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Thursday, March 27, 2014

Gwyneth Paltrow Makes It Hard Not to Join the Bandwagon


            I’m a brat. I’ll admit that. When everybody’s on a bandwagon, I won’t hop on it. In fact, I’ll jump on the vehicle that’s going in the opposite direction. It’s a decision initially made subconsciously and genuinely. Over time, however, I might become stubborn and look for things that continue to support my less conventional viewpoint. As I said, I’m a brat. That’s brat without a hashtag. I declared Crocs to be butt ugly and Farmville to be perplexingly boring well before everyone else collectively admitted to either. Nobody has style wearing Uggs with shorts, just sweaty feet. And you wasted approximately ten hours of your life if you watched all the Twilight movies. (No excuse if you read the books, too.) I may not be any less a conformist than the average person, but I don’t mind speaking up when a trend is not for me. A few other bandwagons I never hopped on:

I had no desire to be friends with any of the women from Sex in the City. Did women really love that show or was it just that after years of book club gatherings, they wanted an excuse to finally be able to talk about fun things, like men and sex.

To Kill a Mockingbird was not the defining book of my childhood. I don’t think it was for that many others, either; I think it was merely the only literary one people could remember reading.

I’ve never done the clean eating, juice cleanses, plant-based, vegan, almond flour, soy milk, Ayurvedic diet fads. I don’t believe in demonizing food groups. When women talk (and talk and talk) about eating whole foods, they’re really referring to the whole pack of cookies they secretly scarfed down last night. I don't mind eating my cookies in public.  

            So it was that my brattiness shifted into gear when everybody was joining the ‘I hate Gwyneth Paltrow’ bandwagon a couple of years ago. Now, there are very few non-criminal people that I hate (ok, there are three to be exact) and Gwyneth isn’t one of them. She’s not vying for our attention. It’s not like she’s Kim Kardashian, all over the Internet posting Instagrams of her butt that I invariably mistake for YouTube SNL skits.
            Sure, she was engaged to Brad Pitt during his Legends of the Fall years, which might automatically put her in the hate column. On the other hand, she’s never gotten a boob job. Even after she won the Oscar and that pink dress looked like it was going to slide all the way down to her waist for her lack of chest, she never got fake boobs. You gotta’ give the gal credit.

            Therefore, I assumed she had more substance to her until last year when she bragged about having the ass of a stripper. Not just any stripper even, but a 22-year-old stripper. Even though she went around telling people this (in case you didn’t notice on your own) and even though she spends two hours every day working out, this doesn’t make her any more narcissistic health conscious than the rest of us, I’m sure.
            And why does she have to be like the rest of us anyway? Wouldn’t it be worse if she pretended that she was just an average Jane and not a privileged Gwyneth? Her self-absorption seems genuine to me, as is the pretentiousness that accompanies it, which makes it sort of amusing. She wants to share her better ways with the rest of us. She wrote her cookbook so she can share the enlightened Gwyneth way of eating. She said she started her blog in 2008 because she has the answers the rest of us have been frustrated to find. She told Elle magazine:

"When you go to Paris and your concierge sends you to some restaurant because they get a kickback, it's like, 'No. Where should I really be? Where is the great bar with organic wine? Where do I get a bikini wax in Paris?’ People know that I know that.”         

            If only I had been one of those people. I spent my time in Paris drinking possibly non-organic wine and walking the Champs Elysees. We went to the Louvre and chose our own restaurant in listening distance to the bells of Notre-Dame. If only Gwyneth had told me where I should really be.
            I still can’t hate her, though. It was my fault for not having read her blog before venturing to Paris packing a razor. Maybe if I followed her advice I would like her more. However, my husband shot me down when he invested in stocks instead of a wood-burning pizza oven in our garden. “It’s one of the best investments I ever made,” Gwyneth had declared. Opportunity missed.
            Every interview or Goop post seems to have at least one of these lovely nuggets for the average person to seethe over. But whenever I would read another ‘I hate Gwyneth’ blog, I would look into what she actually said. Most of the quotes sounded a little better in context, and some I even agreed with. (Cheese in a tin doesn’t sound great to me, either.) Gwynnie, I still had your back.
            And then came the announcement two days ago that she and her husband were separating. This was her chance to finally show the chink in her gleaming armor. She now had a commonality with at least 40% of Americans. She could’ve become almost likable! But then she blew it with her conscious uncoupling statement, as if her break-up was on a higher plane than everyone else’s. She used a new-age phrase as a way to let us know that their separation was well thought out and not a personal failure. Their relationship simply had run its course. News Flash Gwyneth: That’s what we ordinary people call divorce.
            So the ‘I hate Gwyneth’ bandwagon rolls on. As I try grasping for a reason to stay off of it, her latest interview with E! News comes out regarding her status as a working mom. After noting that her rule is to do only one movie a year because of her children, she goes on to say, “I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as -- of course there are challenges -- but it’s not like being on set.” So basically she’s saying being a mother with a regular job is not as taxing as being a movie star. Ugh.
            You’re going to force me to join the bandwagon, Gwyneth, aren’t you?

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Tales of a Reluctant Shopper


Dressy enough?

     People fashion their lives around different things: their career, their spouse, their passions, etc. In hindsight, I now believe I have fashioned my life around not having to dress up. I chose to live in a college town where my regular jeans-and-sweater combination looks polished compared to the co-eds who regularly dine out in their slippers. I'm a writer, which entails rarely having to leave the house. I can stay at home most days in my sweat pants or jeans. It should be pointed out that my sweat pants are the cute, fitted kind, not the diaper-y grey kind. I'm not a slob, I just don't like uncomfortable clothes. 
     I hate stuffing my feet into sky high heels, I hate wearing sleeveless dresses in winter, and I think it goes without saying that I hate Spanx. I thought having to wear panty hose was bad until wearing no hose became the thing and I was wishing I could once again stick my powder white legs into a pair of tan L'eggs. Am I too old for tights?
    So I set up my life pretty well for the minimum amount of instances where I'm not in comfortable clothing. Invariably, however, I am lucky enough to be invited to an "occasion." When it's a formal occasion, it's almost easier. Usually I can find a dress that I like well enough and shoes that I love (but know I won't love wearing). But "business casual" is the tricky invitation. It always involves having to buy more than one thing that all go together. It's almost like redecorating your bedroom. You're just going to paint it, but then once you do, you realize you need new curtains and then a new rug and then a new lamp... Come to think of it, I'd rather redecorate my bedroom.
     Another one of these dressy occasions is coming up and I was complaining to my husband that I would have to go clothes shopping for something to wear. I didn't blame him for not believing me that I had nothing to wear. Some women say that and what they mean is, among these thirty-seven dressy things, I have nothing I want to wear again. Nope, for me I literally have nothing suitable to wear. My shopping experience today might clue you in as to why. Here it is in a nutshell:

I go to the store and pick out 14 pairs of black dress pants to try on because I am too lazy to search for anything besides black dress pants. I have a shirt at home that will match. One less thing to buy.


I try on all 14 pairs, hating each and every one, as I knew I would. Did I mention I hate dress pants?


The mound of rejected black slacks on the floor pushes me to a place in my shopping trip where I always end up: The place of 'who cares?'. (You thought I was going to say the food court, didn't you? That's for later.) 

I go get a pair of black jeans off the rack.

I try them on. They're comfortable. They look good. I won't have to iron them or dry clean them. I'm sold, but I can't find a price tag.


I quickly return to the 'who cares?' point again, partly because I have to pee. I decide to purchase the black jeans regardless of the price. 


Thankfully they were on sale down from $49 to $17 plus the cashier used her 15% off coupon for me. I feel it's my good karma for putting all the pants back on their hangars in less than six curse words.

I come home feeling satisfied (but I think that's mostly due to my binge at the food court). Then my refreshed brain realizes the pants I ultimately bought are not dressy enough for the occasion I was shopping for in the first place. 


I'm back to 'who cares?'. They are comfortable and were a good deal, so I'm wearing them.

And that is the story of why I have nothing dressy to wear. But I do have a rather nice collection of black jeans.