Avdat

So much to wonder about

Jennifer:  I'll see your dislike of gargantuan eyewear and raise you disdain for A-line dresses:

But isn't the A-line/Empire Waist/Baby Doll look preferable to the muffin top?

This helpful article does recommend A-line dresses for pear-shaped overweight women.  It minimizes the hips, she says.

And that does bring up a interesting question:  Are we in the middle of a horrible decade for women's fashion, or are we in the middle of a horrible decade for women's obesity?

Another question:  Is it me or does the frequency of visible tattoos correlate with BMI?  Is the body art a kind of jedi mind trick that's supposed to divert my attention from the, eh... jiggle?  Or maybe it's just that I've been reduced to shopping at Wal Mart where everyone is both fat and tattooed.

I'm just sayin'

I'm not a big fan of these humongous sunglasses all the ladies are wearing these days.

I'm up for it

Tomorrow is National Bike to Work day.  HT.

I'd do this every day, but in mainline congregations of older members there's an expectation that the minister make pastoral calls in pressed slacks and clean shirts, preferably free from sweat rings extending down the sides of one's trunk.  And, unlike some of my relatives who work for corporations, or megachurches, there's no shower facilities here at good ol' John Calvin Presbyterian Church.

But since all that's on my schedule tomorrow is sermon writing plus a little disc golf with a teenager, it fits my lifestyle for this particular day.

I think it's worth wondering about how certain cultural expectations are at variance with good common sense.  I hear that everyone but lawyers have abandoned suits in south Florida, but honesty, they could be done away with in most places in the United States, at least in the summer.  Even far northern cities like New York and Philly are south of those latitudes from whence came the bulk of immigrants accustomed to wearing wool even in July.  And not only are they far to the south of Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and eastern Europe, but they're hot and miserable in summertime.

I know.  Part of what makes fashion fashionable is willingness to submit to a certain amount of physical or financial discomfort.  But heat and humidity and the prospect of even more on the horizon, thanks to global warming, do make me wonder when convention has taken leave of its senses...

Hoops

Is it just me, or are there other college basketball fans out there seriously disturbed about the trend away from a bona fide tank top to a muscle shirt look?  What's next?  Short shorts?  Leggings?  The 80s were my decade, but some things need to be allowed to rest in peace.

Breasts

I was reading this article by Christopher Hitchens's brother Peter about what's wrong with his militantly atheistic brother's views (hat tip to Eric Lee), but I must admit that I found myself distracted by a link to this article about the experience of a woman who transformed herself for a week from a 36A to a 36DD with prosthetic breasts worn under her clothes.  She, um, they, had an impact.  Men snapped to attention.  Women looked daggers.  Working out became a chore. 

It reminded me of that old SNL skit where Eddie Murphy painted his skin white, and discovered what the world is like when there are no black people around.  They serve hors d'oeuvres on the bus!  (I haven't seen White Chicks, so I don't know if it's the same in that film or not).

It also made me feel vaguely guilty, in a Kafka-like sense, like that time I was sitting in the office of a non-profit agency on whose board I served, listening to another (female) board member and a (female) staff person talking about how they won't get fooled again.  You keep your own savings account your man doesn't know about, with three months after-tax savings.  And so on.

I'm not a miscreant.  But fellow-Y-chromosome travelers make me feel like one.  And I don't even get to balance it with the pleasure of behaving badly!

And speaking of fashion...

There was a lot of talk yesterday about the Iggles and 'Skins in their throwback uniforms.  But for my money, that Seattle Cincinnati game was, hands-down, the worst color combination I have ever seen on a football field.  A photo doesn't do it justice.  You really ought to catch some video today on ESPN.  Yuck!

And speaking of black people's pants...

While I think school uniforms are great, I think that criminalizing the sag 'n' drag look is dumb.  It would just give the few bad cops another tool for harassing good kids who are only guilty of poor fashion taste (and who's not guilty of that in high school).  And it would be more work, tedious work, trivial work for the good police officers who really ought to be catching criminals rather than running around putting rulers up against kids' backsides.  Because that's what it would devolve into, teens having a lawyer-like ability to exploit loopholes and dance up to the edge of the line.

Besides, even if the look correlates with criminal behavior, it also may correlate with a higher apprehension rate, as one letter-writer pointed out in today's paper (click here and scroll down).  It's hard to run away from the police when your pants are only hiked up to between your bottom and your knees.

Sag 'n' drag is not a particularly obscene fashion faux pas.  All that's exposed is a usually natty pair of boxer shorts.  You want to talk obscene sag 'n' drag?  That would be the poor muscle tone of the 50 year old woman I saw in the ER the other day, wearing low rise shorts and a cut off T-shirt.  Let the fashion police throw the book at her!

Americana

I don't get out much.  I get up, drop our younger son off at school, go to church, and then go out to visit parishioners--usually the elderly, the hospitalized, or those living in nursing homes.  Maybe I'll run into the grocery store on the way home.

So when I do get out, as was the case on Sunday when our congregation held worship in Dan Nicholas Park, I'm always struck by how sad and unfortunate it is for chubby teenage girls to be coming of age now, given the trends in female fashion.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I disagree.  "DO NOT put any person in this washer" is not the Wackiest Warning Label out there.  My wife bought a hair dryer just today, and my vote's for what she read in its instructions:  Do not operate while sleeping.

A hair dryer?  Asleep?  OK, a heating pad--I'll grant you that.  But a hair dryer?

These warning labels are not the product of our increasingly litigious society.  Yeah, you'd expect a Democrat to say as much.  They're a valuable service to the consumer, provided that he'll actually take this good if obvious advice.

I don't.  I've actually ironed a shirt while wearing it.

You can do the shirt tail.  Don't try this at home, but believe me.  I changed my mind and decided to go with the shirt untucked.  But it'd already been mauled pretty bad down there at the end, and the iron was still warm and...

Expert Opinion

Nobody's referred me to How Do I Look--yet.  So I referred myself to Peace Bang.  Not only about the sweater, but the whole nine yards.  Clergy attire on a budget was what I asked for.

Boy, did she come through for me.  Dude, you'd have to pay the Alban Institute at least a grand for a consult like this!  Thanks, Peace Bang!

I'm in better shape than I thought.  Trench coat?  Check.  (Owing to the fact that I was a debate geek in high school, and dressed accordingly).  Suit?  Check.  Two pairs of nicely pressed slacks?  Hmm.  One pair's in pretty good shape.  The others?  Well, I've blogged about them already.

What I will work on this week is tossing my polo shirts.  Sure it's hot down here in the South, but that's no excuse for looking like some past the sell-by date golfer in a bar.  I am a Minister Of The Gospel!