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| Artistic Rendering of Your Average Bird In Animal Print Pants Copyright S Botham 2012 |
Last week I visited my second favorite place to read fashion
magazines – the hair salon. All of the reading must take place before styling
begins, as once I sit in Omar’s chair it is time for us to chat (I won’t let
anyone else touch my hair. 17 years of flawless haircuts. I followed him up and
down Newbury St. and now I drive to the North Shore to get to him). I picked up the
August issue of InStyle to see what kinds of suggestions they had for my
wardrobe and approached it with an open mind.
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| 3.1 Phillip Lim pants suggested by InStyle |
I got to
page 114 in a feature that was supposed to be telling me about “smart pieces” I
could take from now into autumn and found myself wondering if the editors sit
in an office and conspire to see how many gullible idiots they can get to dress
up like clowns purely for their own entertainment. The page displays
“animal-print pants…. A bit more exotic than a pair of jeans but just as easy
to wear.” Since when are animal print pants easy to wear? And if they really
are, then why are you showing me the clothes laid out flat instead of on actual
people? Additionally the pants they picked are silk (read clingy on big girls)
and tapered to a cuff at the bottom (hello 80’s parachute pants).
I’ve
generally been of the mindset that animal prints are great for accessories such
as shoes, foulards, belts, etc. Full outfits of animal print should be left to
the zebras and the leopards and the cheetahs. We’ve all seen those girls/guys
who overdo the animal print – wear a leopard print dress with a large print and
then over-accessorize with child-like headbands and fishnet stockings and
espadrilles…. You look at them and shake your head and wonder if it would be a
good investment to buy them a full-length mirror, just so you don’t ever have
to see them looking like that again. You then remember that girl went to school for fashion design and yet still does not recognize the names of Jil Sander or Brian Atwood and realize the situation is completely hopeless. The POINT is that there is an art to evoking
the sleek, breathtaking glory of the felines of the wild. You don’t just throw
on some animal print pants and call it a day. Unless you want everyone and
their brother having Mr. T in their head saying, “I pity the fool…..” fill in the blank
with whatever you choose. The whole point of animal print in real life setting
was to camouflage the animal, not to make it stand out to predators and mean girls.
Later on in
the magazine, different approaches to denim are suggested. And of course, they
have suggested some animal printed jeans. If you are tall and thin, you go
right ahead and rock those feather print jeans. If you are like me, and have an
ass that’s more than twice the combined width of your ankles, do yourself a favor and DON’T DO IT! Do you
want to look like a triangle from behind? Yesterday I was bemoaning the fact
that my shoulders are so broad. I guess this would be one way to make them look
a bit thinner. If your ass looks like a feather-covered dumptruck, no one is
even going to look at your shoulders.
There was a
time when I was unhealthily thin – 5’7” maybe 110 pounds. I had this wacky pair
of Diane von Furstenburg jeans that were a purple base with a dark jewel tone
print of circles and squiggly lines. I could wear those then. I couldn’t even
allow one leg to wear them now. Things change. Bodies change. Get over it.
Accept reality as it is right now. Mr. T wouldn’t want you to have animal-print-dumptruck butt, even if the editors of InStyle do.
Contact me directly for more creepy photos of owls in leopard pants.
