Betty Draper is my Style Icon.

So Mad Men is the best show on television for obvious reasons, but one of the things about the show that keeps me ever intrigued is Betty Draper’s (played by January Jones) dresses. The girl, while lacking in maturity and good parenting skills, definitely has style. I never tire of seeing her parade around in gorgeous dresses that are the epitome of understated sophistication.

I’ve been dying to go to a fabric store as of late so that I can pick up some pretty patterned fabric and experiment with my sewing machine to see if I can figure out how to make a simple and elegant 1960′s house dress a la Betty Draper. I die for her wardrobe.

My Hair as a Marker of Milestones.

Change, in my life, has not come easily or lightly. I’m one of those people who doesn’t like change and who have a dramatic reaction when change inevitably comes. I remember when I was in high school, my parents got a new refrigerator that opened from the opposite side than the previous one had, and it took my months to get over it. As I get older, I have an easier time dealing with change: no fits, less crying, just some inner turmoil that can be disguised. But in the changes that I’ve experienced in the past four years of college, I’ve realized that there’s one thing that I can easily and unemotionally change: my hair.

I’ve changed my hair a lot in the past couple of years, and it has always been at a time of transformation or transition. I guess I like the symbolism of meeting a metaphysical or emotional change with a physically-manifested change. It makes me feel less afraid of what may come.

In the beginning, I had very long hair.

May 2008
This is what my hair looked like two years ago. It had survived multiple bleachings and an ill-fated attempt at dreadlocks, and though it was damaged like hell, I loved it because it was long. I was very attached, and I never wanted to cut it.

June 2008
I cut my hair at the end of my sophomore year. It marked the halfway point of my college career, my first real break-up, and my first time leaving my family and the continent on my trip to South Africa. On a practical level, I wanted a lower-maintenance haircut for when I went abroad; but this haircut encompasses my taking the plunge, letting go of the familiar and the comfortable in favor of something new and strange. After I cut my hair, my life followed suit.

December 2008
I cut my hair again on my 21st birthday. It marked my coming-of-age as an adult, getting over my break-up, overcoming an existential crisis and letting go of my fear of change. I had always wanted short short hair, but was too afraid that it wouldn’t look good or that it would never grow out. I made a conscious decision to cut my hair because I didn’t want to regret not doing it later, or wonder about what could have been for the rest of my life. So I did it, and it was the first haircut I got that didn’t make me cry; I even liked it.

March, 2010
I’ve let my hair grow out, but I changed my hair color to mark my college graduation. I loved my platinum hair, but it was time to move on; I have to enter the working world now, and I want to be taken seriously, which I don’t think my platinum hair would allow. It was really hard to let go of my super-blonde hair because it’s been that way for so long that it feels inextricably linked to my identity. But at the same time, I don’t feel like I need to have an extreme hair color anymore to make me unique. There’s more to me than my hair, and those are the things that make me stand out.

into the new, if there’s such a thing.

i was reading a book review on npr’s website the other day for a book called baba yaga laid an egg by dubravka ugresic. the wonderful cover art drew me in, but i was especially interested to learn that this book was one of several novels that are part of the canongate myths project, which enlists some of the greatest writers from around the world to reimagine and retell ancient myths in their own style.

i love the concept of this project! it’s such a wonderful way to honor literary traditions and storytelling. i’ve thinking a lot lately about the task of the writer: to tell a story that’s already been told, but to make it new. every story has already been told in one form or another, but all writers tell stories differently, with their own unique form and voice, and that’s what separates the brilliant writers from the mediocre. virginia woolf and james joyce, for example, innovated the language of prose through their creation of the stream-of-consciousness form, but they didn’t create it ex nihilo (or, “from nothing,” if you don’t speak latin (which i certainly don’t)): they had to have a starting point (the english language), but they used what they had to work with to revivify it and make it something original and fresh.

and really, this concept of newness is everywhere in my life lately: i read an article in the new york times this morning about fashion week, in which the writer asserted that the fashion industry fails in its striving toward newness, that nothing is innovative or evolutionary and that all the same people are invited to the shows, that it’s all “amusing variations on a well-rehearsed theme” (marc jacobs is also quoted in this article as saying, i suspect without a hint of irony, “there’s so much striving for newness now that newness feels less new.”). while i think there’s certainly truth in that, i wonder what part of life isn’t a variation on a theme; we all are born, live, work, grow old and die. everyone. but it’s how we choose different paths and make different decisions from the person next to us that make our lives unique and make us individuals. “newness” is relative because it’s all been done before. but with fashion, as with writing, it’s not simply regurgitation: there are nuanced alterations and changes that make it something unique, make it like a fingerprint for the artist that can be used to identify it as the creation of that person for all of time.

ah, to create. such a daunting task, but with myriad possibilities. which is maybe what makes it so daunting.

the art of fashion (in a completely un-ironic sense)

last week in my women’s studies class, we had a discussion about clothing and how the different ways that women dress can walk a fine line between confidence and desire for sexual attention. some students even went so far as to suggest, subtly, that women who dress provocatively are deserving of the stigma that surrounds the way they choose to dress themselves. i’ve been ruminating on this idea ever since, trying to make sense of what i believe are really reductive statements.

quick history lesson: in victorian england, everyone was enamored with the idea of physiognomy, or the notion that one could know a person’s inner morality just by observing their outward appearance. so if you were a pretty young woman, that meant that you were very moral and innocent; or if you had a large forehead, that meant that you were intelligent and passionate (or something equally ridiculous). then with the industrial revolution and the advent of cities, one had to be able to get a sense of the person walking next to them in the street in a split-second, because you didn’t have enough time to employ the “science” of physiognomy as you were passing them. so how did one get a sense of other people? by their clothing. if a man was dressed in the typical fashion of a middle-class gentleman, one could assume instantaneously that he was in fact a gentleman. this was how social mobility came to exist: by being able to look, and more specifically dress, the part of whoever you wanted to be.

i think this sentiment still exists today, especially for women. it’s so easy for women (and men, i suppose) to make value and character judgments on other women based on what they’re wearing. “her breasts are basically falling out of her top… she must be a slut. her skirt is so short that i have a detailed view of her reproductive organs… she just wants attention. she has a brand new fendi purse… she must be loaded.” these statements reduce women to a single dimension, to a caricature almost, and not based on anything other than the faux science of physiognomy. it’s a shame that women can’t dress to show off their bodies because they’re comfortable and happy with the way they look without being perceived as only trying to pique the male gaze and sexualize themselves; it’s a double-standard that men would never be forced to live by.

on a positive note, i think that clothing, and fashion in general, has that socially mobilizing effect today too. obviously, if you have something that’s expensive (or something that even just looks expensive) you will be perceived as a person of wealth. but even the variance of styles that one person can exhibit in the course of a week lends so much creativity and fluidity to embracing myriad aspects of oneself. that’s why i love VOGUE so much (and will defend it to the death against anyone who dares blaspheme its divinity): it’s not a trash magazine that focuses on celebrity gossip or diet fads or a wild sex life (coughCOSMOPOLITANcough), but a magazine that is truly dedicated to the art of fashion, to the movement and mobility of it, to the beauty of multi-dimensionality that can be expressed through clothing. have you ever seen a spread in VOGUE? the photography and production is gorgeous.

the same woman can be serious and sophisticated in an yves saint laurent blouse and briefs, and then be quirky and fun-loving in a rochas floral silk blouse and skirt. she can interact with two men without being objectified, and be beautiful and alluring whilst fully clothes. despite all of the ads that appear in VOGUE, i somehow never feel like a consumer; i never feel like i’m being sold the current standard of sexy or “beauty.” seeing images like these in VOGE makes me feel like i’m allowed to be all the things that i am, that i can move from one creative interpretive ensemble to the next and still maintain my essence and my beauty and my layers, as a woman and as an individual.

and sometimes i feel like VOGUE is a lone wolf in that respect, and that i’m a lone wolf in experiencing the response that i have to it.

thursday tidbits.

[i often want to acknowledge things or events but don't quite want to write a full post about it (or don't have enough to say about it to constitute a worthwhile post) so i think i'm going to start jumbling all of it together into one big amorphous blob once a week... hence, thursday tidbits.]

1. bill clinton is badass. say what you will about his personal life and habits, but the man is a diplomatic wizard when it comes to foreign policy.

2. i hear a lot of people say negative things about the ending of 500 days of summer, but i thought it was really poignant. yeah, it was cutesy and clever, but i thought it was a really powerful to see the interim between relationships and then end the movie with a subtle metaphor that posits relationships as a simple changing of seasons. it rang true for me. if you haven’t seen the movie, see it and tell me what you think about the ending.

3. i watched annie hall the other day and discovered two things: 1) that i am intensely attracted to woody allen simply because he’s overwhelmingly jewish (the same reason i’m attracted to larry david), and 2) that diane keaton’s style in this movie is amazing.

gaaaahhh, if i was a stick figure like she is, i would totally be rocking the baggy high-waisted pants with a vest and bowler hat.

4. i read an article about how the congolese government is using homosexual rape as a tactic to suppress rebels, and it makes me incredibly sad. rape is so much a synonym for power and will always inflict shame and violence on the victim, and that makes me think that rape will probably never cease to exist.

5. i watched a trailer for the lovely bones, and i’m skeptical. i really loved the book, and i feel like whenever hollywood tries to put a good piece of literature into film form, it always ends up sub par at best. but luckily, bad movies that are based on good books never seem to damage the book’s reputation (ie. the bonfire of the vanities). i’m hopeful simply because peter jackson is directing, but the casting choices were poor. it will have to be really good to impress me.

6. i have recently discovered the welcome wagon, and it’s slowly creeping its way into my favorite albums of the year list. i have a sneaking suspicion, however, that this “preacher and his cute wife singing” thing is really a ploy to cover up the fact that it is actually sufjan doing all the singing and music. i mean, seriously, could the welcome wagon sound any more like sufjan? i know he had some hand in their album being made, but the similarities between the two are uncanny. which is definitely not a bad thing. i’m dying for some new sufjan tunes.