Dog Mom Fashion Advice

Abby the Lab here - no, I did not chew on Mom's underwears but she still had to fix it and afterwards she asked if she could take over the computer for a totally non-dog related post.  If there's treats in it for me - well sure!
Abby
----------------------
To all the dog moms out there -

Why use a needle and thread if there's duct tape?

I know a number of my female readers have dealt with the whole issue of underwire bras. (for men who are unfamiliar, an underwire bra is sort of a cross between an erector set and fabric).  Then, you've probably had the issue where at the point of highest stress, the underwire breaks, and  pokes through the fabric.  You're sitting there, all of your body parts content and happy and suddenly there's this sharp metal thing poking very delicate skin, to the point of drawing blood.

Many of us have been there.  Discomboobulated.

Unfortunately, in this case, much of my laundry was down at the crash pad (where the washer and dryer are bigger), I had no spare and my truck was down at the corner garage for servicing.

Thank heavens for Duck Tape.

With that and tactical lip gloss (and wedgie free skivies) a gal can handle most anything life tosses her way.
Tactical Lip Gloss?  Even Zeva has some of that.

Yes THAT Zeva.  NCIS is a guilty pleasure of mine, even though Ducky once described the injuries of a run over man as a broken "tibia and fibia". I think a "Fibia" is part of the jawbone of a politician, I've not seen one in a normal human body. But when you've only got an hour to save the planet, what's a little forensic goof. I still immensely enjoy the show.

On one episode, a young damsel is kidnapped from the watchful eye of the NCIS team who are protecting her as she knows a special secret. She's found hours and hours later in an old warehouse, duct taped to a chair, a big piece of duct tape across her mouth to stifle her cries, her brow damp, her shirt clinging to her in the intense heat and humidity. One of NCIS team goes after the bad guy and while one of them RIPPSSS the duct tape off of her mouth so she can speak.

Now, considering that it been stuck to her for hours, that would normally remove the lips themselves. But this is TV. Not only did it not appear to hurt her, her pink lip gloss was absolutely perfect. I mean absolutely flawless. It didn't fade, it didn't smear, despite hours of duct tape and heat. My best friend  and I had a long discussion on it, which included a comment in the ladies room at the Indianapolis Symphony as we reapplied our lip gloss. of "good but not duct tape proof" which several blue haired matrons about fainted over.

Look, I have my girly moments even though I tend to be a bit of a tomboy. Face it, women in general pay a lot more attention to such things than men do. Probably because we grew up with Barbie who if she were a real live woman would be 6 foot 6, weigh about 98 pounds, (1/3 of which was her gravity defying chest) with a perfect hairdo that no real woman could get without enough hairspray to immobilize a Cape Buffalo.What's NOT to give a kid growing up a complex about such things as pouty lips and perfect hair when one has free range curly hair and grew up hoping there was a line of lipstick that tasted like cheetoes.

Fortunately, I ditched Barbie and got some action figures instead. Action figures didn't have to look pretty, they just had to be able to DO stuff and be self confident. You would never expect G.I. Joe to say "does this M16 carbine make my butt look too big?" Barbie was soon retired, having lost an arm to an unpleasant Tattoo experience with the little soldering iron in the wood burner kit and a leg to a potato gun launch gone awry. She retired on disability in the Barbie dream house where she was soon forgotten for much cooler toys.

G.I. Joe was cool. He had only the accessories he needed. Plus he showed up in an action helicopter not a pink convertible.

But I'm not just not shopping because I don't have wheels.  Franky, I hate shopping for clothes. 

For starters I will admit I own more tools than shoes and the shoes I have aren't "cute".  I have broken both feet on separate occasions. One involved a Ninja Hotel Dresser and jet lag, and the other a metallurgical experiment and gravity. They're healed, but they swell on a long day so most my shoes look like something Mickey Mouse would wear.  Look, you need shoes, they keep you from stepping on scorpions and spiders barefoot, and all.   But frankly. I wouldn't notice another woman's shoes unless her feet were on fire.  My closet contains five pairs, total, though I do sort  of love these boots..

I have about 6 suits, 3 are court-worthy.  I also have some "it won't bother me to burn them" pants and shirts, a couple pairs of jeans and Irish sweaters and my favorite green cargo pants and black silk shirt.There's also my denim jacket. I live in the latter outfits.

But I do have a couple of  "girly" outfits. There's a little black dress and one pretty little flowered number I bought because I am married to someone that has occasion to dress up.

But outside of that, I went for the longest time without buying anything new, but finally it happened,  Things started wearing out, cuffs frayed, collars too, and some things just get ruined out in the field.  Plus, I seriously stepped up my physical activity to recover from and support a blown out knee and  in that necessary process, lost 30 pounds that had set up base camp on my 40th birthday and refused to leave for a number of years.

Apparently though, while I was living in the fashion dark ages, picking up just the occasional Tee-shirt and undies, sizes have changed.  What used to be the size a very thin girl wore, a size 8, is now a size 0.  There's also not just women's clothes and men's clothes, there's  junior and Missy's (which makes me think of John Wayne "well I tell ya little Missy").  Add to that designer label (which means if you're a size zero at Fashion Bug you're a negative integer at Ralph Lauren),  petite and oh, thank goodness, woman's section, which I figured, worked, because I'm a woman.  But no,  that was a way of saying, "you're not shaped like a 2 x 4.  Welcome to mumu land".

According to statisticians, I am the clothing size of the average American woman, in the size 12/14 range (14 if it's a shirt and I don't plan on wearing undergarments designed for assassination attempts).  I've got 4 inches in height on the average American gal, but I'm curved like her. I will never be "fashionably thin" but I'm strong and I can chase after dogs and grandkids and the occasional group of ex-marines and special forces guys, which you can't do on a piece of arugula and a rice cake.

But in a world where a woman with her ribs jutting out seems to be the ideal (which, I think, would be like sleeping with a bag of antlers), clothing designers still don't seem to get how real American women are built, and most of us ARE not built like an ink pen.

So for them, I will offer some fashion design advice.

(1) Just because I have an ample backside does not mean I'm shaped overall like a VW Beetle.  I have booty.  I also have a small waist.  So why must you make jeans that fit my hips also so big around the waist and the legs (which are decent from 20 years of ballet and tap dancing), that after sitting in them for an hour, they SLOWWLY start sliding off my form.

There I was at a a big outdoors store with my best friend seeing what they had in the way of hiking gear, when the jeans started doing their little gravity dance and I was afraid I was going to be mistaken for one of those gangmember types that normally frequent certain areas of south Chicago.  I hoped at least, that the briefs that were appearing were the proper degree of gansta cool. I had to sneak behind the ghilly suit display (no one will see me here!) and "adjust".

(2)  Due to my. .  er. . bust size, I often have to get a larger sized shirt.  Designers? Just because I am bustier than the other size 14 gal, does NOT mean that my arms somehow grow extra long.  Why is it if you go from a 12 to a 14 size shirt, suddenly the sleeves are 3 inches longer and you have to roll the cuffs up?

Husband with the look all men get when you ask "does this make me look fat?"

(3)  Women in my age bracket may BE considered cougars but we don't care to dress like Marlin Perkins Mistress.  Enough with all the leopard and zebra prints for everything from handbags to dresses to sweats.  The only time I wore something like that, the 20 year kid kid at the oil change place asked me out but after I jogged through the park later, I came home with a dart stuck to my behind.

(4)  If it's 90 degrees out, sleeveless would be nice.  Apparently designers think all woman over 40 never work out and  have arms like  flying squirrels and the intent seems to be cover them up, and cover them up with voluminous fabric, even in  smaller sizes. Looking at clothing for the yearly Christmas party, all of them of had these voluminous winged arms, so that when you held your arms up and out they draped in a straight line to the waist. 

I could have jumped out of an airplane in any of them and flown to earth.  When did the 2014 Christmas look become "Base Jumper".  Actually, given all the sparkles on them it was "Base Jumper Elvis".

Spring collections are worse.  Everything is white.  I am messy, I come home spattered with an assortment of fluids you don't want to know about. I've gotten bacon tangled in my hair  But I had to get something for a special occasion. I tried to be kind to the clerk and just tell her the white top and pants she presented were too. . "you know. . plain."  So she gives me a long red scarf to hang around my neck with it to add some "zing".

I looked like a thermometer.

All I could think of was "I wonder if this comes in cammo?"

I gave up,  went home and put on my cargo pants and jean jacket.

Ladies, though we may occasionally stress over the whole fashion thing, especially when under a timeline to get something for a special event, never overstress as to how you are built, if you are healthy and active. Honestly, the good men don't care about that.  They care that you make them laugh, and that you will, and have, jumped up and down with glee over something they made you by hand, and that you don't mind that their car smells like motor oil, Hoppes No. 9 and a hamburger. They look at you and don't see a size or an age, they see the form of love and the color of courage, even on your worst days, the one holding the laughter of their truest friend.

Besides, I have enough to wear for the places I usually hang out.