Out of the comfort zone: As I did not wear black for a week
"For you on Wonderzine already fixed image ..." - attention whore, mentally I continue the phrase of the chief editor, who advises what to write in the introduction to this material. In fact, she meant the "experimenter". It seems to be true: I like to go through difficult and not-so-big tasks, think about the changes and describe them. This time I decided not to go for a week in black clothes, despite the fact that for the last few years only this color and wear.
Of course, you can’t compare the head baldness, but it also looked promising: in seven days, you can change a lot about the role of clothes, peculiarities of its perception by others and the rest, which helps in the construction of your own image. They gave me one indulgence: the shoes, hat and tights were allowed to be left black, but there wasn’t even a black ornament in the rest of the clothes (so I had to wear T-shirts for back and forth for the next few days). These small digressions should not have prevented the answer to the main question: why do I need to walk exclusively in black for psychological comfort and can it be achieved differently?
Day 1
To the question of colleagues, as sensations, I reply that I feel GREAT. Today I am in gray men's sweatshirts and a huge white T-shirt of the brother of the times when he wore jeans-trumpet and hoody hypersize. It’s not very uncomfortable for me, but in the morning I would rather wear my usual black pants and a black T-shirt (and black socks, and a black down jacket, and my backpack is also black). My ass, despite the pegging of my colleagues, really seems more to me now, and it’s not a controversial optical effect - wearing black clothes feels protected from interaction and even views, and therefore almost invisible and intangible.
These are interesting experiences about the limits of your own body. Recently, the therapist and I discussed my jealous attitude to my own room and why I perceive any uncoordinated intrusion into it as an attempt on my personal boundaries. In fact, the therapist tried to explain to me, the boundaries of the personality do not coincide with the perimeter of the room - and now it seems to me that even with the boundaries of the body. So, if I stop using black clothes to defend myself against unwanted interactions and they will arise, I don’t bear any threat to me - as long as I don’t see it in them myself. The first argument of total black is everything.
Day 2
Inability to get into the usual things is already beginning to annoy, and now we need to think about how to combine those nuggets of the black, that I have. It is important for me that things look harmonious, but my color is not enough, and not everything is combined. Black is a lot easier. However, there is no time to think in the morning, so I put on yesterday's gray workouts and a gray T-shirt. It looks normal, but it feels like pajamas, and I do not like it - when I look at my feet, it seems that I forgot to wear pants. Yes, and the ass really looks great, I didn’t subscribe to this, so I decide that I don’t wear these workouts anymore.
I have no remarkable thoughts on this day, but I think a lot about everyday life. How to erase all this color wealth now? I just throw black things into the machine in one go and feel like a housewife of the 100th level. Is it possible to wash white with gray? And with what to erase a red sweatshirt, really separate? I know all these stories about the red sock among the white linen, but suddenly miracle powders have already appeared? Coffee also strives to splash out on a T-shirt, with black it's half the problem, but I'm not in black. At the end of the day I slap both my pants and T-shirt with cosmetics when I rub the jars of the heroine “It is available”, but if in dirty black I look like a makeup artist who was fascinated by the work, then in dirty gray - on Pachkulia Pyostrenky.
Day 3
Gray pants got me, so I decide on the royal red sweaters "Adidas." In general, a friend gave me the whole costume, but for some reason I don’t want to appear in a red tracksuit at a therapist’s reception, to which I always went only in black. Therefore, I postpone the olympic shirt until tomorrow and pull on a dimensionless white T-shirt. Already by the middle of the day I will decide that I fell in love with these pin-pinned pants (otherwise they slip) and the raid of gopnicia that they give me. I will wear them after the experiment.
I have the same outerwear (gray nayk bomber and black hat of the Syndicate brand in Kiev), but for some reason I catch more of my views on myself in the subway and on the street than usual. Probably because of the combination of a shaved head, a patsansky cut of a bomber and characteristic stripes: it seems that modern inhabitants of Khitrovka would have looked like this if it still remained the cradle of street crime in the capital. Complementing the "cultural biography of sportswear," so to speak.
Day 4
“Someone, please come with me for coffee,” I bleat colleagues because I came to the office in full adidas costume and it is embarrassing for me to draw attention to myself — and when you are a shaved woman without make-up in a costume with three stripes, it really can not be avoided. Not on the subway (my pants are slippery, so I move out of the seats), neither on the street, nor in the JNBY runoff, where a friend took me to look at the dress for the remaining days of the experiment, not to dodge the looks, but this was to be expected. Therefore, in the morning I did not dare to put on a red uniform in the morning and measured everything with my pants that was not black at home. But a neoprene white sweatshirt, a gray wool sweater and a white t-shirt with a pair of workouts do not look good at all, so I had to put on my uniform.
The red suit is the most characteristic outfit of the whole week, and it provokes the most reflections. At the end of the day, I suddenly realized that I liked to try on costumes of conditional men and women. This is quite a powerful admission to oneself: one should like to use the big-model model Raine Dove on instagram, and the other to feel the need to change from one character to another from time to time and still feel no worse than oneself with kilograms of mascara on eyelashes.
In this regard, I think more about gender than usual. I had a period when I doubted whether I was a transgender and not comfortable for me in a man’s body. Radical measures turned out to be useless, but I stopped being ashamed of my masculine features, for which my child and teenager were ashamed of me. 2016 is still not the bright future that has come and made all people happy, but today you can allow yourself to behave as you want and comfortably, and not as different people around you expect. You can adjust for a long time, but why.
Day 5
For contrast, I dress today in a "woman's suit": borrowed from a neighbor well, a very tight skirt to the knee, a silk cream blouse and leave round glasses with diopters. I have already come to terms with the fact that there is nothing to lose, so I try to change my daily makeup a little. I always liked how hyperbolic feminine lips look with an implicitly expressed "tick" or even round, but today they are just in the subject. The trick is successful, and when I don’t repeat it very carefully in the evening (morning lipstick had time to eat, of course), I look like a teacher from porn. Why not.
In general, today is the most uncomfortable for me. And the point is not that a tight skirt, while walking with all its might, climbs back into the ass, and the thin silk of the blouse tells a bit more about the body than I would like. When I walk up to my work table in a gray coat (not to wear a bomber jacket with an office skirt), my colleagues start to hoot - as a joke, but when I'm not sure about my appearance, any increased attention is strained. I am also ashamed to look too, by my standards, smartly and frankly: I prefer that these two qualities not be combined. Otherwise I will feel that I was dressing not for myself, but for others, and populism has always infuriated me.
Day 6
On weekends, I cultivate a healthy habit of relaxing, so I allow myself to sleep until mid-Saturday. I do not need to go anywhere from the sleeping area during the day, but this is not a reason to violate the experimental conditions, so for lunch I go down to the regional “Stolle” dandy. I mean, everything is in the same red Adidas suit. I definitely like him because it helps me not to take myself too seriously - even if you want it, in such a picturesque toilet it is impossible.
In the evening, my colleagues and I agreed to skip over a beer in a bar at Mayakovskaya. I quite often visit him, but never like this (I am in adidas). It is interesting that in my area the suit feels, though bright, but organic, and in the pub, it’s already comical. If I saw a scene with such a heroine in a movie, I would decide that the screenwriter worked carelessly and collected her image from all possible cliches.
Day 7
On Sunday morning, I have a shooting, and I'm already tired of inventing new combinations, so I just put on what I like most: red sweatpants and a huge white T-shirt. At first, I had doubts whether it was worth coming to an unfamiliar team in archetypal sweatpants, but I decide that the main thing is my convenience and makeup artist skills, which do not depend on clothes. In addition, it is foolish to wear something on a weekend to where you are likely to smear with permanent tonal or lipstick.
I spend six hours in a beautiful office, the whole team is cool and busy, so no one pays attention to my appearance. Probably, my friend talked about this when, when recording a podcast about her appearance, she threw in the thought that people who somehow work with their appearance take it easy. I admit that not every lawyer can dye his hair in an unusual color without consequences for reputation, but in my area you will not surprise anyone with a strange appearance. And this is cool: instead of thinking the character with the help of stereotypes, people get the opportunity to learn everything about a person from the most reliable source - from himself.
findings
Despite the fact that this week was bright with emotions caused only by clothes, on the eighth day I put on black clothes with relief. The point is not even in color, but in the fact that I am a little tired of constantly leaving the comfort zone: without it, nowhere, but I also need to rest from new impressions. I enthusiastically want to get on everything at once, but on the street, plus 12, so you don’t like cabbage.
I admit that my commitment to black is associated with one unpleasant story, which sooner or later would have to work out. I was lucky with the experiment: it became a great excuse to raise a painful question. It turned out that it was much easier for me to walk in a non-black than I thought, but it is also fun and gives an extra reason for contact with people.
Now I am less afraid of attention, which attracts color, but I don’t want to switch completely to bright. Not because of domestic convenience, but because my many years of choice of black color and particular clothes could not be associated with only one traumatic episode, even if it served as a trigger for it. I like the aesthetics and brevity of black, its restraint, I appreciate these qualities not only in clothes. In addition, I agree that calm clothing helps to be quieter, and in Moscow it is a superpower.