Today is the last day of the Dress your best challenge week. It's not easy to talk about what you like about your body, something that other bloggers have noted (Kendi, for example, wrote about how it's so much easier to make fun of one's body). Today, I'm dressing to emphasize my hips. I've had a love/hate thing with my hips for a while, and I'm starting to love the more. I hated them because I thought they made me look unbalanced. To 15-22 year old Rad, a small bust should equal narrow hips, like Diane Keaton. But this how I'm built and you can't change your skeleton. No amount of misguided working out in high school and college ever changed the width of my hip bones and the tops of my thigh bones.
Over time, I learned appreciate how the made me look nice in certain kinds of clothing, like pencil skirts. They give me what few curves I have. While it is a pain in the butt to find pants or skirts that can fit my waist and my hips, I've heard that the bigger difference means certain health advantages (we'll see about that). So to appreciate my hips, I showing them off (for a day of working the home office) in what makes them look good- well fitting* low rise boot cut jeans. I've read that longer torsoed gals like me should wear medium to higher rise jeans, but my hips can have some of the spot light too. Plus, proportion flattery be damned, but these are the only kinds of jeans that I can fit right off the rack.**
Jeans: Uniqlo
Belt: borrowed from fella
Top: Lux, thrifted
Scarf: via Ebay
Shoes: Ecco
*This is temporary. Once I've been sitting for more than few minutes, they stretch out. Damn you, awesome jeans that have no stretch in the material!
** I said earlier that my legs made off the rack pants easy to fit. I was just talking about the inseam, not the whole waist/hips conundrum.
(Once again, Lula the chupacobra cat has decided to lord over my outfit photos. She is possibly semi-feral, so believe me when I say that standing in the photos is something that she decides to do. In fact, whenever I move stuff around to take pictures, she runs into our office before I close this door.)
Edit: I'll be featuring more of these "vintage" scarves I got for a song on Ebay the next few weeks. I'll try not to overload on them. Blokey was instantly amused by the acquisition, but not entirely on board. He wore the one from yesterday, ascot style, and serenaded me with "Dedicated Follower of Fashion." I have the sneaking suspicion that he might be making fun.
