Fashion for Writers

I still never finished the post I started last week after Lena Horne passed away, and I’m wondering now if I should be at peace with how slowly I think and write, and also if I should not be so proud of how rapidly I speak especially if I’m not saying very interesting things. My mom was not only the most popular girl at her school when she was younger, but she was pursued by casting agents who wanted to make her into the Chinese Shirley Temple when she was five, and pursued by music executives when she was in middle school (I guess to be the Chinese Britney? Miley? I don’t know,) and she was a muse to famous painters and sculptors and poets when she was a teenager/young woman (I wonder where these paintings and sculptures and poems about her are now? Destroyed? In a box somewhere? In a gallery somewhere?) and I have distinct memories of attending parties with my mom and watching people drift over to whatever conversation my mother was a part of until there was a huge circle of people around her, which is why I was so surprised when my mom told me a few years ago that although she knew she was very well liked, she didn’t think she was ever saying anything interesting.

My father makes weird noises, he forgets to call his friends for five years at a time, when he answers the phone he often sounds unpleasant, his natural face-in-repose is one of irritation (even when he’s perfectly happy,) and when I was younger, I noticed that he was often able to get through a twelve hour party (I’m talking about get-togethers that start at noon and end at midnight!) without saying a word. During that same conversation, my mother told me she thinks my father is often saying extremely interesting things, even though it seems as if more people are interested in her than they are in my father. I have to remind myself that being well-liked is not the same thing as being interesting, and that I want to strive for the latter and care less about the former.

I’m trying to be more thoughtful about assessing the value of what I like to consume and what I like to produce or imagine, and in particular, to try to “reimagine value outside of capitalism,” as Minh-ha recently wrote in the comments of her post, “Why Are We Willing to Pay for Fashion Magazines and Not Blogs?” Meaning trying to write this novel without thinking about agents and publishers and money and fame and how to market myself. Meaning trying to think more about what kind of content I’d like to share with you all on this blog beyond being an unintentionally free-of-charge, ancillary marketing helper elf to the brands of clothing I’m wearing in my outfit posts.

I also meant to thank everyone who took the time to comment so articulately and thoughtfully on my recent post about how to deal with meanness. It means so much to me (Patti Smith’s voice is now officially in my head,) to read your comments (that are way smarter than my original post, by the way,) and feel the excitement I always feel when I know there are other people wanting to start a dialogue rather than to shut it down.

I’m slowly responding to everyone, but it’s taken me a while because I’ve been busy these past few weeks–best friends coming into town, planning a bachelorette party, making phone calls to male strippers (for said party,) going out of town to see my cousin graduate from law school, finishing bookbinding assignments, making books for my friends, teaching my last class, figuring out how on earth I’m going to survive in France next year, trying to overcome my laziness, and trying to find as much time to write as I can.

By the way, the little blue thing on my face is a horse sticker and here’s a bigger horse sticker on my boyfriend’s pocket. The pink dress is vintage and I used to wear it all the time in college before I knew anything about strapless bras, and because of that, it was kind of HI NIPPLES every time I wore this dress, and it’s too bad that learning about strapless bras coincided with learning about nipple shame, at least for me. If only I could turn back time.

Love, Jenny