JEI {12}: To Be Beautiful

Welcome to the weekly link up, Just Enough Info (JEI).  The internets can be a great source of community, and I’d love to get to know you better!  Feel free to share your answers in the comments or link up if you have a blog.

 

“I know what women want. They want to be beautiful.” —Valentino Garavani

 

This is so true!  Everyone wants to be beautiful.  That’s why botox and hair dye are things.  This week’s Just Enough Info linkup focuses on one aspect of external beauty: clothes.

 

Clothes

1. If you had to wear the clothes from another time period, when would it be?

The 1950s!  Definitely!  (I don’t think I’d be able to handle Spanx’s Grandma Girdle, though.  Yipes.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I could, I’d live in brightly colored fit-and-flare dresses and cardigans.  Wait a minute.  I think that makes Ms. Frizzle one of my style icons.

If you read my Quick Quirks post, you know I love good dental hygiene.  And there are other science-y styles of this dress.  And they offer my size.  I think I just found my mom uniform.

2. What are you embarrassed that you wore but used to think was cool?

This is an excerpt from my post My Style Journey:

From high school on, I developed the mentality that it’s not what on the outside that counts.  I can rock inside stuff like being kind and helpful, but I can’t rock the outside stuff.  So I’ve pretty much given up trying any harder than “presentable.”  Clothes were designed to hide me as much as possible.  To help me blend in so no one would notice me.

I had no right to try to look pretty or feminine or stylish.  I just did the best I could, shopping the clearance section and wearing ill-fitting, low-quality items that helped me get by.  There’s a wedding coming up—better find the best I can do off the clearance rack.  Oh, I have a job interview—better find the best I can do off the clearance rack.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up with a closet of clothes that I don’t like (A brown pinstripe suit?!?  A brown pinstripe suit!?! No wonder I didn’t get that job!) and don’t fit well.

Even at the time, though, I didn’t think most of my clearance rack settles were cool.  I guess that I’m embarrassed that I spent so long being…embarrassed.

3. What’s your favorite article of clothing in your closet right now?

The magical Lands’ End fit and flare dress!  I have a blue one and a tan one, and they get rotated almost every week for Mass.  They are magical because they work for pregnancy, nursing, postpartum, and none of the above.

I’ve had some luck with Dia & Co. for finding clothes I like, but Lands’ End is my go-to place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wouldn’t have had any of these pictures without the Sunday linkup My Sunday Best.  I don’t really enjoy being in pictures, but I do treasure the pictures of me with my kiddos.  Even looking back to earlier this summer, I can see how much my babies have grown!  It’s a goal to be in more pictures with them.

One thing that’s helped me get over being so camera shy is this book:

 
Set in Russia, a little girl is separated from her parents as they are working in the fields.  She manages to find some adults, but they don’t know to whom she belongs.  They ask her for a description of her mother.

“My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world!” she declares.  They parade a bunch of attractive women in front of her, to no avail.  Finally a stout, warty woman who is missing teeth rushes in to embrace her lost daughter.

The villagers are flabbergasted at this “beautiful” woman, but ultimately realize it’s the love, not the physical features that make up her beauty.

I tear up every time I read this book.  I recommend that all moms pick it up from the library for themselves to read and reflect upon!

Valentino is right.  Every woman wants to be beautiful.  In the eyes of my little family, I know I am.

 

Answer these three questions on your blog (making sure to link back here!) or in the comments.