After the election, I was driving myself to depression by thinking about how things might turn out in the years to come. I decided after my yearly physical yesterday afternoon to go shopping. I know that sounds shallow to admit, but shopping is soothing to me and I do love clothes. Again, maybe that is shallow, but someone has to keep the economy going!
I was in need of a new belt, so I headed to the Summit. I parked at one end as I usually do and walked the length of the line of stores and down the stairs to the lower level stores. It is a way to get in my physical workout and my mental health workout at the same time. See? I am not totally frivolous!
While I was walking, I was thinking about why I do love clothes so much. I can remember my mom telling me about how much she loved the dresses her mom made her when she was growing up. The styles of the ’40’s and ’50’s were what she had grown up with- cinched waists and longer full skirts, kind of the “Leave It To Beaver” look.
When she moved to the U.S., the styles were changing. Her carefully packed dresses were quickly going out of style as sleeker, Jackie O type clothes came into vogue. When my parents moved to Chicago, where I was born, she had access to some of the best stores in the country and she took advantage of them.
Then we moved to Birmingham. Birmingham in the early 60’s was a fashion wasteland according to my mother. She decided it was time to buy a sewing machine when her mom sent us matching dresses she had made for us in Puerto Rico. The beautifully tailored, expertly lined shift dresses with elegant broaches attached reminded my mother that she could sew.
At first I was thrilled. During the summer, when I was trapped in the zoo and never saw any of my school friends, my mother and I would scour the fashion magazines. Then we would head to Newberry’s to pick out fabric and patterns. If we couldn’t find the exact pattern we had seen in the magazines, we would get one that was close and my mom would improvise.
As the years went by, I started to become self conscious that my clothes didn’t look like the other girls’ clothes. Mine were chicer and more current than theirs (fashion got to Birmingham years after it hit the runway) but all I wanted was to fit in and be normal.
In 1970 when Homewood City Schools decided to start their own school system and unceremoniously kicked me out for living in the zoo, which was on City of Birmingham property, I was suddenly no longer in a suburban middle school, but in a mostly black, inner city elementary school. I thought the world had come to an end.
During that summer of 1970 the fashion magazines had started showing some groovy clothes. Skirt lengths, while mostly short, also came in “midi” and “maxi” for a change. It was the beginning of “anything goes.” So Mom and I headed to the store and bought a beautiful orange fabric with a floral print. We got a pattern for a pleated midi length skirt with a long sleeved button front shirt. The details and the workmanship were New York Fashion Week quality.
The day I decided to wear it to school was one of the two days we started the day in art. When I walked into the room, my art teacher, who had taken a disliking to me almost immediately, asked me in front of the class what I had on and “Who do you think you are, walking in here like you own the place?” I was speechless. Next thing I knew I was in the principal’s office to be sent home to change.
I tried to reason with him that what I was wearing covered me way more than anything any other girl in class had on. Between long sleeves and a longer hem, I was dressed much more conservatively than the other girls in their micro minis of the day. With a mother who didn’t drive, I knew my dad would be called to get me and since he was now having to drive downtown to get to my school, I knew I was in for it.
Since I was new, I asked to see the dress code. After much fuming and trying to find a copy of it, a copy finally appeared. Nowhere did it say I couldn’t wear this outfit. There were rules about skirts being too short, but not too long. There was a rule against pants back then which made the popular look of jeans a no-no, but nothing about a longer skirt. When I politely pointed that out, I was held in the office until art was over, then allowed back to my regular class.
It was at that point I decided I no longer wanted the latest styles from New York made by my mom, but the same kind of thing everyone else was wearing. I was suddenly embarrassed to be different, I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be just like everyone else. I suddenly hated my beautiful, fashion forward outfit.
As fall turned to winter, I started noticing the little girls walking from the projects near the school. First and second graders were shivering in their short skirts as they walked to school. As my dad drove me by each morning in our nice warm car, I decided that those young girls should have on pants.
So I went back to the principal’s office to ask him why we couldn’t wear pants. It was becoming acceptable in most places for women to wear pants and blue jeans were all of the rage away from school. Once again, I was kept in the office and my parents were called. In the few months I had been there I had caused too much commotion. I was a straight A student, but I was treading on thin ice.
After much talking and many meetings not only with my parents, but other parents, the PTA talked the school into rewriting the dress code. I was heralded a hero by the kids who had to walk in the cold and by the fashion conscious older girls alike.
While walking around the Summit yesterday, I remembered all of the long talks my mom and I had when I started to work and had money to shop. We would go out every Saturday, do a little shopping and have lunch together. Those are memories I cling to now. I decided that long as I was out I would look at more than a belt.
I found a dress I loved yesterday, a very odd dress that really had no place in my life. It was green, short, A-lined and appliqued with hundreds of individual petals grouped into hydrangeas around the hem. It was also on sale. I tried it on and felt special and different. I took it off and gave it back to the lady working in the dressing room.
“Didn’t fit?” she asked. “No, actually it fit perfectly. Actually it is more ‘me” than I am at this point.” She looked at me oddly. I didn’t know what else to say, I just walked away.
We are the sum of our experiences. We learn as young women not to be too loud, not too take up too much space, not to show out, not to be too strong or the boys wouldn’t like us, to not be too different. I remember when I became a mom and started to hangout with other moms in my community. I felt that I didn’t really fit in, so dressing just like them helped me to join in more easily. For my child’s sake I didn’t want to be the “weird mom.”
I remember reading a kid’s book when my son was in elementary school about a teacher that was sweet and kind and fun. The kids loved her, but the adults thought she was crazy because she wore bright purple all of the time. I don’t remember the name of the book or the author and I really don’t remember the story line exactly- I do remember thinking that when my son was grown and I was old, I wanted to be that crazy lady in purple. I thought when I got old I would feel free to do that.
Yesterday I walked away from a dress that would have been wildly different and people would have looked at me if I wore it. I made the decision that I wanted to just be normal. Today, after thinking about it, I have realized that is just what I don’t want to be. It is just what I am tired of being- quiet, small, normal. If I want the young women of the world to step up and make a change, if I want the world to change, then I have to not be normal, quiet and small- I have to find deep down inside of me the “me” I was born to be. I have tried to work through the things I have experienced that have made me scared to stand out and become the large, loud, crazy lady in purple and make a mark on this world, not just for me but for all of us.
I am not sure where this might go, but I don’t want it to be anywhere normal, that’s for sure. I have to go now, I have to go buy that dress.
