Clothing Camouflage

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This is an old post from another blog site of mine. Apologies if you've already read it, but it still holds currency for me.

Today was one of those days... you know the ones, when you just can't make up your mind whether you feel like a yummy mummy or a frumpy lumpy? The compromise is terrific underwear (that makes you look like a jelly doughnut in a rubber band, but feel like Jessica Alba pole dancing all day) covered up by jeans and a tracksuit top. That way you know that you're so insecure about your looks that you're willing to take the requisite 3 hours and 4 bottles of Vaseline to get into the underwear, while the world thinks you're so comfortable with yourself that you're not bothered with how others judge your appearance.

It's urban camouflage at its paranoid best. The days of "putting on a face" while anaesthetising the boredom with gin and Valium have given way to the clothes neuroses that now dog us thirty- or forty-something mothers. That fine balance of presenting our best face to the world but not getting strap marks from a too-tight bra or blisters from too-tight Manolos is our perpetual Everest.

We're inundated with style tips, knowing our body shapes and dressing for them. We're berated by upwardly-mobile, pretentious, stick-insect women or, better yet, gay men for wearing the wrong clothes for our fruit-shaped bodies. Any attempt to remonstrate against this barrage of rampant consumerism is met either with dog-eyed pity and a pat on the head or with utter derision and a booking on the next round of The Biggest Loser.

There's no use in buying out of the fashion stakes either, it'll come back to bite you eventually. The one day you slink down to school in your unwashed trackpants and the t-shirt that was doing an impersonation of a dustball under the bed, attempting to throw the children out of the car at the kiss-and-drop before anyone sees you, will be the one day when the President of the Ladies Auxiliary button-holes you for a contribution of petit fours for the winter sports carnival while sneaking furtive glances at various high points of your attire. You know she now doubts your ability to whip up a packet muffin, let alone the Nigella-like delicacies you've been boasting of for the last week and a half. In desperation you make a lame endeavour to pull back your hair that has managed till now to look suspiciously like you're channelling Albert Einstein, and smooth over any part of your clothing you can reach without fear of discovering a new strain of flesh-eating bacteria. Suddenly the bravado with which you left home (I'm taking children to school, not strutting down a catwalk) completely deserts you as you mumble excuses, make wild promises about producing 300 miniture opera tortes by next week and screech out of the carpark narrowly missing the Headmaster and 6 Kindergarteners as they scuttle across the pedestrian crossing.

You make it out of there alive, reputation in tatters and swearing never to be caught out again... and knowing you've just been sucked back into the vortex of clothing camouflage.