Burnt Toasties, THANK YOU — we crushed our goal to raise $6,000 for the Me Little Me Foundation’s virtual food pantry!! You all raised over $7400 in just three days… and 42 of you became monthly donors. AMAZING.
So now we’re setting a stretch goal — let’s hit $12,000, and 50 recurring donors, by the end of the month. I know we can get there with your help.
$12,000 plus the Burnt Toast match will pay for 3,600 home-cooked meals for the marginalized folks (many in eating disorder recovery) who rely on Me Little Me to get groceries. You can learn more about their work here. And donate here (and put “Burnt Toast” in the comments so we can track your awesomeness!) Thank you all so much for showing up!
What Do You Do When You Wear the Wrong Thing?
I wrote the first draft of this newsletter on a school bus filled with 42 shrieking children, on my way to chaperone a school field trip to Storm King Art Center. (If you’re new to the Hudson Valley — Storm King is one of our local treasures.) The forecast yesterday was sunny and 76 degrees, so after more extensive thought than I’d like to admit, I wore denim cut-offs, bright blue Birkenstocks, and a red and white striped long sleeve tee. I also had my larger Baggu, stocked with snacks and water. When I left my house, I felt jaunty and spring-like.
Then I arrived at the school to see every other adult wearing long pants and long sleeves. One teacher had a puffy jacket with her! And the other mom chaperones, specifically, wore baggy jeans and Blundstone boots. They look very effortless and Brooklyn, and like they all got a dress code memo that I missed.
And INSTANTLY, my breezy spring outfit felt… wrong. Too brightly colored! Too much skin showing! (Um it was just my legs.) Too much Old Navy (top and shorts), not enough olive, or black, or “I found this trench in a little vintage shop in Carroll Gardens.”
To be clear, the other moms chaperoning this trip were lovely people, and nobody looked at me funny, or said anything to suggest I wore the wrong thing. “Wore the wrong thing” panic is just my particular flavor of social anxiety, although it’s grounded in some lived experience. There was the time I was photographed wearing a sundress next to a celebrity dressed in head to toe black and my limbs sparkled in the tabloid photos like a Twilight vampire. And then there was my ten year high school reunion where I wore a (low cut) cocktail dress and all the other women wore jeans.
I was also the only fat mom on this field trip. (Sometimes it feels like I’m the last fat mom in the Hudson Valley?) Which worked to my advantage when we got on the bus — the teachers made most chaperones sit with two kids each, but didn’t try to cram another child into my row. But it’s absolutely part of why my particular flavor of social anxiety always, always shows up as this kind of wardrobe angst. If you can’t adhere to the thinness standard, you feel extra pressure to adhere to other standards — to have good hair, to be put together, to wear the “right” thing.
I dropped all of this into my group text with Dacy Gillespie and Corinne Fay, who were immediately reassuring. “Maybe, possibly, they are looking at you, and wondering if they are wrongly dressed for the occasion?” Dacy wrote. “I have a theory that there are two types of people in the world,” added Corinne. “People who would rather be cold and people who would rather be hot.”
In other words: I wasn’t breaking some kind of unspoken style rule—for how to dress while keeping track of second graders, yes, don’t worry I am hearing the absurdity!!!— I was just dressing for my own needs and other people were dressing for theirs. I am firmly team “would rather be cold” now that I’m in perimenopause. And as we walked miles around Storm King on a gorgeous but very sunny day, I appreciated how not-sweaty and comfortable I felt. And yes, I noticed a lot of sweatshirts and jackets being shed!
I also reminded myself of my friend Kate’s life advice: Dress for the honor of the occasion. What she means is that it’s always okay to be a little over-dressed, because it shows the host you cared and prioritized their event, rather than trying to play it cool or worry about what other people would be wearing. I’m not sure how denim cut-offs fit here (my host was…art?) but I’ve decided they just do.
Tell me I’m not alone: Do you also suffer from “am I wearing the right thing” panic? If so, where does your anxiety stem from? And what strategies have you figured out to navigate it?
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This is one of my main sources of social anxiety, and I feel like I always pick wrong (that and what is the parking situation). But also it’s one of the only things within my control in an uncomfortable and uncertain social setting. And I still always pick wrong.
Oh I feel this. Pretty sure im the only fat mom in my city. For any school field trip, volunteering or PTO meeting I feel like I have to look put together and care about my appearance. I don’t feel like I can show up in leggings and a baseball hat like many moms do. They look like busy moms who threw something on, I would be the slob. Whew lots of internalized feelings about this 🙃