Tag: lifestyle

Sparkle and Shine

The Breathe magazine Building Better Habits edition has a feature article titled Dressing the Part. About choosing outfits to improve your mood.

Per the editors:

“When you add a bit of sparkle, even it it’s just putting on a necklace with your T-shirt, you can feel more sparkling in life.”

There’s proof of this in real life. Take this: One day a person canceled our plans. Imagine getting dressed up then having nowhere to go.

It makes a positive difference on an ordinary day to be sitting on the couch in elevated clothes.

For those of us who can’t afford a $150/therapy session dressing up on the regular can’t be beat.

Though if you have clinical depression or otherwise need professional help I say reach out to find out where you can get that help.

With another birthday coming on I have what could be considering a shocking confession: In my life other things are taking priority.

It goes without saying that I’ll always make the effort to dress well.

Only today I realize that when so much going on in the world is not right there’s no shame in taking a beat to accept this tenet:

Everyone living on earth is doing the best we can with what we were given.

On a day that the shoes are not shined or our hair doesn’t look like a Drybar salon blowout: This is OK folks.

What this sad and at times screwed-up world needs is for us to understand that not everyone is going to show up dressed for an event when there’s no event.

To have compassion should be expected. Besides who wants to rack up debt buying clothes if it means we can’t afford to retire from our jobs at a decent age.

That said I’ll take the necklace to make an outfit sparkle so that I feel sparkling.

This chain reaction doesn’t have to cost $1,000 for the hardware.

There’s no shame in this love of adornment either.

Shine on!

Sartorial Self-Care

One way to defy the womanly norms expected of us in the patriarchy is to dress to please ourselves. No man is worth starving ourselves and becoming precariously thin for.

In coming blog entries I’ll talk about weight again. In here I’m going to write about real life-affirming self-care.

Years ago I thought the Visual Therapy Style Quiz was fascinating. Then I became disillusioned with it as I wasn’t satisfied with the outcome.

At the time it was like I was going through an existential fashion crisis by wondering what my style type was and should be.

Enter Allison Bornstein and her Three Word Method. She advocates that your Style is found by examining the clothes already hanging in your closet.

After two weeks I figured out my three words were Chic Quirky Confident.

Sartorial self-care can be the most joyous form of loving, accepting, and nurturing our authentic selves–and bodies at the weight we are today.

As a 200-pound woman when you dress sharp not only can you feel better you can inspire other 200-pound women to feel good and be confident in their bodies.

Having clothing confidence is not frivolous and isn’t shameful. The way to like ourselves is to dress in the ways that make us happy.

I for one don’t follow fashion trends unless I truly like the color or clothing items being touted.

When dressing up gives us such joy and happiness no one else should be judging us for liking fashion.

Turning to a clothing rack when the going gets tough can really be a form of self-care that sustains us.

In fact it can help us feel better when we’re not rail-thin!