War on Women, Thy Name is Overall

I haven’t been willing to believe that there’s a war on women in America today. I tend to prefer the use of the word ‘war’ to include actual physical violence, like what’s going on in Iraq and Syria, not some sort of nebulous, unverifiable, micro-agressed hurt feelings. But I’m ready to change my mind.

As charming as it was to watch Star Wars in the presence of an enthralled nine year old super fan, it was an equal measure of frustrating to try to find pretty things for four little girls to wear the next day. “We’ll go shopping,” we said, “it’ll be fun” we said. And it was, basically. There were some pretty patterned skirts amongst great vast sea of strangely adorned skinny jeans, and there were shoes, lots and lots of shoes.

But there were also, and I can’t believe I’m going to write this on the Internet in the dying embers of 2015, overalls. For women.

They were everywhere. I kid you not. Each and every temple of Stuff People Ought To Be Able To Wear contained these ghastly throwbacks to a bygone era when they shouldn’t have been worn either.

Way back in the 90s, or whenever it was, they seemed a plausible and comfortable idea. I was skeptical, truly and deeply so, but I gave them a try because people were, you know, wearing them, and I don’t like to be way far out of the fashion trends of the day. I haven’t watched the movie, of the beautiful girl being made fun of by the other beautiful girls, for being from Africa. I didn’t ever see it because it was too painfully close to home. You get off the plane, and people very kindly give you bags of clothes from the last three seasons, meanwhile wearing this season themselves, and you’ve got to be grateful that you have clothes, and food, because Ethiopia, but really you’re dying of teenage angst melded with culture shock and the humiliation of being two seasons out of style. The tears, the fretting, oh my Lord.

This perfect storm of sadness leads a person to fall to fashion trends that ought, at all costs, be avoided, like overalls. But I’ve been shriven of my sins. I can’t even find those things in a bin because, by God’s grace, they don’t exist any more. They have been sent far away to the dust bin of history.

So when I was herding my lovely little pack of girls through these various stores, trying to find them lovely things to wear, trying to eek out the days of twirling skirts and dresses and sparkle, I fairly wept with each passing pile of hideous, thick, ugly overalls.

Who is doing this? Who is making these things? There must be someone to blame. Couldn’t someone, somewhere, along the way, as the season’s fashions are being considered and assembled, as rich people in well appointed hipster offices are gazing down their noses at us rabble on the bottom tier of the fashion universe, couldn’t someone have uttered a quiet and well timed “hmmmmm”. But no, they just went with it.

So Caitlyn Jenner, with all the clothes that money can buy, gets to glide around in her six feet, lean, million dollar bejeweled frame, complaining about how hard it is to figure out what to wear, and we here in Binghamton, the salt of the earth, as it were, have to beat our way past great piles of black denim overalls. She’s not really a she, though I’m not supposed to mention it. Whereas I am. I am a hobbit shaped lady, without a budget for fashion. When I take the little bit of money that I have, I hope that entering the capacious stores of today, I will be able to find something that is not just not ugly, but actually very beautiful, feminine, charming, something that accounts for the life giving nature of my actual body. I am not a man pretending to be a woman, I am a woman whose flesh has been stretched and broken by the lives of six other people. There should be lovely, beautiful items with which I can honor and shield my brokenness.

But no, instead of that, overalls, the garment of the bygone farmer who tills the earth and fixes the combine. And over on the other side of the store, where the men, or whoever they are, get to shop, v-necked Ts and Star Wars emblazoned sweaters.

So, I’ve heard it only takes one person to be offended, to wreck everything. Today, I’d like to be that person. In the presence of God and the Internet, I am appalled and offended. I would like to know whose idea it was to bring the overalls back. There should be some kind of public apology. No one–male, female, trans-gender, cis-gender, whatever–should have to wear those things. They should only be available for purchase in the places where one acquires farm and gardening equipment. Surely as we have rallied together around Emo Kylo Ren, we can rally together against the hideous and terrible overall. He wouldn’t wear them. He would take his light saber to the whole women’s section. Let us join him, in his tears, and in his rage.