“The real match, as in determining financial destiny is figuring out who controls the pocketbook in a marriage, or controlling your own pocketbook. Eventually the former had to happen. I have made so many financial mistakes, it comes down to changing my manor of dress and physical demeanor to find the life I wish to have. At least for a little while. To have someone else take the reigns, direct and plan. In the least, drive the car so I can be a passenger for a change. Cross country trips are so much better when the driving is shared and it is not expected for one person to bear the load for over  2,500 miles.”

Picking up where I left off about the significance of pants being built for carrying money, I started with the following:

 Now that I’ve seen the lining to the financial fabric I’ve brought up, I’ve given myself the short shrift. With every ethereal cloud (skirt) there is a silver lining and the threads of conversation are what I am after. Compliments are that thread. A skirt of a beautiful eye catching fabric next to a pair of Italian pants is a good pairing.Thinking about clothes financially, I’m proud to mention I just made a skirt with pockets earlier today. I can carry my own weight and look appealing while I am doing it.

 The compounding distaste of pants is somewhat relieved in skirtiveness. Being assertive in a skirt is great when you do not have to be a stereotypical airheaded female when it comes to meeting people and balancing the bills. The real issue with assertiveness is being so independent that people stay away from you. Sometimes the perception in wearing pants is that you are a young woman who “has it all together”. The perception is that “you want for nothing” especially not emotional support or the comfort of just shooting the breeze at RaceTrack. Somehow the world comes to view you as not just untouchable, but unapprochable. The world finds that you have no room for it in your world.  Here are my button ringers: “You just looked like you were busy”. Then there’s the ringer “you’re intimidating”. I found out this past month, that comment kept me from a high school romance that really would have brought the sun, moon and stars down in a jar just for me.

 How now I beg for a skirt to give the right signal, the right inclination, the right guess that I can be swayed and sometimes whisked away. Thinking of women who can divulge all and have no boundaries, I would much rather not be as forthcoming.  I would like to retain the mystery till the folds of the skirt are found lined with good intentions. But, let’s get real, I could never be a bubblehead. Quiet, yes, bubble head, no.

 This skirt issue truly is about being more engaging – the difficulty in not being overly gregarious. The skirt issue has also been about letting go and letting someone else, even God, to take control. Sometimes being tired can be a systemic disease. I guess it is true, all a woman wants is for someone to take care of her. For the reticence and regret, I still say this, I’m envious of the females who went to college to get married. Although for the legal ramifications of non-entitlement in divorce settlements and odd things at the husbands death, I still am envious. Is it so wrong to go back to a classical, antiquated identity of womanhood, where you just want to give in and give over. Years of feminist talk and accomplishments of being the first this or that I begin to think I am betraying part of my ideological development.

 One settles for advanced education. One settles for a high paying managerial job. One settles for intense exercise regimens. One settles for shopping for bargains on the holidays most are with their lovers or families. You settle for being busy and growing tired. Activity becomes the substitute for intimate and honest human relations. So does a skirt. My new wubbie.

 Skirtatude

Is that the flounce of my skirt? How coy is the cut of the skirt to catch a man? Is talking with a man about anything at all about being assertive? It is really about the act of catching which devolves into the realm of a testing while gregariously teasing: Dart and Pause. Dart and Pause, careful remark. Laughter and falsely ingenuine interest. (That is a hem that is falling apart) My skirtatude, or assertiveness in a skirt, is more that I know what it is like to be on either side of my pair of eyes. Seeing at, seeing in, seeing out, gazing around and glazing over.

by Niven Colette Constantine

Copywrite July 15, 2009