Dedicated to the Fashion Week, Tommy Hilfiger and Nice Subway Strangers

It's Fashion Week in NY.  Did you know?  I only found out this Thursday under peculiar circumstances...

My closet ate two of my skirts and countless number of tops.  It's true and it can happen to you if you are not vigilant and stuff your closet with everything: from bags of old clothes prepared but never quite given to donations to ill fitting shoes you are not ready to part with to confiscated toys.  Somewhere in between the bag of unmatched children's socks and an old pillow are my missing clothes.  But to find them, I would need to organize my closet, so for now I am doing without.

The absence of skirts coupled with the fact that quite a few of my other skirts have salt and snot stains on them - winter, I know you are here! - resulted in having nothing to wear one fine Thursday morning.  Frantically going through every piece of clothing I own and rejecting them one by one - snot, too small, too summery, too dressy, salt, snot, yogurt, snot, too small, wore just yesterday, damn it, I should've left 5 minutes ago!!!!- I finally came to a piece that resulted in a "maybe".  It was kind of summery, somewhat ill-fitting (yes, I gained weight like I do every winter and summer and fall ) and a jumper to boot, but running 15 minutes late made the "maybe" piece a winner.  In retrospect I realize that even my closet exercised a better sense of fashion by refusing to consume this jumper.  But maybe my closet just got overly fastidious, after all it was Hilfiger! 

Despite my unseasonal garb, the entire day went just fine.  Going back to work, the subway was overflowing with people, but I don't think that it's fair to blame my jumper for it.  As I squeezed myself between two people who insisted on standing close to the doorways, I came standing right in front of a seated guy about my age.  "Asian," I thought, so I figured that I had about 50% chance of getting his seat at Delancey, only three stations away.  Yes, racial profiling in NY subway system is so rampant, it's appalling.  As I was shamelessly calculating my chances to get his seat, our eyes met and he uttered the unicorn of subway phrases, only few of the riders claim to have heard and scientifically proven to be non-existent.  "Would you like a seat?"

 I was caught a bit off-guard.  I was not pregnant - did he know something I didn't? - or sick or elderly.  But then my instincts kicked in and I said, "Sure!  You are being awfully nice.  Thank you."  "He must be getting off next stop," I told myself.  He did not.  I stubbornly pushed away the obvious.  "He must be a REALLY nice guy," I thought.  We passed Delancey, and my benefactor was still standing only a few inches away from me.  I looked at my jumper, my protruding stomach and remembered slightly greenish tint on my face from watching Interny till wee hours the night before; all the dots connected and I could no longer deny it.  "The nice SOB thinks I'm pregnant."  As this thought entered my mind, I glanced to the left and saw my neighbor studying pictures from the Fashion Week shows.  "Is it Fashion Week?  Again?  (Sigh.)  I am so out of vogue.  (Deep sigh.) I bet this fashionista would never wear a jumper that made her look pregnant, " I sulked.

And then another thought entered my mind.  "Too bad for her."  I got a seat in an over-crowded subway car.  Half of those well dressed fashionable women were getting killed by their high heels and poked in the ribs by neighbors' elbows.  And frumpy and pregnant looking me was comfortably sitting.  Right then and there I made a decision to upgrade the jumper to an all-season regular.  With that thought I peacefully drifted off to dream about fashion, jumpers and Interny.

PSA: skirt length and public transporation.

This is a public service announcement coming from your local prude.

Ladies, when you wear skirts that don't cover you knees while sitting down, you are exposing a lot more than you think. Those skirts almost always ride up and leave very, very little to the imagination. So little that anyone sitting across from you will know the color of your underwear. If that is the desired effect, then knock yourselves out. I would bet, however, that most of the women are clueless about this. They think that their skirt is not showing more than desired because it's not that short and covers the knee when standing up.

I could be wrong, of course, and in the age of bikinis no one cares about this. However, personally I would be petrified if I found out that half the F train car, filled with strangers with whom I ride pretty much every morning, has seen a whole lot more than I thought or cared to show. And would want someone to tell me.

So there.

The SubOne who laughs last laughs best

SubHub needed new swimming goggles. Since the kids were still on vacation, he took them with him to Modell's. According to SubHub, there was only one model of goggles, and since he was desperate he bought whatever they had. Those goggles, which were replacing sleek and good looking pair, were huge and covered half his face, which made him look like a cross between a geek and a pilot. When I came home from work and saw him try those goggles on, I must've laughed for five minutes straight. I could barely catch my breath.

SubHub took this reaction stoically and was not at all surprised. He said that kids reacted in the same way when he tried goggles in the store. The older two were rolling on the floor and the baby attempted jumping out of a car seat. "Do you know what they said when they finally were able to talk?" asked SubHub. I had no idea.

"Papa, you look just like Mommy."

Ahem.

Wake up and smell your BMI

I don't know if you are aware, but there has been a lot of fuss over some Australian beauty contestant Stephanie Naumoska whose height is 5'11" while her weight is only 108 pounds (BMI is around 15.1). I will not post pictures; those who are interested can easily find them on the net. They look scary, no healthy human being looks like that, whether she does or does not have an eating disorder.

While browsing CNN news clips, I accidentally stumbled upon the one with comments from a model Roshumba Williams about this situation. She said that the girl might not realize that she is underweight and might be in denial. Aside from the self-promoting and self-congratulatory tone of a very annoying Ms. Williams, who is not only a model, but also - get this? - a life style expert and an author of 2 books, Ms. Williams said that while being 5'11'', her healthy weight is 125 pounds. That's when the fatty accountant in me smelled something fishy, and I quickly crunched the numbers.

Drumroll!!! With these figures Ms. Williams' BMI is 17.4, well below 18.5, which is a cut-off for normal weight, and also below 18, a cut-off established by the Madrid fashion show a few years ago. So, in fact Ms. Williams is underweight, and as a life style expert, should know that. To be considered at healthy weight, Ms. Willaims needs to be at least 10 pounds heavier. While I will not tell her to eat a sandwich and claim that she is, in fact, unhealthy (after all, BMI is not fool proof in assessing health), presenting her weight as healthy is very misleading to the audience. The whole thing cemented my belief that the entire industry is in denial about their weight, health and self-image.

And by the way, what IS a life style expert?

Are you related?

There are times when I just can't find anything worthy or interesting to write about. Now is clearly the opposite: I have tons and tons of - what I consider - interesting topics. Many posts are hovering in my head only to be forgotten or become outdated because I simply have no time to post them. Such is life, we are destined to lack something. Therefore, I have decided to just blog whatever bothers/interests me right now, in the shortest form possible (given my propensity for verbal diarrhea, it is not easy feat or a guarantee for a short post), and leave philosophical discussions/topics requiring more thought or memory cells for later. So this post will be my attempt at being brief.

I was browsing news last night (while nursing, or course), and came across an entertainment snippet about Nicolette Sheridan leaving Desperate Housewives. Along came the actress' close up photo, which clearly showed signs of "work" and looked kind of bizarre.

I am always perplexed when I come across such pictures of famous actresses. What were they thinking? I mean I am aware that the business they are in is very competitive and looks are important and all. All the more reasons to not make oneself look grotesque. And is it me or do these "made over" actresses all look like clones or at the very least as if they were related: unnaturally high cheekbones, cat-like eyes, botoxed skin and collagen-filled lips? And more importantly not only do they lose their uniqueness, they look SO MUCH worse than before! So many have ruined their beautiful faces that would've aged gracefully or at least not as atrociously as after the procedures performed by cosmetic surgeons. Christa Miller, Meg Ryan, Priscilla Presley, Melanie Griffith and Mickey Rourke are just a few names that come to mind. Why? Why? Why?

I am not looking at them, they are looking at me

I haven’t been posting or answering emails as promptly as I used to for several reasons. The main reason for my cyber space neglect is SubHub’s vacation. He’s been home for a few weeks and has been hogging computer expressing desire to spend time with his wife. The nerve! And I have so much to write about, I am bursting at the seams (and not because my clothes are too small). I have another week and a half of this to endure, but then we should be back to our original programming.

I wanted to write this entry ever since the beginning of summer, but always put it off. However, after my company had an evacuation drill, I feel that I can no longer keep silent. Have you noticed that if you see a woman in a New York crowd dressed in super skimpy clothes, so skimpy that she stands out among people wearing mostly tank tops and sundresses, nine times out of ten she speaks Russian?

I was thinking exactly that during our evacuation drill. In the crowd of a two hundred people, one could easily spot my some of my former compatriots based solely on the way they dressed. No, those weren’t the raggedy clothes of poor immigrants, for the most part those were expensive duds, but…. One woman was sporting VERY tight pants with three inch heels. How she climbed down twenty something flights of stairs is anybody’s guess. It’s a good thing that Russian women also possess high endurance. She was talking to another woman who was channeling a 12-year-old trapped in a body of someone about three times that age. The second woman looked like she borrowed clothes from the last Children’s Place collections: a tiny polo shirt with a super mini skirt that looked like this (picture taken from Children's Place website):

Something tells me that there was a little girl in Brooklyn, bitterly crying over the loss of her favorite outfit. And just to put it all in context: this is how these women were dressed for work!

But young women with good bodies baring almost all are only half of the problem. Older women refusing to accept realities of their age, weight and the laws of gravity are much worse. Go to any Russian wedding/birthday/big party if you haven’t yet, and you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. When a woman in her 20s shows too much skin, it’s one thing. When her 50 something year old mother does the same, it’s a whole new ballgame. And I am not talking about grossly overweight ladies; most of these older women are rather fit for their age and would look awesome, if only dressed a bit more…I can’t find a word - well if they were just a bit more dressed, I guess. The things that I have seen would only come in some designer’s nightmare. (From now on I will only be talking about women in 50 plus age bracket.) I have seen them wearing skirts or dresses with slits up to here. It could’ve looked attractive, if only the slit didn’t show spider and varicose veins, cellulite and hanging skin. Not pretty. I have seen low cut dresses and blouses without appropriate support – gravity is a law of nature, you can’t opt out simply because you don’t like it. I have witnessed women squeezed into outfits a few sizes too small for them. That looked funny, both funny ha ha AND funny peculiar. And don’t get me started on makeup. I guess the concept that less is more haven’t reached Brighton Beach and Russian media yet. Let’s hope it catches on in this century.

But the winner of them all almost made my eyes bleed. I have seen her, a woman in her fifties, at a wedding, wearing a laced up corset top, few sizes and twenty years too inappropriate for her, like this one,

only without an extra layer of fabric, with her skin literally popping out from between the criss crossed laces. The saddest part was that this woman was rather attractive, and had she worn something less risqué, she would’ve looked pretty rather than desperate for cash, old and fat.

It all would’ve been just in the realm of aesthetics, and we all know that this one is hard to argue logically. However, this propensity to dress inappropriately often time translates into undesirable treatment. I worked once with a girl who preferred wearing tight T-shirts and short shorts. This was a deli type of establishment, and most people at the counter were teenagers making extra cash while in high school or college. Sooner or later this was bound to happen: one of the guys started making comments about the way this girl looked in shorts. His biggest offense was to tell her that she would’ve looked much better if she exercised her legs a bit. The girl went ballistic and started screaming about sexual harassment. While in no way have I condoned the comment the guy made, I still asked the girl as to why she wouldn’t put more clothes on her body. It only makes sense to me that if you are not comfortable at people looking at your body, then maybe you should cover it up. She said that those were clothes she was comfortable in and she was not going to change the way she dressed because of one jerk. I would’ve seen the logic of it had she not complained to me on a regular basis about people making jokes and commenting on her looks. (When another guy – in my presence - paid her a very sexually explicit compliment only a few months later, she didn’t complain. I guess it didn’t constitute sexual harassment if her looks weren’t mocked or criticized.)

Where am I going with this? I am not sure, but I need to conclude. I am not saying that all Russian women dress like this. Actually, most of them dress just fine and not much different from their current compatriots. But the ones who stand out like a sore thumb make all the rest look bad. Russian girls are often stereotyped as easy and promiscuous, and I suspect that the way some Russian women dress has a lot to do with it. (According to my friend who lives in Austria, it’s the same story there. If you see someone in uber mini there, 95% of the time she’s Russian. And it embarrasses the heck out of all the other Russians because many Austrians also developed stereotypes about Russians.) I am not suggesting that everyone should emulate my old lady frumpy style. But how about some common sense: if you don’t want to be treated like a cheap whore, don’t dress like one?

Education of SubWife

I have lived in US for the past thirteen years, and I think I have adapted well. But every now and then certain facts/things/cultural info come to my attention that are completely new to me; the info that anyone natural born knows, but no book ever mentions because, like I said, everyone is supposed to know this before they stop wearing diapers. Maybe they give out this info in labor rooms, but unless someone tells you, you won't know or deduce it.

Today was one of those days when I found out something new. What is this pearl of American fashion wisdom (or maybe universal fashion wisdom, I am just no aware)? That pink and red don't match, and to be more precise they clash. And according to my American born and raised friend, with whom I had an honor to go kids' clothes shopping, this piece of fashion truth (?) is very common knowledge. Well, they didn't teach that in ESL classes, high school or college. It wasn't on my citizenship exam. Quite frankly, I was shocked, and my friend was shocked in return that I didn't know. In any case, tt would've never occurred to me on my own! I am quite sure I didn't dress DD or myself this way because I am not a big fan of pink and like red even less, so at least I didn't traumatize my little fashionista that way. But if no one had ever told me, it was only a matter of time until my child would commit this fashion faux pas because of her mother's ignorance. Basically, I was a ticking fashion bomb.

So thank G-d for my American friend who detonated this bomb in time. But I still don't know if it's just me, the poor uneducated in fashion foreigner, or someone else didn't know this either. Is this an American mishugas or a universally held standard of beauty? Your feedback would be very much appreciated.

P.S. I am pretty sure that DD has a pink and red striped sweater from Children's Place. What's up with that? You can wear pink and red in one piece, but a skirt/shirt combo with those same colors is a no-no? Am I being too logical about this? Someone please educated me!