Dreaming of Cats

"Oh, But You Would!"--Saturday, 9/17/16

Looking for purple blazer inspiration on Pinterest, I found this promising outfit idea.

From pinterest.com

The pretty bird scarf reminded me strongly of my black scarf with the light grey kitty cats.  Add a white T, denim skirt, and purple flats and we're good to go, right?  Scratch that.  Why wear a plain white T when you can wear an Alice T?  So that the kitties didn't obscure the Alice image, I let the scarf hang loose under the blazer's collar, so now you have Alice's face framed with cats.  Again I am reminded of the first scene of the movie in which Alice is explaining to her cat Dinah how things would be in her world.

Alice: That’s it, Dinah! If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?

Dinah: Meow!

Alice: In my world, you wouldn’t say ‘meow’. You’d say ‘Yes, miss Alice’.

Dinah: Meow!

Alice: Oh, but you would! You’d be just like people, Dinah, and all the other animals too. Why, in my world… Cats and rabbits, would reside in fancy little houses, and be dressed in shoes and hats and trousers. In a world of my own. All the flowers would have very extra special powers, they would sit and talk to me for hours, when I’m lonely in a world of my own. There’d be new birds, lots of nice and friendly how-de-do birds, everyone would have a dozen bluebirds, within that world of my own. I could listen to a babbling brook and hear a song, that I could understand. I keep wishing it could be that way, because my world would be a wonderland. 

(Source)

Thinking of cats and rabbits gives me that dreamy look, too.

I love the detail of how the topsy-turvy cats look like they are falling down the rabbit hole, though Alice's cat does not accompany her to Wonderland in the movie or in the books.  (For the record, the cat is not present when she goes down the rabbit hole in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Dinah and her kittens appear in the opening of Through the Looking Glass instead.)  It's amusing to consider a version of the story in which her cat comes along for the adventure...but I don't think she'd get along very well with the Cheshire Cat, so it's probably for the best that she stays top-side.

Purple cotton blazer (thrifted, Kohls), $0.29/wear
White Alice graphic T (Disney Alice/Kohls), $5.40/wear
Black cat scarf (Nordstrom), $2.40/wear
Denim skort (thrifted, Walmart), $0.56/wear
Purple flats (thrifted, Target), $1.31/wear

Outfit total: $9.96/wear

And to make Alice's dream of cats and rabbits complete in this blog post, here we go.

In other news...We already know that there is significant bias against fat women in the job market, but a new study shows that women (but not men) who are at the higher end of the "normal" weight range (according to BMI) are discriminated against when participants rate the hireability of candidates for a customer-facing position.  (I learned about the study from this post, which summarizes the findings.)

Interestingly, the photos of the candidates only included faces, not entire bodies, so people were discriminating on the basis of skinnier vs. fatter faces alone.  As you can see in the materials accompanying the article, the difference is pretty subtle (the faces were digitally altered).

From journals.plos.org

It makes sense given my (simplified) model of how women's weight affects social responses--i.e., fat women are hated, "normal" weight women are ignored, thin women are celebrated.