Mind you, I do have a valid excuse in the form of two days of joyless dentistry. Think classic torture scene from Marathon Man, and you get the idea. I am still a tad tired but I will wrap my pink feather boa around my neck and battle through.
Today's post has been inspired by a recent post by Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess. I love The Bloggess. She is the good kind of crazy, with a side of sass, and a healthy dose of irreverence, that just appeals to my sense of humour. She's the kind of woman who is proud to put her crazy out there, thus making the rest of us feel kinda normal (well it does for me, but then again the inside of my head resembles the rec room from One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest).
If you haven't read The Bloggess, you may want to start with the Zombie Apocalypse incident on Twitter, although you could start with pretty much any post. I love this one as it's a kind of international, multi-player, version of folie a deux, and that just tickles my, previous life as a psych, funny bone. This is what Twitter was created for. Not for tweets that let me know that you just had a shower or put a new roll of loo paper on the holder, cause I really don't care you attention seeking freaks. And yes I know, I've gone to the dark side and now have a Twitter account. I feel dirty. But I promise I will not alert anyone to the boring as batshit, minutia of my daily life, well no more than I do on here anyway.
This week The Bloggess put up a a great post. In it she writes:
"I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies. I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be. And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”."
So she did. She decided she was worth it, and challenged her readers to accept that they too were worth it and to find their own personal red dress.
I love the whole concept. It's something I have struggled with since I was a kid. I was brought up to believe that you do for others and ignore your own needs. That you need to be level headed, and practical at all times. Swallow those pesky irrational feelings, never step on the cracks, wear sensible shoes, never ever wear blue and green without a colour in between, and always wear matching underwear just in case I happened to cross paths with the proverbial bus. Judgement and scorn were the only things that came from unpuckering that sphincter (try being diferent in a conservativesmall country town). I've been told so many times that I'm 'quirky', 'too independent', or that I like 'weird' stuff, that it all starts to stick. I wonder if I cae across the Mad Hatter would he say to me as he did to Alice, "You used to be much more..."muchier." You've lost your muchness".
The last few years I've had to do a light speed re-imagining of my life thanks to "he who shall not be named" on a Fabulous Friday. Part of that re-imagining has involved relocating and giving myself permission to embrace the parts of me I've shed over the years to be practical, to fit into the cookie cutter world of acceptability. Well damn it, I want to find my muchness once more.
As any regular readers know I can't exactly swim with sharks (although I'd love to and if I can ever persuade my body to get with the program I will) thanks to the fact that my body has been put together by one of those dodgy tradesman they are so fond of exposing on A Current Affair. So I've had to be creative with my red dress dreaming and actualising. I periodically do things just cause I want to, naysayers be damned. Sometimes it's the little things as much as the big that mean so much.
One of the things I do everyday is wear Chanel No 5. I know that doesn't sound like much of a red dress moment, but when you are pretty much stuck in your house 24/7 you need to do something. So regardless of if I'm stuck in bed, or getting milk at the supermarket, I wear my Chanel. I may not have brushed my hair in a week, my underarms may look like a wookie's rear end, and my teeth may feel like they are clothed in felt, but I still squirt on my Chanel. If I wait for a special occasion to wear it I will be waiting for ever, (or at least until the actual zombie apocalypse arrives, and I do intend to smell pretty whilst I take out the un-dead beating down my door). So each day I pamper myself with expensive perfume, just cause I can.
(Yep, that's my feather boa in the background)
Even we sickies can pamper ourselves. I drink my 4 litres of water from a cranberry coloured cut glass carafe and matching glass. I keep my chocolate stash in a beautiful green depression glass butter dish. I brought sparkly zebra ballet slippers with red bows, and I have a pair of black silk pjs I had made in Singapore, which cost way to much but which make me feel pampered each time I put them on.
(So pretty)
We all need to find our own red dress. Sometimes it's running barefoot in a graveyard in a beautiful red ball gown, sometimes it's about making even the most practical thing something special just cause you can. We are all worth it we just need to believe.
I'm going to embrace me. I'm worth the effort. I'm going to find my red dress and my muchness. Will you?
Cheers
The feather boa wearing Michelle :)
Feeling Good, Nina Simone (1965), my favourite play it loud 'kick some arse' song.
