An Outfit

 I rather like outfit posts, but I wonder if they make me feel too silly.  Should I feel silly, or is it just fun, or maybe silly in a good way?  Would you be interested in seeing more outfits?  Anyway, here's an outfit.

 

I've been having a super lot of fun getting dressed lately.  Losing, well, 60 pounds, helps in that department.  Shocking how much less I fret about what to put on without that extra weight, although I keep having to go through my closets and get rid of stuff.  I've given away enough clothes to clothe an army (and wouldn't they be a super cute army?!), and there are still days when I think, Gosh, I'm feeling so frumpy/lousy about myself, and I look down and realize that every item of clothing is too big.  That's a weird thing, to not have realized your clothes are too big, but you have these clothes, see, for example, a pair of pants that were always your skinny pants, the ones that fit you for a day or so if you held in your stomach all day, and even though you're in a size smaller than those pants now, you are still sure those won't fit yet because being your skinny pants is a part of their intrinsic identity, you thought, and then you try them on and low and be behold, too big. You've missed the window and now they look lame.  I know this all sounds like very exciting stuff, and it is, sure, yes, let me tell you.  I've been hoping and wishing and dreaming and frankly working my tail off to get here, but the thing they don't tell you, the thing people don't talk about, is how disorienting it is to lose this much weight, or maybe any weight at all, because your BODY is CHANGING, I mean physically not the same, a change we shouldn't underestimate so, and this is part of why people turn around and go right back up: it's emotional, really intensely emotional, and People, not every one of those emotions is good.  This is hard to explain because our culture is so focused on weight loss and obsessed with thinking it solves every problem in the world, and I really just meant to show you my outfit, but now I'm on the subject, so I'll say a bit more.  This is why (and I'm about to get really soapbox-y) a solution to a weight problem that doesn't address every piece of it, what you put in your mouth and how you move your body as well as all of the emotional business, is going to be a bummer, it's going to feel terrifying, a different sort of terrifying than gaining a lot of weight, but more exposed, more raw, and less likely to offer lasting success.  Okay, now I'm done.  

See? An outfit.  That's all I meant to say.  The skirt came from The Gap in Bath, England about a million years ago; the shirt came from The Gap in Brookline, MA a few months ago; I got the belt at Charlotte Russe and the boots at Marshall's, and the necklace (can you even see the necklace?) was on clearance at Anthropologie for $10.  $10?! Yes, 10.  I had no idea they would mark down that low, since it was originally like 70 or something, and those people are insane with their gorgeous million dollar items, but there it was looking fabulous with a $10 pricetag, and who had a good day that day?  I did.  I certainly did.