Finally, a Christian blogger who's not going to write some thoughtful / progressive / snarky / whatever response to the Judgment Day hullaballoo. I don't really think it's going to happen, but I'm already bored with everyone making fun of it, and hey... if tomorrow really is Judgment Day, I'm hoping to weasel my way into getting raptured, so it would probably be best not to have a blog entry on the record making fun of everyone who told us it was going to happen. Amirite?
I saw Bill Cunningham New York today, and it was so inspiring. Full of beautiful, exciting people doing beautiful, exciting things with clothes; both the rich-and-fabulous types we usually think of when we think of capital-F Fashion, and regular-and-fabulous types who just know how to rock clothes.
So many movies and magazines about fashion treat it as an inaccessible or aspirational thing. It's all designer stuff you will never be able to afford worn by people who are thinner than you will ever be to places you will never be cool or rich enough to go.
But Bill Cunningham New York tells the truth about fashion instead - that almost anyone in almost anything can be amazing if it's done right, that it's more about the look than the label, and that it's not about being rich or thin or cool but about being yourself, unapologetically and fearlessly.
My own attitude toward fashion has done almost a complete 180 since I started losing weight about a year and half ago. When I was at my heaviest, shopping for clothes was such a pain... I hated going to what I called the "Fat Girl" section of the store (or shopping at "Lame Giant, " even though they actually have great clothes and I sometimes miss shopping there). I mostly wore black metal-band t-shirts with jeans and tennis shoes, I had maybe one or two dress shirts to wear with my one or two pairs of dress pants... and no dress shoes. I have a picture of me meeting the ELCA Bishop when I went to Mexico for the International AIDS Conference, and I'm wearing a black band t-shirt and baggyish denim capris... and you can't see it, but I'm pretty sure I was wearing white New Balance tennis shoes with that. Eek.
Part of why I put almost no thought into a "look" or whatever for so long was that I wasn't happy with my body, and it's hard to get excited about wrapping the package when you don't like anything about the package you're wrapping.
It started changing when I did CPE, and I started doing some internal work around issues of embracing the power / authority that comes with being a public leader. I'm using those words in the most positive sense - I hate the idea of "authority" as ruling over someone or being the arbiter of others' behavior/beliefs, and for me it's more about recognizing that if people have given you the privilege of being in charge of something or care enough to listen when you say something, you should make damn sure to use that power wisely and for good, not evil. Anyway.
It changed even more once I started reading Beauty Tips for Ministers, where I found writings that made me think about the connections between leadership and presence and appearance.
It changed the most once I started losing weight and was finally happier with myself and my body. I think I've written before about how I cried the day that I tried on clothes from the "normal" section for the first time in four years. It was overwhelming for a few months - I was used to having so few options, and even fewer exciting or attractive options. I would walk into the regular womens' clothing section and feel like there was just too much to choose from.
It's changing more now... now that I'm no longer overwhelmed by the selection, now that the prospect of presenting myself as a public person/leader is imminent, now that I've started to get really encouraging feedback about the metal/theology stuff I'm into and wondering how that gets interpreted in my appearance (e.g., how to present myself in a way that is congruent with the things I'm thinking and writing about, if that makes sense...), and most importantly, now that I'm realizing more and more the need to claim my own God-given identity and be unapologetic and fearless about it in a world where so many ideas and so many people and so many corporations do everything they can to stake their claim on the minds and bodies of others and colonize them.
Bill Cunningham New York is more than a movie about a guy who takes great pictures of great clothes. It's a portrait into one man's quest to make the radical claim that what is beautiful matters, and matters especially in a world where there is so much that's ugly and horrifying. It's about lifting others up instead of tearing them down, and about celebrating both your own unique and awesome God-given identity as well as the spectacular diversity of people all around you.
It's about the impact that one person can have on millions of other people by simply getting up every morning and deciding to get out in the world and celebrate what it means to be alive in some small way.
If the Rapture really does come tomorrow and I get raptured, I'll be sad. There's so much more that I want to do, and so many people and places I want to experience again or experience for the first time. If the Rapture comes and I don't get raptured, well, I'll be available to hang out with the rest of you heathens tomorrow night, I suppose.
Either way, it's probably out of my hands now.
But either way, I'll be wearing my knee-high black leather Doc Marten 3-strap boots with something glam-meets-industrial/rock n' roll and sparkle eyeshadow and shiny lips. And I'll go out knowing I was trying to live as fully as possible into the fabulousness for which we were all created.
And if the Rapture doesn't come... well, those boots are seriously really awesome. It'd be a shame to save them for the end of the world.
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