On smiling and privilege

  Good morning, everyone! Today I thought I'd discuss an often unaddressed accessory in personal style: the smile!

  A blogger I follow* recently wrote a piece called The Fingerprints of Poverty that I found meaningful.

It was that piece, and some friends of mine who grew up in poverty and shared their experiences with me that made me realize that I am solidly middle class, and one of the things that marks me as American middle class is my teeth.

*Incidentally, fans of Steampunk, you should check her out. She's an author of Steampunk books and posts on old-fashioned style.

  I grew up raised by my father in a single income home. There were a lot of struggles for money growing up, but we were above the poverty line, there was food to eat every day, and I always had a roof over my head.

  Then there was the issue of our teeth.

  My teeth hate life. I brush. I floss. I rinse with fluoride. They came in covered in grooves and deep natural pits, and they cheerfully do their best to rot out of my head.

  Japanese people in general have a combination of small jaws and huge teeth.  The reason is grinding large grains and other hard foods in our collective history caused bone growth and would have made jaws larger to fit those teeth, but eating refined foods, a very recent luxury, has stopped that, while leaving our teeth the same size.

  An example of the long faces that run in my family:

  By the time my twelve-year molars showed up (at sixteen. sigh.) at the same time as my wisdom teeth, there was no room left in my mouth, so they came in at the curve of my jaw, pointing down onto my other teeth. The wisdom teeth were impacted and couldn't come in at all, so all of my teeth started shifting out of alignment with the pressure. My brother has one tooth that came in at 90 degrees to the rest, and a baby tooth that couldn't fall out for years because it was jammed in so tightly with its neighbors.

  My father paid for extensive orthodontic and dental work for one of us, and it was me. At the time, I could not for the life of me imagine why, except that my teeth were the worst in the family. Why did I have to get braces? Why didn't we just take the teeth that didn't fit out? Why couldn't my teeth just stay crooked? I could chew fine.

  Furthermore, we couldn't actually afford it. My father made that exceedingly clear, because he always talked to me about his financial woes.  I didn't figure out until about a year ago that it's because I'm the female child.

  I don't think my father even consciously thought of it that way; growing up, there was never a point made of my sex or different treatment that I noticed. But there are little things my father offered that imply he realized, however unconsciously, long before I did, that being pretty counts for more when you're female. I was the one who got braces. He even offered to pay for microdermabrasion for my acne scars when I grew up. (Again, can't. afford. it! Crazy.)

  I think we're still very influenced by the idea that women, especially in families that aren't wealthy, marry up. You may have read in evolutionary psychology books like The Red Queen**, that sons are traditionally more valuable to rich families because they can produce more offspring than a daughter, while daughters in poor families have better chances than sons if they're attractive because being able to provide resources doesn't matter as much when you're a woman.

** No links in this post are sponsored, this is just one of my favorite books

  And of course as an adult, I realize one of the American middle class hallmarks is even, straight teeth. It's something so common around me that I never questioned it until I traveled abroad and realized other countries don't bother with it nearly so much. Japan even puts a value on the snaggletooth that you don't see here.

  So here I am, middle class, boosted up by my father in the hopes that I will do better, except the concept of "do better" is exceedingly vague. I don't know what I'm expected to do, except be good at college. Communication in my family is something of a weak point.

  Lately I've been contemplating privilege more, and of course, teeth. I think about how much money went into making me more attractive before I was old enough to realize what attractive was. I still wear my Hawley retainer at night, and I'm fascinated by those new Invisalign deals they have now. Ah, the memories of all the scar tissue in my mouth from braces! People now might not have to deal with that, which delights me.

Did any of you wear braces or headgear? What are other things you can think of that are markers of class?.

On sexiness and changing narratives

  Before the weather turned, found myself myself pushing the bounds of what I was comfortable with wearing outside. I've been wearing red lipstick, and I tried some outfits that showed more of my shoulders and back.

  I think this was sparked by a conversation with a friend of mine. He said that for someone who loves style as much as I do, the colors I prefer -slate blue and soft grey- are "urban camouflage" and that I still dress an awful lot like I don't want to be noticed.

  I thought about it, and I realized that while I dress to be confident and happy, that I am very gunshy about dressing sexy. Part of it is I am paranoid about looking inappropriate/trashy/tasteless, but part of it is also a reaction to the male gaze.

Urban camo!

  I started physically developing when I was 10. By the time I turned 11, unwanted scary male attention started. Bam! All of my feminine clothes went away and I dressed to be invisible for the next 8 years.

  When I started trying more feminine clothes again in my late teens and twenties, I discovered a new type of predator: much older men with Asian fetishes approaching me in cafés and Japanese bookstores. I steered well clear, but again, it was a confrontation in which I was prey and it left me feeling dirty, marginalized to a fetish, and powerless. If I'm never called "exotic" again it'll be too soon.

  Even with the early puberty, I think I've had a less extreme version than what many women have to put up with. My natural protections include an ADHD, distracted way of socializing (I walk around staring intently into my own little world), and being born a woman of color, which automatically puts my appeal outside the mainstream.

  Sometimes you receive awesome compliments from strangers. Sometimes people hit on you in a polite and nice way that you feel comfortable saying "no thank you" to. Sometimes you're followed in a car while you're on foot or called to as you'd call a cat, and there's less reasonableness involved. Ultimately I think I the puzzle we all face is wanting to be attractive to the people we find attractive, and unappealing to the people we find creepy.

  Nowadays I both have more confidence and honestly, enough years on my face that men who prey on young coeds don't sniff around any more. It also helps to be in the SF Bay Area, which is majority population Chinese. I blend, and people seem less likely to fetishize 50% of the people around them, at least blatantly.

  For the few unwanted approaches I still encounter, I have developed my own way of dealing with the situation. You see, when a person makes an unwanted advance, it can easily become a situation in which I feel trapped and the center of scrutiny.

  So I developed the Bro Stance to change the narrative: I drop my naturally low alto to the bottom of my register, jut out my lower jaw, lower my brow and shout, "Coo, thanks, braw!" and throw a peace sign or a 'W'. It's kind of improv from there, but there's usually a chest bump with my fist or a chin nod-up involved. My nuclear option is shouting "Nah, BITCH!" if I get really uncomfortable.

"Uh-oh. Better make myself look BIG!" -The Cat, Red Dwarf

  Prey has become confusing and possibly masculine! Irony! I like to imagine a person reaching for a delicious sandwich only to find it has transformed itself into a jar of fuzzy purple mayonnaise. Sac town represent!

  The situations I've used it in have certainly left me feeling like Not Prey and the other party feeling confused. I really like it. It makes me giddy every time it works. I practiced it when I was alone and now I use it without even thinking when I'm in a situation where I don't feel comfortable.

  Best of all, doing this jars me out of my "freeze and stare into the headlights!" mentality that is my normal reaction to any sort of unexpected situation, and I feel centered and ready to push back if someone encroaches on my boundaries.

  Growing up is all about developing these little coping mechanisms, isn't it? May I ask what sort of coping mechanisms you've developed as you've made your way in the world? (In general, not necessarily being hit on or making a spectacle of yourself in public. :D)

Pantsion Plan

  I have a question, dear readers!

  How many pairs of pants (trousers, for you European folks) do you own?

  I know the answer varies widely depending on whether you prefer skirts to trousers, your line of work and its dress code, wardrobe size, and so on. I'd love to hear about it. Do you have a favorite pair of pants? Pants just for home? I'm asking both because I thought it would be fun to hear about, and as a sanity check because my pants are outgrowing the drawer I keep them in.

  This is the pants drawer. It is in a free craigslist bureau that is unremarkable save it is exactly the dimensions of a Toyota Prius with the back seats folded down, minus 3/4 of an inch on the top and sides.

  The pants get folded into sixths and fit inside in four columns, six deep for trousers and five deep for jeans, and I have two cool hangers that hold four pairs apiece. The thing is, I now have 29 pairs of pants -12 jeans and 17 slacks/trousers, and if you count the pair of khakis I'm altering, it becomes a round 30.

  So that's 30 pairs of pants and one pair of legs. Almost all of them have been featured on Couturgatory in its brief time on the Internet. They all fit; I wear them and I like them. But there are 30 of them. And the question rebounding in my skull like a BB rattling in a tin can is: Is this normal?

  Just trying to keep an eye on the arbitrary line between enthusiastic clotheshorse in a compact living space and bananamonkey crazyperson. I mean, again, there's a lot of play here, but most people would probably tell me north of 30 say, cats that maybe I should take it easy.

  I have lived in pants the majority of my life. This summer, while trying to post outfits to the blog that didn't consist of ratty denim shorts and a geeky graphic tee, I wore more skirts and dresses than I have since I was six. I liked it! But now that I have many lovely skirts and dresses, I wonder if my pants collection should still be growing. How do you manage your pants collection?

  At this point I've also realized that pants is a delightful word to say. Pants pants pants pants. Emancipantson Proclamation. The Safety Pants. Pantsalot. Pantsy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Elepants. :D
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  The seasonal changeover continues apace! Winter, that time of year in which there are fewer items in the closet, but it's more crowded because of garment volume. (:

  Summer skirts and sundresses are going away...

  ... into the shelf box previously occupied by sweater dresses and cold weather skirts:

  With few exceptions, my cold weather clothes are grey and black. I tend to spend my winters huddled in wool coats and scarves looking miserable, but I will do my best to inject some color and visual interest.

  What will you be wearing in the coming months?

Accessory Sorting

  My feet get cold inside when I'm not wearing socks, and I have to bundle up walking back from the gym at night, so there's no denying fall is here. (But the daytime weather is still gorgeous!) Sheila at Ephemera recently did a post on changing her closet over for the cold seasons, and it got me inspired to finally get to work sorting mine.

  Last week I got around to the long overdue job of sorting and folding my unkempt pile of scarves, purses, and hats.

  It had not occurred to me to separate out my heavy winter scarves from the rest before. This would have saved me a lot of room sooner!  I also have a set of narrow silk scarves/lady ties dyed with various plants and minerals. Would somebody like them? I've had them for years and have never worn 'em. Shoot me an e-mail at notactuallyaya [at] gmail [dot] com and I can send pictures.

  Goorin Bros. linked to a high quality Vimeo video on how to tell the difference between various flat caps. I grabbed my pile of flat caps and sat down excitedly to finally be able to categorize my various hats!

  ... did not end up helping. It's a lovely video, and handy for knowing the style of Goorin hats specifically, but the rest of mine defy explanation. I haven't had much luck on the Internet, either. Maybe the modern hat companies took liberties.

  I also sorted out my purses, which all live, along with my hats, on this over the door rack:

5 main ones, a free Easter basket, a lunch sack, and a bag from Cathy that looks like a buckler

  I have never been a person that notices purses. As I get more into personal style, I'm getting better at it, but by and large I still carry my things in a small REI backpack my friend Cathy gave me ten years ago. Then I favor small crossbody bags that leave my hands free. I do like metallic blue bags, though. So dramatic!

  I don't know if I've mentioned this, but my apartment has zilch in the way of storage. There is a closet in each bedroom, cabinets in the kitchen, and that is it. There isn't even a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I have kind of a lot of clothes now, so I had to get creative.

  Did you all know they sell stuffed toy hammocks you can put in the upper corner of your room? That eight bucks were among the more useful of the ones I have ever spent.

  So now three types of accessories are sorted out, and next I tackle changing things over from warm to colder weather, while trying to layer in a way that lets me sun myself in the lovely mornings and afternoons.

  Have you changed your closet over? How do you sort things if you live in an even, temperate climate or one more extreme than the Bay Area? Do you have items you wear all year 'round?

On cooking vs. outfits

  I've been wondering something lately: what do style enthusiasts do when we cook?

  I've seen recipe and cooking blogs, but they always feature immaculately clean, macro shots of photogenic ingredients with diffuse white lighting on tastefully coordinated pale backgrounds.

  My kitchen does not look like that.

  This is our kitchen. My equipment is a hodgepodge of thrifted gadgets. And when I cook, my clothes are definitely in a hazard zone, because there are always steam, oil and as often as not, pungent Asian sauces flying through the air. Also, we have way too many refrigerator magnets.

  One day I would love to live somewhere with a working dishwasher, unbroken shelves, and counters that aren't warped and peeling, but until then, this is where I do my work, and I love being in this room.

  Sometimes I am tempted to invest in a safety mask, particularly when throwing water or tea onto a hot pan to steam dumplings, or when chopping a particularly feisty onion. (My roommate refuses to use my lab goggles. Maybe he thinks they are tears of penance for chopping aromatics.)

  I been competent enough since a young age to feed myself, but it wasn't until I went back to school and started cooking every night to save money that I loved cooking. Prepping ingredients became calming, and when a dish turns out right I do a little happy dance, thinking I am awesome.

  Things I have learned:
  1) Lamb fat does not come out. There will be a subtle greasy spot on the abdomen of my Pure + Good hoodie and my Old Navy dress forever. Surprisingly, I have not tried layering the two items to see if the grease stains match up. Future outfit idea noted.

  2) Green tea can be substituted for water in pretty much anything. Cook rice, steam dumplings, and make ginger beer with it. It's very nice.

  3) Cut the cooking times for all meat in recipes you find online in half, and check on it. I swear, people on the Internet overcook *everything*.

  Recently, after owning it for a mere two years and forgetting I had it neatly folded up in a box, I started wearing my apron. It was a gift from my mother. It cracks me up because it looks very much like a country-style apron that I'd imagine well, not Asian people wearing, but she got it for me because I was born in the year of the rooster. I can tell people it makes me cocky.

   Now I don't need to change out of my day clothes quite so much.

  If you cook, what do you do to protect your outfits? Do you change? Wear a full body apron? Both? Please tell me if you wear a safety mask.

Musings on weight loss, undergraduate education, and stew

  A texty departure, gentle friends! Also a new tag: rants*. Outfit posts will be back shortly.

  Somehow personal style is, well, personal and far more revealing than I had anticipated. I keep things deliberately topical in my social media- Facebook, Twitter, and I tried to with this blog, but things keep leaking out. This is a (rare!) brain spill about weight loss and body image, with some angerballing about college.

  A bit of background: I am a returning student in my 30s. I've burned through my savings of several years and worked as many as three part time jobs to staunch the money hemorrhage while attending classes on three different campuses due to overcrowding. And yet during this pity party I'm painfully aware that I am one of the lucky ones. This stress and exhaustion and fear for me is (hopefully) temporary. There is no end in sight for the adults working multiple jobs, all days of the week, supporting families on barely or less than subsistence wages.

-----------

  After this last summer, I'm not gaining my weight back. I have not been able to digest things properly for weeks. My stomach sounds like a herd of cats burping and growling at the same time whenever I eat. I'm constantly nauseated. I lost thirteen pounds in four months, bringing the total to twenty three overall, my kidney got infected, and my hair has been torn out. I get hives now after recovering from each round of school, and eczema has started appearing in patches on my legs.

  Every semester I lose weight and I never fully recover it. I feel like a set of Russian dolls; every semester I am smashed against an edge, and a smaller version of myself is set back on the table. I do not know what happens when we come to that last little solid one. I suspect that I am there now.

  I've started politely correcting people who compliment my weight loss, who counter my explanations of stress with the dubious silver lining of becoming slimmer, more conventionally attractive. I am the reverse of the accepted paradigm: when I lose weight, it is a wasting process. It signifies that stress has destroyed my appetite and study has overrun the need for exercise and sleep. It means the things I take pleasure in have been set aside in a desperate sprint for a ticker tape, marking the end of only one more section of this monotonous grueling trek.

  I miss my physical strength. Half my lifetime ago, I wanted to be the media's feminine ideal, to have slender limbs and more prominent bony landmarks. Now I do not want my build any other way, and I want so much to have it back. I had the luck to fall in love with a sport that made me realize how beautiful a body works: a symphony of cables, pulleys, and organs that made me want to sing when I ran and when I flew in the air for that amazing fraction of a second. I miss my gentle long jogs, my weights, my pushups, my core exercises, my flexibility, and my wushu. When I do those things, the endorphins fill me with an overwhelming awe of how trillions of cells make this complex organism I live in. Life is a constant battle against entropy. Each breath becomes a conscious, incredibly precious gift.

  Most of all, there is guilt. I feel guilty that I consciously burned my health and betrayed the body which has served me and worked so beautifully all these years in a desperate prayer for a future.

  I want to hug my body to tell it how sorry I am, and reassure myself that we'll build ourselves back up together. I want to feel that sense of awe with each breath again, and to experience those precious hours in which I feel I have fully embraced the joy of being alive.

  (My friends, by the way, are amazing. They buy me my favorite foods and check to make sure I am eating, supporting my unusual desire for weight gain. As I type, there is a large container of my very favorite lamb stew waiting for me in my refrigerator. It is as thick and delicious as you can imagine.)

  I've watched the lines around my eyes deepen and show even when I am not smiling. I've watched the roundness of my face that I used to despair over gently fall away, leaving deep channels between my nose and chin. My dimples, once almost hidden by my cheeks, are showing more as my thinner face creases and pulls taut around them. I'm still young, but as I laughingly tell people, the model is modern but past its warranty. I feel my body changing as the battle against entropy rounds its curve, yet somehow the internalization of age makes me more patient. Well, more patient if I weren't so angry at this school process.

  There's a lot of anger. I am so angry at this clown show that has thrown roadblocks every step of the way as I try to graduate, at the complete irrelevance of so much of our only certification system, and watching more and more years sunk in a desperate race to compete for a shrinking pool of jobs.

  There is so much impotent frustration that the education system that could give me such beautiful tools as chemistry and biology would then have me spend years solving the same problems, cranking out the same answers like an assembly line. I don't like this frenetic pace, the shakedown and lazy way of distinguishing between goal-oriented students by testing how well we can memorize minutiae, culling us on the basis of tiny tricks and mistakes in identical problems rather than how we can use these new languages and concepts to change our perceptions of the world around us.

  It was using my new knowledge to read academic papers in the little time I am not cramming trivial details that made me think I might be suited to graduate school. And yet when it comes to statements I have no idea what to write, how much of myself I should hide and how much I should show. Everything in this system so far says what distinguishes me is how perfectly I can recite the arbitrary knowledge someone set down in a text and someone else cherry picked for exams. It is this, I am told, or be denied entry to any further steps. It takes almost all of my time to stay above water in competitive courses in which this and only this determines my grades.

  I started this blog because I was so frustrated at this system. I wanted an organic creative process, the unexpected paths it opened, and the resultant excitement of discovery. It has been so conspicuously missing in the countless years of education I've slogged through in thirty three years.

  Lately I find myself dressing for the things I am so grateful did not change about my body, even after this latest and most dramatic round of weight loss. I am dressing to emphasize the thickest, sturdiest parts of my physique- my shoulders, my upper limbs, my midsection. I used to have a physical sense of invincibility that wore as an armor to help me get through each day.

  I'm in a privileged position, becoming more rather than less conventionally attractive when I lose my health, but what I want is if we could be, as my friend Mo said, our ideal selves. What would we look like if we had enough sleep, enough money, enough to eat, enough exercise, enough fulfillment, and enough love? For now it feels like all I can manage is rice porridge with ginger and bok choy. And lamb stew. I'll eat all the lamb stew I can.

* Rants that are remotely related to style through body image, anyway. You will be spared my rants about the history of civilization, evolutionary psychology, control mechanisms, statistics, feminism, politics, and economics.

This one is for Mom

  A quick midweek post because I miss blogging and because I didn't have lab today. (YAY NO LAB)

  I was perusing eBay when I came across a skirt that simultaneously captures my delight and everything my mother could hate in a garment, ever:

  I've never had an antagonistic relationship with my mom, so you may wonder why I go into a paroxysm of belly laughs every time I see clothes she would hate, and I think the reason is that a person from Japan being aghast is about the funniest thing I've ever seen.

  It starts with a very blank look, followed by an eyeblink, then a gentle distressed cry of "Nooooo. Aya! Nooo. aaaaaaaaaa" with subcurrent of 'why do you like these things? what did I do wrong? is it my fault?' I'm pretty sure this is the exact sound she made when I cut my own hair at age eight.

  Then I roll around on the ground laughing for several minutes, hug her, and reassure her I will never wear the skirt in front of her again. But really, if she keeps doing this hilarious thing, she is reinforcing the wrong behaviors because I want more skirts that look like this.

  I've started a new tag for my posts in honor of this moment: 'Mom hates this' and it will mark all of my long ragged-hem boho skirts. :D I love you, Mom!

  Also I think I genuinely love this skirt, despite my boyfriend reporting that it is hideous and the hippie homeless vibe makes his face hurt. Every now and again I think we all have items of clothing where we're like, "Yeah!" and our friends are like, "No." and we're like, "Yeah! :D" and our friends are like, "... whatever makes you happy. (weirdo)"

  What is your special item?

  And there's a whole line of 'em! (eBay link, the sizes appear to top out at XL, but I'm not sure which sizes are available for which items.)

Edited to add: Hot damn, there is a shirt! Not that I'd wear the two of them together. I apologize for the mannequin's lack of decency. She just refuses to understand these things.

Opera Scura

  I've wanted to do a post for a bit now about my friend Mo's shop, Opera Scura.

  Mo is a dance instructor and an amazing craftswoman, among many other things. She makes all of her own patterns for her crafts, and the pieces I've bought from her have all been of excellent workmanship- durable, functional, gorgeous, and unique.

  She's starting a new set of patterns and crafts and is currently making awesome hats, and I encourage you to take a look! I will likely post again when I see something particularly ooh-worthy. You can contact her for sizing if you are extra large or extra small hat size. Her prices are in the super-low $20-30 range, and she currently ships within the United States (sorry, international readers!)

  The etsy shop is Opera Scura

* This is not a sponsored post. Mo just makes awesome things.

American Apparel Sale and a question about sizing

  Quick note that American Apparel, a basics clothing company that makes its clothes in the US, is having a $5 and $15 item sale. At a glance, a lot of the selection is in L and XL. Bargains abound! (Link does not result in any income for me. May result in clothes for you. :D) Please note some of the models are scantily clad, so possibly not safe for work?

  And a question for all of you: sometimes I try to track down links to clothes I wear and post them, usually secondhand on eBay. I post any sizes I find, but I notice they're often limited to the smaller end of the range, and some companies don't offer sizes above XL at all. Japanese clothing companies especially tend to offer a one-size-fits-all-if-you're-Japanese selection, because the population is relatively homogeneous in build and height. Seriously, when I was there, I think every woman I saw was 5'2"-5'5". I imagine being a tall or plus-sized woman in Japan is extra difficult.

  I don't want to be exclusionary or size-shaming (healthy and happy is beautiful, not a number on a clothing label. and healthy can mean a range of things, depending on how we are built and enabled.) Can you please let me know if you're getting that feeling from my posts, and if so, what I can do to correct it? Thank you!

OzzOn Japan pictures

  The OzzOn Japan website is finally back up after significant delay!  I have to admit it *does* look better and is much easier to navigate. Go ahead if you're interested in Japanese punk/goth clothes- I think it isn't difficult without reading Japanese.

  They're having a 30% off everything sale that goes on every year. Ah, for a budget that could keep up with my sartorial dreams. (:  Here are some of my favorites:

Ozz Oneste China camisole

Rozen Kavalier lace printed cami

Ozz Croce dragon camisole

Ozz Croce 'Hard Croce' skirt

Ozz Angelo lace embroidered leggings

Ozz Croce double pouch purse

Shirt or Collar Clips Tutorial

  Hey everyone! Some of you expressed interest in how I made the shirt clips, pictured holding the front of my jacket in this post, so I put together some photos. Click on any picture to get a close-up.

  This was an idea of mine ever since I used a small orange binder clip to hold together an open-faced shirt in one of my first blog posts. I poked around online to see if such a thing existed, and found this photo of collar clips:

  This is essentially what I wanted to make, I just wanted to use them on shirt halves. You can of course use them for whatever you like. (:  Here are the materials I used:

round nosed pliers, two headpins, thrifted clip-on earrings, length of chain

  You can use flat pliers instead. For the connecting pieces you can use wire, or even jump rings instead of head pins if they are large enough. (You can also make your own headpins with wire and round-nosed pliers.)
  Use a type of chain that has links or round rings at each end so you can thread the jump rings/head pins through them to hold them in place. Pick the length of chain you want for holding two ends of a piece of clothing together, and cut the chain if necessary.

   Look at where the hinge is on the earrings. You want a hole where the hinge articulates, and you want that hole not to close up when the earrings open and shut. This is where the headpin to hold the chain will thread through. If there is no hole, you can also wrap the wire around the bottom of the clip part that curves toward the hinge.

  Insert the headpin through the hinge opening, thread it through the chain, and wrap the wire around itself to hold it in place.

  You are done! Enjoy your new clips on whatever you'd like.

Please let me know in comments if you have any questions or if anything is unclear.

  Two notes: 1) Because clip-ons are meant to clasp earlobes, they don't grip very hard, so you can't use them to hold say, a skirt of heavy material up. Sudden expansive movement like stretching (to which I am given) may cause one of the ends to slip off the cloth. You can reduce this some by adding clip-on pads. These will add friction and narrow the clip opening.

  2) Experiment with other materials! For example, instead of plain chain, you can try other things. I have this broken bit of bracelet or necklace I found on the street years ago. I think it will make a snazzy chain between a set of clips, once I find some suitable clip-on earrings.

Edited to add: There is such a thing as this! Gracey at Fashion for Giants posted about vintage sweater clips. She went in the reverse direction- she took something to hold clothes edges together and put them on her collar. :D

Belting it out

Let's talk belts.

  I love wide belts, probably because they suit my build. Skinny belts at the waist make me look like I have been bisected into two powerful chunky pieces, and I can't wear belts at my hips because I wear long fitted shirts so I don't show a big section of my lower back/upper butt when I sit and squat.

  I'm always interested in hearing about how other people wear belts and how they suit different body types and figures. And if you have any advice on how one wears hip belts that doesn't involve a strange series of lumps under one's long shirt, please let me know.

  I cruise eBay to calm down before bedtime, as it's lightly engaging and doesn't take much concentration or brain power. I've been fixated on Crystaline's Steampunk Lolita ensembles this past month and I'm in the market for a belt like the one she sports in a lot of her outfits:

  I thought I'd share some brown wide belts that caught my interest. Let me know if you'd be interested in any other styles or items, and maybe I can poke around the internet for you when I can't sleep! Links here don't profit me, but they may benefit YOU. ;D

  This studded brown belt with double buckle looked simple enough to wear on the street but had a cool fantasy vibe to me. It has an elastic section in the back and claims to fit ~30-33 inches. $12 with shipping.

  This is a German trachten belt. It is also adorable. Dangly hearts on little sock-shaped pieces of wool! Says  it will fit waists ~36-41 inches. $30 with shipping.

  An obi-style fake leather belt with a panel in front and long elastic band behind it. I guess this would be for wearing under jackets or if I was going to spend an evening leaning against a wall. On the plus, the stretchiness says it will accommodate up to 43 inches. Also comes in brown, black, and red. $16 with shipping.

  I like the asymmetric holster-feel of this one. I think it looks modern and conjures a bit of gunslinger feel at the same time. ~27-34 inches. $8 with shipping.

  Closest in appearance to Crystaline's belt, this cincher comes in several colors and finishes. Claims to fit ~30-40 inch waists. $17.45 with shipping, but seller has individual colors on auction that you can bid on for cheaper.

  One thing I've noticed is that many of the new-fangled belts are mass-produced pieces from China, meaning the size range can be quite small in comparison to American sizes. For myself, growing up the nice clothes here were always too big/tall/long and when I discovered Asian clothing, it was like a world of things that fit me opened up. However, this means that my friends are often excluded because of the limited sizing. Do you have better luck with particular brands? Do you have experience finding clothing from a particular country that fits you better? What do you look at when you shop online?