zonkered.net

I’m developing sort of a thing for blazers and jackets. It’s weird, because I’ve never been that into them before.

I own, like any sensible person who works in the semi-corporate world and has to go on interviews, two suits that include jackets. One’s tweed with a pencil skirt and mandarin collared jacket; the other is basic black with a gored skirt and velvet details. They don’t, in all honesty, see a lot of use. I wear the tweed pencil skirt a lot in the winter months, but my office is on the extremely casual end of business casual – I wear jeans a couple of times a week and once spent an entire week wearing flip-flops while recovering from nasty sunburn gained on a trip to Portugal. No one cared. We are not a formal office – just ask the consultant across the room in the board shorts.

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You know, I’m 5’8″ tall. Okay, fine, it’s really 5’7″, but the point is I’m taller by either one or two inches than the average American woman, and yet I cannot for the life of me find a pair of jeans that are not too long. Why is this? Is there a vast conspiracy to make me wear heels with my denim, because in all honesty: No. No, that is not going to happen. I won’t even wear heels with a dress. I may wear heels when I go to opera in April, but I’ll be sitting down the entire damn time. I wear heels for interviews, which are blissfully few and far between.

I will not wear heels with bootcut jeans at work on a Monday, dammit, and you can’t make me. I’ll wear my cowboy boots instead.

Sure would be awfully nice if I could wear flats, though. Do I need to buy short length to do that?

I’ve done a lot of shopping at Ann Taylor Loft this year – sweaters, jewelry, shoes, dresses – but I’m fairly sure that this is it for the year. Appropriately, it’s a party dress that would be great for ringing in 2010 except for the facts that a) it’s not arriving until January 12th and b) I’m spending NYE on the couch.

In fact, I am not entirely sure when the next occasion calling for formalwear will even be, but let’s disregard those little details:

This is it for 2009, people. No more shopping until 2010.

I can always wear it to the opera in April, I suppose.

Lindsay at Jezebel posted a video yesterday of one of the Gap’s holiday ads in a post entitled: New Gap Commercial With Little Girls Is, Yeah, A Little Gross. I’m…not seeing it, honestly.  Neither are most of the commenters.

The sticking point is apparently at :08, where one of the girls does a hip-pop. Now, I can’t dance. I really can’t dance. I can’t dance so much that I took weight training in college instead of a class in modern dance (which was considerably closer to my dorm, I might add), and even I know that hip popping is pretty much a standard in jazz and modern dance, not to mention modern cheerleading. The move itself isn’t sexual. It’s certainly not inherently sexual when performed by little girls in sweaters, tights, and boots.

But about 500 commenters agree with me there, and it’s not the thing that’s bugging me now. What’s bugging me are the comments like this one:

“it’s sick, quite frankly, that little girls would care so much about their clothing– how materialistic.”

This isn’t the only comment of this kind on the post – there are several in the vein of “they’re too young to care about their shoes!” – but this was definitely the most to the point.

Part of my reaction to it is increduality – I was pretty tomboyish after I got over my initial frilly dress phase around age seven, and I spent elementary school dying for a pair of Guess jeans. I got to go to the Gap for my back-to-school clothes for the first time when I was 12 and was so thrilled. I wanted my tennis shoes and sturdy sandals that I ran around to be cute.

And this is from someone who didn’t pay attention to fashion and what really looked nice until sometime in college, or possibly grad school.

There’s nothing wrong with being interested in clothes at the age of 8. There’s also nothing wrong with not being interested in them at that age (or any other). Kids are just as individual as adults, people. Really.