Thursday, August 24, 2006

One of those girls...

Those of my readers who were in grad school with me will probably remember me coining a certain term about the second-year students. The term was quite catty, but seemed appropriate for the class above us who were mostly administration and development museum people. Oh and Randy the hipster butt-crack. A different bag from collections and exhibition people, to say the least. Necessary for museums to stay open (and for me to get a paycheck), but different cats all the same. The term got around so much that I'm almost embaressed to admit this...but I have to get it off my chest.

I, too, have become a pointy-toe shoe. It's true. I have several pairs in my closet and several blisters on my toes to prove it. Sure, sure, I tend to wear my soft-sole white Minnetonkas and my grandpa sweaters more... but the point is that I've crossed a line into a world I can't come back from: fashion trends.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Run away, run away!

All kidding aside (can someone like me really say that with a straight face?!)...when I first moved from Missouri, I had a basic uniform of chunky glasses, short pixie hair, corduroys, cowboy shirts, and chuck taylors. Sometimes I'd mix in a jean skirt, overalls, or flip-flops if the weather was nice. Basically I wore Midwestern chic and nothing else. Even though DC is NOT a fashionable city by any means (seriously, are scrunchies required federal employee uniform wear?), but it was still more, ahem, "urban" than my "down-home" Arkansas-bred comfort clothes. I mean, time for the high school Widespread Panic concerts was over. Black Cat approved bans only for me now. I bought a nice wool coat (vintage, of course) to replace my Grandpa's chicken farm vests. And by Grandpa's, I don't mean style, but provenance. Somehow, someway (okay, it was at H&M) in the last three years I started buying feminine, multi-blend trend clothes. I also took out all of my all-the-way-up-my ear hoops and started wearing dangling earrings. DANGLING EARRINGS! Did you hear me? DANGLING EARRINGS! and POINTY TOE SHOES!!!!

FUCK!

Actually, I like it. Nothin' says D.C. gentrifying transplant like Midwestern chic mixed with pointy-toe shoes.

1 comments:

Emily said...

Do you remember the scene in Roald Dahl's The Witches when all the witches got to their conference, closed the door, eased their pointy-toe shoes off and heaved a collective sigh of relief? Because they had square feet?

They didn't like to wear pointy-toe shoes.

I'm not making any allegations against square-toe shoe-wearers, but I try to be on my guard around them and look for the other witch cues (fire/ice in pupils, crinkly noses and distaste for smell of children, etc).