Jordan Reid - Ramshackle Glam: The New Moms Haphazard Guide to (Almost) Having It All

2014 by Jordan Reid

Illustrations by Katie Rodgers

Published by Running Press,

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013955296

E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5305-4

Edited by Cindy De La Hoz

Designed by Amanda Richmond

Ramshackle Glam logo design by Naava Katz

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Fashion

(People Have a Whole Lot of Opinions About What Youre Wearing, and They Are Going to Tell You What They Are)

Get Your Glitter Eye Shadow On If You Want To

When I was twelve years old, my best friend Arielle and I decided that it was the height of style to go to school every day dressed in old mens striped pajamas that we had scored for $1.50 from the Salvation Army down the street from my apartment. We accessorized the look with lips painted shimmery-white and outlined with dark-brown liner, and then used black kohl pencils to draw enormous snail-shell swirls that extended from the outer corners of our eyes onto our temples. And then we topped it all off with a generous dusting of glitter across those swirls, in addition to our browbones, cheeks, lips... wherever we were feeling it on that particular day.

It was quite a look.

We loved it.

One afternoon, I had just arrived home from school and was settling in to do a little homework when it suddenly occurred to me that Id like to try out a self-tanning lotion that Id seen advertised in YM . It was February, I had made my annual transformation into Casper the Friendly Ghost, and I had five bucks burning a hole in my pocket. And so my pajama-ed, be-glittered self decided that a quick run to the drugstore was in order.

Did I bring a coat? I did not! My mother was very pro-coat-in-the-wintertime, as mothers tend to be, and I was in the middle of a pain-in-the-ass stage. So out onto the very cold street I went.

I grew up in Hells Kitchen, the New York City neighborhood that used to be a hub of Irish and Italian mafia activity (youve seen the place in everything from Sleepers to West Side Story ), but by the time I was born had abandoned those grand, storied roots in favor of being just a straight-up Not-Great Neighborhood. Later, of course, Mayor Giuliani came in and Disney-fied the place (with a mixed bag of responses from residents, some of whom were happy to see all that graffiti get painted over, and others who couldnt stand the idea of Starbucks moving into the stores vacated by mom-and-pop owners who we all knew by name), and now its all very expensive and fancy... but in the years I spent growing up on West 46th Street, it was the kind of neighborhood that attracted lots and lots of people with no place to go.

Around the time I hit puberty, I started being allowed to walk the avenue between the bus stop and our apartment by myself. Any further than that, and chances were I had to find myself an escort of the over-eighteen sort. Conveniently, however, Im drawing a blank on the asking my mom for permission to wander our neighborhood alone part of this particular story.

All right... I may have skipped that bit. But it was an emergency! I was a girl in need of self-tanner, and I had a major crush on a guy at school who just about exactly resembled Jordan Catalano in My So-Called Life (complete with floppy brown hair and a tendency to lean emotionally against lockers), and that is a desperate situation if Ive ever heard one. One problem: The closest drugstore was the one inside the Port Authority, which, if youre unfamiliar with the place, was (and continues to be) New York Citys primary bus station. Bus stations arent usually fantastically lovely places in general, and the Port Authorityespecially in the early 1990swas pretty much the opposite of a place where you commonly saw young ladies taking a leisurely stroll around.

When the two plainclothes police officers stationed at the Eighth Avenue entrance to the Port Authority looked up, what they saw run by them was a very cold-looking preteen wearing pajamas and glitter makeup. And probably looking frantic, because, like I said: self-tanner emergency.

So I found myself in the back of a police car, being interrogated by cops who were positive that I was a runaway. (The fact that I tend to immediately burst into tears when confronted by an authority figure surely didnt help matters.)

A few phone calls later, the whole mess was cleared up and I was allowed to return to my apartment (still, alas, sans self-tanner). Mom was mad; Jordan Catalano made out with me one afternoon a couple of years later on a brownstone stoop around the corner from school and then graduated, never to be heard from again. So it goes.

The point of this is not to say that this was a particularly smart choice on my part. It wasnt; kids, wear your coats when you go outside in February, please. And its not even to say that the pajamas were an excellent look for me. They werent; I abandoned them a couple of years later in favor of chartreuse chiffon prom dresses (obviously).

The point is to say that fashionespecially when your choices are a little on the out there side, as mine have been from time to time over the yearsisnt just about clothing. Pajama pants, ball gowns, or regular old T-shirts and jeans... theyre not just things that you put on your body in order to not be naked when you go about the days activities. Theyre a way of speaking to the world, and theyre just one of the many tools that the world uses to figure out who, exactly, you are. What you put on your body can in a very real way express how you see yourself... and where you want to go.

Another thing about fashion: Its hugely subjective. As weve seen, one persons awesome pajama fashion statement is another persons runaway teenager attire. And all those differencesthose enormous divides in terms of how people interpret fashion and what they believe that a simple piece of fabric can reveal about the wearercan get you into a spot of trouble from time to time (hopefully not of the in the back of a police car variety, but you never know)... but really, when it comes down to it, theyre great. Because difference breeds experimentation, and experimentation breeds conversation, and from conversation comes change. Evolution.

But theres a weird truth about getting pregnant, and becoming a mom, and thats that it feels, in some ways, like the worlds expectations for you shift. You suddenly start feeling like you should start being more responsible... practical... mom-like. And maybe its you who starts feeling like minidresses arent really your thing anymore. Or maybe its others telling you that its time to take a turn for the maternally-attired.

Do you know, I once had a reader comment under a fashion post I put up when I was a few months along to alert me to the fact that wearing things like shorts and high heels would be humiliating to my future child? Sure, Im on the Internet, and that puts me in a strange world where very different social/religious/moral spheres collide in ways that they ordinarily wouldnt in real life, to sometimes dramatic effect, and sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but still: I have to disagree. Strongly.