After some minutes spent getting ready to leave home, and by some minutes I really mean an entire morning entertained with a long cold shower, followed by an intimate ironing session with my white Jaquard Aquascutum shirt which I then buttoned while searching for every tweet or Facebook status on Vogue’s Metropolitan Ball – I was apparently ready to face the world. Apparently.
I go though all kinds of efforts in order to save myself from my own nonage. I acknowledge Slavic culture. I bookmark Wikipedia articles: planning ahead my insomnias. I rant tumblr like Daphne Guinness rants McQueen’s archives on a Friday night. And amidst conceptual chaos, I still find time to mind picture Franca Sozzani rising to the skies with a patronizing (Virgin Mary like) glaze in her eyes while I max out my credit card limit on luxury goods (mostly green glycerin soap for horses since I cant even afford key-holders at Hermes.com). Yes, I’ll spend an entire morning avoiding reality, because reality isn’t something I gratefully invited into my life: I was born into it. Real world is not kind. We’re
constantly faced with comparisons and distinctions, while our feelings are questioned and afflicted by mostly everyone but ourselves. Having to touch that real wall that separates me, both from world’s most wonderful wonders and word’s most horrible horrors is the hardest thing to do. No safety gazing from a distance, no calmly picturing from afar – but amidst all: be present, face disparity.
As you step out, be ready to feel things. Feel shorter, darker, uglier, smaller, older, worse, poorer and sillier. On a good day, feel sassy – or content in Christmas if you are a masochist. Yet no matter how hard you spent adolescence fighting to upstage Britney Spears, there will always be a better breed. High school sweetheart pop-star will soon be upstaged by avant-garde city girl. And while city girl runs the masses, somewhere in the north lands a Swedish goddess performs to a group of tree, gathered in a golden late-baroque ballroom that has been previously stented by Tilda Swinton herself with Le Lab’s Neroli 36.
Sure, you did your absolute best laboring like a slave for 6 years in hopes to turn a small family-business profitable, and finally you can enjoy those achievements by stepping out happy, looking like a perfected English rose in Jill Sander semi-couture (that you paid for with your hard earned money) except that somehow in hell, someone assigned Dree Hemingway to take a walk down your street, wearing a long vintage ivory laced dress – standing taller than you in flat shoes, and prettier than you in rags. What do you do then? Set fire to your own skin? Feel confortable in your own body (meaning putting on 20 extra pounds as you eat your feelings of inferiority in pink cupcakes)? Move to Antarctica? No. You are expected to deal with it without killing the bitch who’s raining in your parade or looking for a permanent residence in Tibet.
That’s, supposedly and aside from a rational explanation, why we are here for. To deal with it.
So… Property rights created by anonymous-guy 5000 years ago got you out of job? Deal with it. Gisele Bunchen deepthroats Tom Brady in a desert tropical island while you masturbate alone in your IKEA 99 euro bed? Deal with it. Natural blond sits next you in the hair salon as you fight those nasty-dark roots for 60 minutes with 100dollars worth of peroxide? Deal with it. Meet life – an extreme sport for us sensible and aware humans that have THIS much more to deal with.
After all, we were NOT born THIS way. We had to violently go against our lazy ways and face the local gym’s treadmill while a Russian fitness goddess drove us to shame, performing her no-sweat routine five meters away from our Godzilla jogging. Throughout childhood, we also had to accept we would never make it in the porn industry (let alone modeling) since our natural lottery was not kind enough regarding to breasts, (height) or promiscuity. Focusing on emerging markets and logical solutions at an early age, was not a choice, it was an outlet. We’ve grown to be Dita von Teese, because someone else in our street had luckily been born Claudia Schiffer.
Acceptance does not mean compliance. I do accept the natural state of things that allows some people to be extremely lucky and others to be heartbreakingly unfortunate. Yes, I accept this, but I’m not complying. That’s why I cling to fashion – because in a world of horrors, we can escape to wonders. We can fight, we can dress up, we can peroxide-blond, we can contact lenses, and we can bitch please, we play Dita von Teese and possibly win Louis-Marie de Castelbajac.
Fashion allows us to change ourselves while changing our fate.
I’m 50% cute and 50% work. I work it. We work it. It’s the gay thing to do: scrub lactic acid over our naked bodies for whichever many mornings needed in order to get that porcelain white complexion, thus saving us from our innate nonage or ethnic tragedy. If God gave you a midget size, gay will give the Armadillo shoe. Some were lucky to be born perfect, but we are lucky that we can be perfected.
No matter what, acceptance does not means compliance. You can’t change the media, but you can switch the station, and you can change the channel. Study harder. Peroxide stronger. Platform higher.
Fabulous is on line 3. Please hold as we transfer.
