In Which It's Mostly About Con Wear

15 April 2004

I might have some of my energy back today. I may, I might. It's a good bet that if I do, I'll use a bunch of it doing energetic things I should have done before. But still, better than not, I think.

Timprov has ceded The Dubious Hills to me, so I can finish it and give The Proof House my full attention again and finish it before we see Stella this weekend, whenever during this weekend we're supposed to see her at Uncle Hugo's. I've left it to her to choose when.

I was talking to Timprov about cons and clothes the other day. He said he didn't know why I wasn't uncomfortable dressing the way I do for cons, because in his opinion I was dressed better than most con attendees. Actually his phrasing was "any three people there." Part of my comfort level is that I don't read it that way. There was no one there who dressed much like me, but there were people who were dressed very nicely -- Jo Walton, for example, was wearing a nice outfit that suited her very well on Saturday that I remember specifically -- and I wasn't exactly in a strapless formal gown. I was wearing little dresses and tights and sweaters and flats. Clothes that make me very comfortable but still look decent.

The thing is, there wasn't anybody there who looked a good deal like me. Twenty-somethings were not in great abundance, and the twenty-somethings and early-thirty-somethings I saw clearly wore different styles of clothes. Truepenny, for example, had a gorgeous jacket that managed to be whatever level of dressy you wanted it to be. I have no such jacket. The same jacket would probably have looked a little funny on me -- it's just not the sort of thing I wear. But it looked great on Truepenny.

Rounder, less rounded, funkier, more conservative, older, younger...I don't know. There was just nobody there who made me think, oh yes, I should emulate that. Plenty of people looked good or fine in what they were wearing. They just didn't look like me. And if I'd worn jeans and a sweater or a T-shirt, I still wouldn't have looked like many other people anyway. So I wear the more decent end of my wardrobe to conventions as long as it's comfortable, and I figure other people are wearing what makes them comfortable or happy, too, and it all works out.

(Also I show cleavage more often when I'm nervous. Sort of a "be nice to me, look, here are some boobs!" reaction. I also show cleavage more often when I'm really not nervous at all. So there's kind of a cleavage parabola thing going if you graph it. Uh...yeah. This is what happens when you don't use your physics degree, folks. Leave it alone in the dark recesses of your brain with not enough calculus to do and it'll start figuring out the derivative of your skirt length over the years.)

And after that oh-so-fascinating diversion, I have work to do and lunch to eat and books to read and all of those usual things I do. Wheee, my life. It's going to be a lovely day, and it might even thunder for me later. I'm wearing sandals. It'll be good. And tomorrow I might even be energetic and interesting. It's been known to happen from time to time.

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