An Error in Attire

The suburb in which I work is kind of a haven for people with no dress sense or else who have very confused ideas of what makes a person appear presentable. It’s a suburb where a tracksuit is appropriate for all occasions, and on those rare, special occasions that may arise, you simply substitute the tracksuit pants for jeans.


The woman I saw today was another shining example of this.

As I stood in line to buy my lunch, I spent a good deal of time staring at the back of a woman who was had the strangest shaped body I’ve ever seen. The top of her body was that of a regular (if slightly chubby) person, but where her waist spread out to her hips it just kept on going and going. It was as though she had been formed out of a very large eyedropper – slim at the top and rounded by the force of gravity at the bottom.

As is the norm around here, she was stuffed into skin tight black leggings and a black singlet, like a sausage shoved haphazardly into an ill-fitting skin. I suppose because ‘black is slimming’.

The thing that really confused me though, was the anklet around her very generously sized ankle. I will never, for the life of me, understand why a person with a body like that would want to draw attention to their ankles! We all have parts of our body that we’re not overly happy with. For me it’s my nose (family curse) and as such there is no way I would ever draw attention to it by getting my nose pierced and wearing a bright, glittery jewel in it. So I will never understand what these women are thinking by putting something shiny and sparkly on their ankles so that your attention can be drawn to it as the light reflects off it, winking at you as it alternately reflects, is swallowed by a roll of fat, reflects again.


We all make the mistake at one time or another of getting dressed to go out, looking in the mirror and giving ourselves the nod of approval - only to catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror later that night and find that your beautiful outfit is actually making you look like you got dressed in the dark.

For me it’s occasionally the curse of the dreaded muffin top – I squeeze myself into a pair of jeans that make my legs look fabulous and then find that later in the night, when everything has shifted and settled itself to a comfortable position, I’ve got the embarrassing above-belt bulge.

Men will never point this out to you, and KJ in particular is useless when it comes to this, because until quite recently he thought a muffin-top was an actual piece of clothing of some kind – like a mid-riff halter top or something.


I think the point I’m trying to make here (if there actually is one) is that at some point on those occasions, you realise you’ve made an error in attire, and you make sure it doesn’t happen again. Here, in the suburb where I work, it seems to be a rule that you can’t go outside unless you’re sporting a muffin-top, a pair of tracksuit pants, or if you’re obese - a figure hugging lycra garment of some kind. Which is nice for me, because in my work shirt and jeans, and wearing shoes instead of slippers, I spend most days feeling practically over-dressed. In this suburb, I am a well dressed woman.