Today I was thinking about the Express top I tried on to wear with skirts and how it made me feel vs. how it made me look. I think I should feel lucky to be an hourglass since that's what most women seem to strive for, but to be honest I would much rather be a slender rectangle because I think the styles that flatter rectangles are styles that I prefer. I remember reading Stacy and Clinton's book, where Stacy talks about how being very curvy can easily make you look vampish. It's also a very sexy shape, and that's just not me. I like to use clothes like a work of art and not necessarily a tool of attraction. If I could I would love to wear and experiment with more avant garde pieces and crazy silhouettes, but they always seem to be made for statuesque model types.

So going back to the Express ensemble, it fit well and I could see that I looked good, but it didn't feel like me at all. It definitely brought out the hourglass shape, but it just seemed way too sexy for me. I like playful looks that make people smile, not looks that make creepy men say vulgar things to me on the street (which happens often here, unfortunately). The outfits that attract me the most when watching WNTW are the ones that the super slender women wear. The curvier gals look beautiful, but never in a way that I would want to look myself. I think I was much happier years ago, as a rectangle, because I could pull anything I wanted off the shelf and it would look good...whereas now I have to bypass a lot of styles I really like in favor of styles that I might not like as much but are more flattering.