Validation with a Cinderella Connection

I've noticed that I tend to include little this and that about clothes quite a bit on here, and yet I haven't really considered myself a terrible clothes fanatic. But then in class the other day we had to write down memories of our childhood and I was drawn to remember that I did have a bad habit of judging people based on their clothes, and well, I was quite a bit more clothes conscious when I was in junior high and even to a certain extent in high school. Not that I sought people who were really highly fashionable. No, they just had to have similar level of moderation to mine--not even the same style--just this undefined level of balance between too slummy and too haughty. Perhaps there was a certain level of maturity in that because it seemed once I got to college just about everyone was "just right." But then again, maybe I'd matured by the time I was in college, and it just didn't matter so much any more. Perhaps that's why I look back to those college days with some longing. I could wear blue jeans all day and nice tops and feel I was "just right," because that was just generally what everyone else did. None too haughty or too lowly.

But then the working world came along, and new rules came into play. How I hated that transition. I really would prefer to wear blue jeans all day. That's probably why I was such a pill at that place of work where I did data entry--I wrote about it before but I've since deleted that post because I felt bad about it. Anyway, you might remember it regardless. I think part of it, too, was the money issue. I was a really poor graduate school drop-out at that point, and so when they changed the rules and said I had to wear pants to work, well, what's a girl supposed to do? Most of the pants I owned were pajama pants I'd been sewing with my recent acquisition of a sewing machine, as I strived to improve my skills.

Now we come to the Cinderella connection comes. Nancy Willard is our writer-in-residence this summer, and she came to speak with us this evening. It was a wonderful speech, too. Quite different from a lot of our author guests who talk about their writing career and all that--which is fine, too, not to disparage them. I'm always glad to hear about those things. But anyway, so in Nancy's speech, she was talking about the writing craft with particular attention to the narrator's voice. Things I've learned about before, but the stories she shared were a little new and different. One of them was a Scholastic editor's demand for a new retelling of Cinderella under the belief that what drove the love for the Cinderella story was not the prince, not the pumpkin, not the wicked steps, not even the glass slipper, but the dress. Girls love the Cinderella story because it validates the idea that a change of clothes will create enough of a change so as to change their whole life. I would have to nod my head to that. It makes perfect sense. That's why, as the Scholastic editor based his theory, so many young girls want to dress like Cinderella for Halloween.

So why is that validating for me? Well, I can relate. I still feel, even in my recent work experiences that clothes tend to make you or break you. People notice what you wear and treat you accordingly. That was a point I was trying to get to in that old post I deleted, but couldn't quite get there because all of the experiences weren't adding up. But I think it's true, within certain contexts, expectations. Anyway, I'm dropping this now because it edges so much on judgment that I don't want to cast out.

Aside from the work place, and even the school place--even now being back in school, I'm not as comfortable dressing just however I want to dress because, well, perhaps because it's summer and everyone doesn't just wear blue jeans and nice tops. There are all other kinds of levels of modesty and casualness and fanciness going on. I don't think I base my friendships on how people dress now, but for some reason, clothes are still on my mind under some premise that they can make or break me. Of course it's a total fallacy, which is probably why the Lord had to warn against love of clothing in a few places in the scriptures. But anyway...

I'm not done, nor even "there" yet--that's not the whole of the connection! What I've been trying to get myself to is the literature connection. That considering the high profile Cinderella has in literature, the number and variety of the stories she shows up in, in one form or another, her story is pretty significant to the reading population. So, for a blogger who does like to write about this that and the other thing but who tends to write more about clothes in oddball form and books and writing in slightly less so, but still oddball form, my world is starting to come together to make some certain degree of sense. Clothes and books--there really is a connection.