Category: body image

Some reasons why I didn’t wear skirts

(another quick thing about femininity and fashion)

  • Maxi skirts weren’t really a thing when I was younger? from what I remember? So to wear a skirt either it had to be a Fancy Dress or you had to show your legs.
  • I did not want to show my legs.
    • I have bumpy keratosis pilaris-ish skin with lots of ingrown hairs.
    • Shaving takes time, especially when you have neither the eyesight nor the coordination to do it in the shower, and I was struggling to find the time to shower in the first place.
    • I get the impression that this is less of a Thing now, but when I was a teenager, tanning was a big thing. Girls were embarrassed to show their legs if they were “too pale”. And I was not tan, but I was also not about to go to a tanning salon, buy tanning lotion, or go outside wearing shorts, so there was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing.
    • I have very dark body hair to go with my pale skin, so you can basically see every hair follicle even when I’ve just shaved.
  • I didn’t like the feeling of nylons either, not they really covered anything up anyway.
  • The stylish skirts at that time weren’t just not-maxi-skirts, they were really short and tight.
    • Do you have any idea how hard it is to shave the back of your thighs without missing a spot?
    • Constantly adjusting your skirt to make sure you aren’t showing your underwear is really uncomfortable and distracting.
    • Even apart from physical discomfort, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of dressing to be Sexy or to get any kind of attention, really, and that’s what I associated that style with.

Some reasons why I do wear skirts now:

  • I give less of a fuck about how my skin looks
  • I have more free time in which to shave my legs
  • loose-fitting swooshy comfortable skirts are a thing
  • maxi skirts that completely cover my legs are a thing
  • basically now I have skirts taht are sensory heaven instead of sensory hell and are also adult-looking and not Sexy™

Today Sparkly was telling me about a weird conversation ey had with some of eir classmates from law school. The gist of it is that Sparkly is the only one of them who exercises for reasons other than weight loss/fear of being fat. The highlights, according to em:

“I feel so gross if I haven’t sweated enough”

“I overdosed on calories today, I need to exercise more.” “Well, we did walk like eight miles today.” “But that’s not REAL exercise.”

I’m glad I could reassure em that I find this kind of talk weird and scary too. Because even when it’s not explicitly about “I hate my body,” or “being fat is the worst possible thing,” that’s still the undertone. And it is scary, especially if you’re familiar with that feeling of The Worst Possible Thing and the fear that it can cause.

(Sparkly takes gymnastics classes, so both eir intentions in signing up and the structure of the class are very much focused on “learn this specific skill,” not on exercise for its own sake, and certainly not on weight loss. It very obviously has made em stronger, but that’s not even the main goal. The main goal is, now ey can do a backflip.)