Fashion (And Eating Disfunction) in the Workplace
I haven’t done a fashion post in a while, basically because I wear all the same crap: Jeans, shoes, cotton-poly blend top. Sometimes I change it up and wear a denim jacket on top and a tee shirt for pants, but that’s really only on extremely sloppy mornings and I generally change before leaving the house once I notice a draft around my…well, it’s not important. My hair seems to have had a growth spurt recently, as well.
Also, if you can’t tell from this picture, I’m wearing an Incredibra. That’s the slight boobtasticness there on the left. My left, your right. I got another $10 off coupon from Victoria’s Secret; purchased a nude Incredibra this time. They’ve got me in the palm of their crappy corporate VS hand. Also, pretty shitty….mmmonth, so not the most thrilled look on my face.
I have crap I have to do around the office. Movement is a necessity, so looking my best often comes second. This does nothing for one’s self esteem, especially in an office of rich hipsters with no families to drain their income; their wardrobes are something out of Sex And The City. Even most of the guys sport two hundred dollar haircuts, which for a girl might not be much, especially for highlights or color, but for a guy? C’mon.
A girl pretending they have the stomach capacity of a hummingbird has always been in fashion. Eating so daintily that you take miniscule bites too small for a toothless infant. Pushing your food around on your plate so that if you do manage to consume more than a bite or two in front of your coworkers, friends, date, etc, it still looks like you haven’t eaten anything at all. And then that show is followed by the delicate damsel bullshit distress whine of “I am so full. I can’t believe I just ate all that. I just hate myself.” Girls are trained to do this before puberty. To act as though you eat nothing in front of others and to make sure everyone hears you lament your hatred of you, because the fact that a girl has to eat is just tragic. To hate anorexics because of their strength in will power. Believe me. I’ve been asked “Can’t you just be a little anorexic?” after recovering from a 6 year eating disorder. And that was by a friend’s mother.
The lengths people go to in order to simply show the world they want to be thin as adults just kills me. Juicing is a big thing around my office. Drinking liquified spinach with a dash of cayenne and a single pomegranate seed and calling it a meal. And I’m just not too sure what it’s all for any more.Juicing is a big thing around my office right now. Drinking liquified spinach with a dash of cayenne and a single pomegranate seed and calling it a meal. And I’m just not too sure what it’s all for any more. A coworker was telling me how she keeps all snacks to 100 calories so that she can stay between 1000-1100 a day. As we sat in the break room she took out a pre-measured bag of 100 calories worth of crackers. She then proceeded to take out a slab of bright orange cheese, the thickness of a finger and the size of the palm of my hand. I have an aversion to orange dyed cheese and my coworker apparently picked up on this, but confused the look for me judging her caloric intake. “Oh….it’s such a small amount of cheese, that I don’t think it counts against the hundred calories…” I immediately came out of my orange horror and apologized, explaining that a calorie concern hadn’t crossed my mind. When I thought about this later, however, I realized the absurdity to it all. No one has to justify they food intake to another. You’re either hungry, a glutton, or have a thyroid issue. And I don’t care about any of it. But I did like the idea of pre-measured calories + any topping = the same pre-measured calories and nothing more. Which is why I felt justified in my afterwork snack.
And still just 90 calories. Like the adult version of DunkARoos
I’m kidding, I didn’t really eat that, but I’m sure it would have been delicious. It was just a commentary on the ridiculous. I blame women, mostly. There is a whole percentage of men, though, that do think it’s alright to tell girls “You would look sooooooo good if you just weren’t so fat/chubby/etc…” I don’t know a woman alive who hasn’t been told that. Which, by the way, is not okay. I think most men would be afraid to say something like that to me now. I don’t have “naivety” written across my face. I have more of an “I will cut you, bitch” look to me now. In a chubby, sexy way, of course.
This walking around like peacocks is tiresome to me know. I accepted it and participated whole heartedly when I was a teen, but now there are important things to be worried about. Being healthy, to me, should be the main focus. The whole “I’m better than you because I eat less” mentality I left behind along ago, but I still see it every day in others. Maybe I view it as insanity is because of what I have seen in the past. Just a few months ago, while I was working at a University, a young girl died due to complications from anorexia. I saw her almost every day, I had spent a long time in groups with women like that. It was hard looking at her, knowing people had tried to help, it being obvious she was going to die that way. And it still really bothers me that she did, in fact, die that way. I’ve done horrible things to my own body because I wanted to look prettier and I’m thankful I’ve been learning to be more accepting of me. I often wonder, however, if I wasn’t with my incredible husband, what I would see as acceptable acts to obtain acceptance. The lengths I would go to for beauty and style .
See the unattainable fashion of my office to my right. I watch these shoes walk by me at least three times a week. They are what can only be describe as hardcore, and they are a marker for what is expected of the other fashionable ladies in the company. To be fair, this particular coworker did ballet for years and the damage to her feet is actually eased by wearing such harshly structured shoes.
I like fashion, love it even, and if I had a better body I would probably have quite the clothing debt to pay off. But what I really like is looking acceptable, good sometimes, while being able to do my job and being, at least a little bit, comfortable. I care about how I look, so, yes, in comparison to the constant at work fashion show, I don’t feel great, but I try not to feel awful either. I eat and I don’t pretend I’m a bird when I do so. I have spent more than half my life punishing myself for ever being hungry and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop completely hating myself for wanting to eat from time to time. But I am to a point where I know what is absurd for me personally and professionally as a company slave dog. I mean, Admin.
The Nerdy Foodie 