On clothes and dates

It has been not-so-gently suggested to me that I might have more luck getting laid if I would only dress better.

In my defense, it's a lot easier to dress well when one has an income. I haven't had an income for a while, but if I remember correctly income is a situation where you "trade" your "time" and "work" for "currency," which you can then "exchange" for "goods and services" provided by other people. And, in the process, the numbers on your bank statement do not continue to dwindle and go to zero, so long as you "save" more of this "income" than you "exchange" away.

But until I have an income, I'll be making do with ill-fitting jeans, hand-me-down shirts, and D.I.Y. haircuts.

And maybe that's a vicious circle, too -- I'd be more appealing to a potential employer if I had more than 2 suits that fit me, and if the suits I have were better styled and tailored. Let's just say that I'm on a "banana republic" budget right now.

Anyway, I have a long history of dressing badly, and if you think my hair looks crazy now, you didn't know me in the 1980s. Childhood snapshots of my family generally show me wearing pants that are too large, a shirt that is too small, and a hairstyle that looks like a dead muskrat stapled to my scalp. When I was an undergrad, my uniform was jeans, a t-shirt with a tea stain toward the front hem, and a rolled-up bandanna holding my hair back. At least nowadays I know how to use black clothing, spandex, and hair product, and I can blame the pot belly on pregnancy.

Speaking of which, have you actually been shopping for women's clothes lately? What the hell is up with these maternity-looking shirts? Hanger after hanger of them, and hung up all over display windows. Blouses, frilly sleeveless tops, even professional shirts all have extra pleats in the front, I guess to cover up how fat American women are becoming. Folks, I didn't look good in maternity wear when I was pregnant, let alone now. Ugh. It makes me want to go back to wearing jeans, tea-stained t-shirts, and bandannas.

And I think the lack of dates is more due to my abrasive personality, and the fact that I have a kid at home, than my wardrobe, really. But on the off-chance it helps, a few days ago I went out and got some new-to-me summer clothes for myself from the upscale consignment shop down the street. Then I came home and put a slightly greater quantity of clothes in bags to donate to a charity thrift shop.