a dress story (for mae)

I have a lot on my mind lately. A lot of it personal. A lot of it painful. Some of it hopeful. That's just me, though. I'm a deep thinker. One thing I will say is that I never need a special occasion to wear a dress. I like dresses. It's one of those things in my closet that I'm happy to reclaim because for years I completely avoided wearing dresses. I wrote about my dress reclamation here. So yes, I love dresses. However, after a recent visit to LA, the lovely Mae gave me a mild scolding about the dresses I wore for my best friend's wedding and my brother's wedding. She said that as much as she loved the photos, the most frustrating thing about them was seeing me so covered up. Not too long before that, my friend "Mr. Dukes" wrote me an email declaring that I needed to "show some pride, for real!" I get Mae and Mr. Dukes's point. I'm not one to wear sleeveless anything. It's just me. Somewhere down the line, I was taught that unless you're a skinny bitch with cut arms, you have no business showing your arms to the world.

And then I got to thinking... who the f--k fed me this bullshit?! So in the name of re-vamping the Fierce Runner blog and trying my best to dig deep, deep inside, I decided to take the plunge and purchase and wear those dresses I've been forbidden to wear because of some stupid familial/societal standard. So here it is. My adventures in my two new dresses.


This past Saturday, Margaret, Diana and I decided to "dress nice" and head to Valley Fair to run errands and go on a lovely stroll at Santana Row.


A solo shot with Diana in her lovely orange dress.


This is me with Margaret in her usual lovely sun dress and shawl fare.


Before we left the mall, we stopped by Nordstrom and Margaret insisted I try on this Maggie London dress. We were thinking of possible graduation dresses for me (it's a year from now, but it's never too early to plan) and Margaret picked this one. I liked the color. Unfortunately, my body is a little too curvy for the straight cuts of designer dresses. If you look closely, Diana is actually behind me holding the dress:)


Unfortunately, the dressing room door automatically closed behind me and I was locked out. Since the saleslady wasn't around, I had to crawl under the door to get back into the room and change into my new swirly dress (not bad for $28, huh?). It was pretty funny. Lesson learned. Be sure to keep the dressing room door open to avoid a mishap like this.

And this was day one of my adventures in wearing sleeveless dresses. Any thoughts?