I love wearing my moto jacket to work, so this moto + striped T + patterned skirt [not floral] + ankle boots + briefcase look tickled my fancy. (Of course, I wish I worked in such a lovely scenic workspace, but that really wouldn't be practical in Coldville. I mean, where do you plug in your docking station in this environment?)
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| From somevelvetmorningblog.com |
When I saw her patterned skirt, I immediately thought of how well my magenta paisley skirt would work in such an ensemble. Did I hit it out of the park or what?
Black striped T (Kohls)
Magenta paisley skirt (thrifted, Ann Taylor)
Black moto jacket (JCP)
Black tights
Black ankle boots by Sam Edelman
Black tooth/claw necklace (Outfit Additions)
This black moto jacket/ankle boots/necklace combination has achieved MVP status already, and in a couple years will be inducted into the Sally Outfit Hall of Fame. If I were doing the 10 Top Remix Challenge (pick 10 items that are very "you" and wear at least one of them every day in April), I think this combination would have to be one of the items.
Verdict: I really like this skirt. It's very simple--a lightweight, unlined cotton skirt--but the pattern and cut are fab. It was a nice change of pace after all the pencil skirt I've been wearing recently to wear one with a (very slight) flare to it.
This past week, I've been surprised to read a couple different bloggers that I follow writing about serious health issues that they've not gone public with on their blogs before. For example, one woman has had a relapse, or if that's not the right term, a significant worsening of her lupus, which is a disease I only recognize as something that the doctors on House always suggested as a possible diagnosis in their mystery cases and which was always almost immediately dismissed, and thus sounds like it must be something pretty bad. And indeed, it sounds quite unpleasant--an autoimmune disease (in which your antibodies attacks your own proteins) that leads to inflammation and that affects most of the body's organs. But when you see her photos on her blog, she looks thin and "healthy." We can't see the joint pain, anemia, ulcers, hypertension, seizures, and cognitive disorders that frequently accompany the disease.
It's a very good example of how, as a fat-phobic society, anyone who is thin (without being obviously skeletal, old, haggard, whatever) is pretty much assumed to be healthy as well. It's almost to the point where thin and healthy have become synonyms in the popular imagination. I know this is not an original observation, but the cognitive dissonance I experienced when considering the hidden health problems of this thin 30-something woman was instructive. I know better and yet, there it is.
A to Z Challenge Day 8: H is for Hidden Health
6 comments:
I have a friend who participated in a conversation something like this:
Well-meaning person: "Wow, Have you lost weight? You look great!"
Friend: "Thanks, I almost died."
I'm learning that I actually never know what all's going on with anyone.
While I was at the desk in the library a thin woman came up to check out her materials. I asked her how she was doing and she told me her cancer was back. I didn't know her, so it would have been easy to assume because she is thin she is healthy.
Really good examples. Of course, I was at my thinnest adult weight after the Great Blood Loss Diet.
I had an argument with a man on Twitter this week who seemed to think that HAES stood for "Healthy At Every Size," a claim he found outrageous. I too would find that a strange notion since we are not guaranteed health at ANY size, much less at EVERY size.
(For anyone not familiar, it stands for "Health At Every Size" - i.e., basically the notion that one can work on improving one's health regardless of one's size, and that changing one's size is not necessarily a healthy priority.)
I guess for some people the leap from Health at every size to Healthy at every size is not such a huge one--it's the leap to Health at every size they can't make. And conflating the two concepts is useful for rhetorical purposes.
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