worrying about how to 'make up' for things I ate.

In the past year or so, though, I feel like those thoughts have finally begun to wither away, replaced by thoughts of 'is this good for my body? Am I eating nutritious things? Will this behavior/food help me live well?' And when I decide to eat things purely because they're delicious, I don't feel the terrible remorse that used to ruin the act of indulgence.

I like to eat things like this!

Body Positivity Week

Being surrounded by supportive, positive women is one of the best things about jumping into the blogging world. It's helped me to expand my comfort zone, style-wise, and venture into the Wide World of Crop-tops, and more importantly, it's helped me to feel more at home in my own skin to see women constantly building each other up and sending out messages of self-love and acceptance. Most of my media consumption has shifted from 'traditional' outlets (television, style and beauty magazines, and more 'mainstream' style blogs and clothing stores), and it's amazing how much better I've felt since I withdrew from a world that bombards women with constant messages of not-enough-ness: not thin enough, not pretty enough, not tall enough, not white enough, not male-gaze-friendly enough.

Those anti-woman messages are, frankly, utter bullshit. (My apologies if this profanity offends you. In this case, I think it's the right word for the job.) So, since I missed the boat on Body Positivity Week back in May, I'm declaring this my own personal Body Positivity Week. Please join me!

On Body Acceptance

What's that I see? A crop top?!? Doth mine eyes deceive me?

Nah, you're not seeing things: I'm stepping wayyyy outside my comfort zone today, and it feels pretty awesome. I came across this turquoise crop top and immediately, a war broke out in my mind between the "it would match my Mary Blair umbrella skirt perfectly" faction and the "we don't show our midriff ever" camp. Obviously, the matchy-matchy contingent carried the day, so here I stand, proudly flaunting my midriff and flouting that stupid '24 Things You Shouldn't Wear After 30' post. (Not going to link to it, because she doesn't deserve it. For a much better take on what you can/can't wear after 30, see this brilliant post.)

On Ethical Shopping, Part II

Way back in February, I shared some of my thoughts on more ethical shopping practices, and publicly committed myself to a more ethical approach to buying clothing. I'm happy to say that I've been largely successful at adhering to the principles I outlined there. While I failed at my no-buy month, I've kept to my plan of shopping with small, largely female-owned businesses, supporting domestic clothing manufacturing, and working towards lasting body confidence rather than buying new things to try to feel pretty. I'll write about my journey to body acceptance soon, I expect, but for today, I want to tackle two issues that didn't come up in my last foray into the ethics of clothes consumption: the environmental dimension and sizeism.

Before we dive into all of that, here are some photos of a dress that I can genuinely feel good about owning. It's the Kelly from Bernie Dexter in leopard print, it's made in the USA, and it's available in XS-4X. In these photos, I'm wearing it with ancient combat boots from Buffalo Exchange and leggings I borrowed from my little sister.

Black in Black (Spanish Fans, That Is)

As you might've gleaned from previous posts, I'm a major creature of habit. In fact, right before I started writing this post, I was reminded of that fact. Jeff and I were debating whether to watch a movie, and while I've had The Sting on my 'movies to see' list for literally years, when it actually came to the point of possibly watching a movie I'd never seen, I hemmed and hawed and finally said I'd rather watch Star Wars.

The weird thing about it, though, is that I'm generally glad I watched a new movie/listened to a new album/read a new book after the fact. Take, for example, my embrace of all things colorful after about a decade of monochromatic clothing. I wore nothing but black dresses for years, yet now when I look in my closet, I just don't gravitate toward them. The exception is this fantastic, new-to-me Heidi dress from Pinup Girl Clothing.

Why I Stopped Wearing Babydoll Dresses

Happy day-after-St.-Patty's, everyone! I hope everyone had a safe night and enjoyed themselves. I'm feeling much better than I did as a college student/young grad students on the day after St. Patrick's Day. Maturity FTW!

In college, I went crazy for babydoll dresses. For the first time in my life, the entire fashion world was at my fingertips, by which I mean that I had a brand-new debit card and high-speed internet. I ordered babydolls from Urban Outfitters and Forever 21, and tromped all over campus in knee-high boots, tights, and my array of short jersey dresses. This was definitely a step up for me, fashion-wise: for the first few months of college, I went to class in running shoes and workout clothes, so as to not waste any time between class and the gym. My undergrad advisor actually came out of his office one day during my senior year, while I was working in the student lounge, specifically to tell me that when he first knew me, I dressed like a dork. So babydolls were a major improvement.

This black dress, for example, was a staple from around 2005 or so until I finally retired it in 2008.

Me and Socrates, down by the schoolyard...

A Month of Colors

When I was about sixteen or so, I fell in love with the color black. I think there were a few different reasons for this. I was in the pit band for my high school's annual musicals for all four years of high school, as well as Jazz Band president from sophomore year onward, and the uniform for all of these performances was head-to-toe black. Dressing like that on non-performance days reminded me of something I really enjoyed. I was also super into the Cure at that point, and sort of a metalhead/punk to boot. Oh, and I had a seriously major beef with authority.

Anyway, my love affair with the absence of color relaxed a tad in college, and I got a little more comfortable wearing color after I moved to LA. In college, I'd wear neon pink with my black pants, skirts, and tops, and as a grad student, I discovered that teal and subtle prints were actually my friends. As recently as five years ago, though, my closet still basically looked the same whether or not the lights were on. Black dresses were my go-to outfit, and even when I wore a more colorful skirt, I'd generally default to a black top. The colors I preferred were saturated jewel tones, in smallish doses. In fact, I distinctly remember going shopping in Vegas in March 2015 with one of my best friends, who kept making fun of how I continually gravitated to the monochromatic clothing. At that point, I guess I finally realized I was getting a little too predictable!

Oh, how the times have changed. These days, I want my clothes to be fun! I still love a head-to-toe black outfit from time to time (obviously!), but reading so many awesome blogs and getting into Instagram has reminded me how much fun it is to dress expressively. There's so much one can convey through clothes, and I'm much more excited about it than I have been for a long time. I'm a loud, excitable person, and I want to wear things that turn my enthusiasm up to 11! I also think that moving to a place where the sun doesn't shine 355 days out of the year has really helped to solidify this rediscovery of color.

So here's my outfit roundup for the month of February. Every day for the entire month, I had color in my outfit. Most days, it was quite a lot of color; one day, it was just my beloved BB-8 and seriously red lipstick, but the color was there nonetheless!

On (More) Ethical Shopping

In my second post, I told you that this is a blog about my journeys. Whenever I go through a period of intense changes, I get hit with a tidal wave of introspection. As I’ve rediscovered my love of vintage-inspired style, I’ve given real thought to how I dress (and why! But that’s a post for another time.) And since I’m a political theorist dwelling with someone who teaches Marx for a living, it was inevitable that my thoughts would go from ‘oooooh pretty dress is pretty!’ to flights of ‘consumerism is bad’ fancy.

God, as envisioned by adjunct professors.

Rainbows in the Produce Aisle

A few days ago, I realized something. I am 95% certain that more people have read this fledgling blog than have read, or ever will read, the dissertation I spent over three years of my life writing. Now, I’m the type to see the humor in the unfortunate, so this initially struck me as one of those amusing ironies of life. At around 2AM that night, though, I remembered the stress that my dissertation occasioned: the constantly broken out skin (which has cleared up since I stopped teaching five classes at once), the days without any sort of human contact, and the agonizing over each and every sentence. Ah, there’s that downer feeling I should’ve had in the first place! But you’re probably here for the outfit, so let’s get on with it, shall we? I’ll get back to the ‘oh my god did I waste the bulk of my 20s?!?’ bit later (*spoiler alert:* the answer is ‘no.’)