“Be curious, not judgmental.”― Walt Whitman

Greetings Dear Ones!

Happy Autumn! Exciting things are happening on my wee croft. The barn is (finally) full of hay, which permeates the air all around it with a rich and heady sweetness—the gentle exhale of many ‘Leaves of Grass.’ No perfume could entice me more. It’s been so hard to get hay this summer. You’ve all heard the saying “make hay while the sun shines.” Well, June, July, and August were so wet and the fields so boggy that many farmers couldn’t get their machines in to cut, turn, or bale. Hay needs three dry days in a row to cure between cutting and baling. Only the luckiest farmers, those without necessary side-hustles like “real jobs,” managed that kind of dance. Consequently, our local hay prices are through the roof, easily three times what they were only three summers ago.

Summer, like an exhausted babysitter ready to be relieved of her charges, hangs her heavy head over the fence in the garden, which is running amok. Apple arms reach out with apples, the pear trees with pears. Never do they bear each other’s fruit. And so it is in dressing rooms too… Those who come in happy remain so, while customers covered in the mold of self-loathing make work hard for me.

A Leaf of Grass stands in the dressing room fussing with a purple one-piece outfit she wants to wear to an upcoming wedding. She has on three-inch, blingy sandals. “I want you to hem it so that it just shows a little bit of the bling,” she instructs me. The trouser portion of the one-piece has billowy legs that behave like a skirt. “I hate dresses,” she confesses. “I think this looks as good as a dress but it isn’t a dress.”

I pin the hem length so she can see it in the mirror. She takes off the shoes. Now the hem is way too long. “These shoes kill my feet. I’m only going to wear them for the ceremony. For the dancing, I’m going to be barefoot.”

So I adjust the hem and pin it up. She puts the shoes back on. “Well, that looks goofy!” she says critically. “Too much of my foot is showing. I don’t actually like my feet.

I resist the urge to smack her. People I feel like smacking are usually the people most in need of a hug. I take a deep breath and pause, while she continues her dance. Finally, I announce that she needs to make a choice—either her feet are going to show or not. I ask if maybe she should wear some comfortable flats that won’t hurt her feet too much. (I like feet. I always lobby for kindness to them.)

“I can’t,” she says. “I’m too short. I hate how short I am. I always wear heels to events like this so that I can stand up taller and chat to people during the cocktail hour.”

Prudence is having a field day. “Ah, you always wear heels, but then take them off…how short do you look then, madam?? Do you think people won’t notice you’ve shrunk three inches after a few bites of wedding cake? How heavy is that cake, they’ll be wondering… ” It’s not like this is a kid heading off to a prom. This is a grown woman, well into a groove around who she is, what she hates about herself, and how she maneuvers in the world to disguise those things with makeup, jewelry, and draconian undergarments.

Meanwhile, she has begun clutching at the back of the jumpsuit, trying to excavate it from her buttocks. “It keeps riding up,” she complains. “Is there anything you can do about that?” I take a look. I tell her that there isn’t really a tailoring fix for this now that the garment is already made. The crotch is pretty much connected to the shoulders. There’s not much I can do but advise her to keep her shoulders back and to edge herself up against the nearest shrubbery for occasional discreet digs on the day.

“My legs…my legs are too short,” she says. “If I had longer legs, then I could have bought the right size for my body.”

“Nonsense,” I say. “Size has nothing to do with it. Not every design fits every body. Jumpsuits are really tricky. They are very uncomfortable for long-waisted gals and they can look silly on the short-waisted ones too. Have you tried sitting down?”

She blinks at me for several moments, uncomprehending. She has not. Since finding and buying this little number, she has only ever stood up, scowling into mirrors. When she does attempt to bend her bottom towards the seat of the dressing room chair, her eyes widen considerably and she does a surprised little jump that probably gave this item of clothing its name in the first place. She has just realized that she will be standing for the whole event. Someone will have to drive her, lying flat in the back of a wagon, lest she slice herself in two if she bends in the middle. For a jumpsuit to accommodate sitting, the crotch needs to hit you almost at mid thigh and hers is already lodged deep in her heinie.

Undaunted, she goes back to looking at herself critically in the mirror. “I’m not going to wear a bra,” she decides, as if that will change everything.

“Ok,” I say, “take it off.” I have learned not to talk people out of their ideas, only their clothing. She wiggles out of the straps through the armholes of the jumpsuit and brings the whole thing up through the front of the neck opening like she is a magician disgorging a sweaty bouquet of lace flowers. Now she has a little more room, but something doesn’t look right.

“Do you have cups I can add?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, “but they won’t give you any support. They will just fill out the front seams while everything underneath just dangles.

“Well, that looks weird,” she says, after trying the small foam inserts I offer her. “I need support. But I don’t want it to show and the back [of the jumpsuit] goes too low for the strap.

“You could try one of those backless bras,” I suggest.

“I hate those,” she says, trying to manually rearrange her breasts, which are behaving like defiant dough. She looks in the mirror with the same stern look on her face I get when I have told my little calves to “Whoa!” and they are still attempting to sneak around me.

I realize I am starting to feel depressed. From her toes on up, I have watched yet another beautiful woman go to war with every part of her body so that she can wear something that will make her appear (so she thinks) more “loveable,” translated (in her mind) as “taller,” “thinner,” more “attractive.” She wants to wear it as revenge against her ex, who is also attending the wedding. She wants to wear it because she hates something else (dresses) worse. She likes the feel of the fabric between her legs—she hates the feel of bare skin sticking to itself up near the top of her inner thighs but she cannot abide it riding up her bum. She wiggles and frowns and picks at every part of the fabric.

She has not told me once that she wants to wear this jumpsuit because she feels great in it—because she loves the color, because she feels Alive in it, because it will comfort her in some way. Instead, I have been summoned as the hired ally, a version of the Hessian mercenaries in 1776, in her fight to colonize herself.

Again and again, I look at women like her (and myself) and wonder what amazing, thrilling, possible Good could come from us just LOVING every inch of ourselves?

“Tell me what you love about this jumpsuit,” I say.

“Well, they’re coming back in fashion,” is her answer.

“And they’ll be out of fashion again really soon. Do you know why?” I ask. She looks confused. “Because they are a pain in the ass. Literally. They are hard to fit and hard to wear. They feel comfortable standing up or sitting down, but not both. It’s hard to mass-produce anything that fits a large enough segment of the population because each body is unique and jumpsuits don’t work for most bodies. Shortly after the designers fill the runways with these things, women come to their senses and decide they don’t want to have to strip to their knickers just to go to the bathroom. They are like a chipped horse on a merry-go-round that no one wants to sit on for long.”

“Want to know what NEVER goes out of fashion?” I ask.

“What?”

“A woman who feels beautiful in her clothes. Seriously. I see brides wearing hiking boots with their wedding gowns and they look fabulous.”

This woman laughs. She gets it. She rolls her eyes. She’s genuinely pretty when she smiles.

We all think we can sneak a little self-loathing, like cupcakes, whisky, or cigarettes, behind closed doors when no one is looking and it won’t do us any harm. But It Does. People think they can hate all over themselves in front of me and I won’t see it. I feel it though. It’s like I am watching someone abuse an innocent animal. I am not the owner of those feet, but I don’t want to see them hurt. I am not the owner of those breasts, but I do not want to see them mauled. The sadness haunts me.

I am getting braver about defending our rights to be whatever shape, size, color, or hemline we want, but I have a ways to go. I hate it when I stand by, say nothing, then spend the rest of the day wishing I had. This leads to long conversations and “dress rehearsals” in my head as I think of what to say next time.

What would Walt Whitman have said, if he were an Un-Silent witness to a dressing room on a Thursday evening before a wedding? Perhaps “…dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem…” [Leaves of Grass]

THIS….

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” (Whitman)

Bound from our collars to our crotches, we are the ill-fitting jumpsuits affecting each other locally and globally. We cannot bend to help one another if we yet contain our own self-hatred. This Life we live, whether we see it or not, binds raindrops to pennies, threads to bread, heartaches to happiness, and Work to Love. We need to cheer the hell up and start loving ourselves better. Especially behind closed doors. It matters. Every little, blessed thing is woven to another. Can you see it too?

Dear Ones, let an enormous sense of Peace envelop you. There is mending yet to do! May we make of our flesh Great Poetry. Thank you for your loving work!

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy