Why fire-swailed Doña Quixote squinches at the fashion advice “dress for the woman you’re becoming (Not the one you were)”

Featured image: Evening, Tchabalala Self, 2019. Self’s painting incorporates mixed-media such acrylic and paint on canvas to create a textured, collaged effect. Self’s work is known for examining the human figure, specifically manipulating bodily scale and shape to address themes of identity and expression.

Title: I came upon 2 Janus words, “fire-swailed” and “squinch, ” while scanning google instead of working on this piece: these two red diamonds are among the few dozen Januses out of English’s over-1-million-word inventory: words that contain at least two opposite meanings, one positive, one negative. SWAIL: a), protective “controlled pre-burning” to prevent unstoppable wildfires and, b), firing an iron and carbon mix to turn iron into steel, a medieval trade with brutal, dangerous, often lethal, working conditions, apprenticeships that started at age five, and chronic poverty. The latter meaning of “swail” turns on itself again with the metaphor “forged in the fires of adversity,” meaning that difficulties harden one’s resolve, nerves, or character.

SQUINCH also has two opposite meanings: a), contorting your eyes to convey displeasure and disgust; b), slightly narrowing your eyes by bringing up the lower lid while keeping the top lid still, like happens when you smile. Makes you appear more confident, alluring, and approachable on camera.

THE GOOD NEWS IS I’M NOT WRITING ABOUT MY BACK SURGERY

After grumping around for another two weeks after my last post, I suddenly hit a plateau of betterness: Less back pain, and ability  to go for walks outside and to do my physical therapy better. All thanks to a miraculous cure-all Peter found for me on the internet: Dr Worden’s Female Pills, an infallible specific for Female Troubles, Nerve Difficulties:

NOW ON TO THE NEXT ITEM ON MY ONE-THING-AT-A-TIME MIND: SARTORIAL TROUBLES

Now that I have reach a better physical and mental state, I finally have some energy for a project I’d had to let go after my spine buckled last October: I must update my wardrobe to better meet Doña Quixote’s rapidly multiplying physical and mental needs. To summarize the challenge, some of my clothes are hard to put on, difficult to care for, and/or uncomfortable on my body. Fortunately, clothing makeovers stir up that Marie Condo spark-of-joy in matters of dress and death cleaning. To prepare for the task, I revisit my relationship with clothes, which—of course—goes a long time back, to the days of my childhood: 1), I grew up rich in love but poor in material goods; 2), My growing up on a farm with my nose in a book, more knowledgeable about the Incas than about “white” (privileged) South African mid-1950s urban life. And—to put it mildly—a loner when it came to friends. Mindsets about my Self have traveled with me into the wider world and continue to hang about like household familiars. They’ll abide with me during my deliberation about how to dress Doña Quixote.

Gerda’s family, the Steenekamps, in order of height. I am on the left of the photo in a knee-high dress, next to the man with glasses—my father, Boshoff Steenekamp, 1968. Peter took the photo. He and I had started going steady a few months earlier.

THE GIRL I WAS 

 The woman I was pre-Doña Quixote arose from the farm child I’d been before my exposure to the larger world.

Above, I am second from the left. During my childhood on the farm, I happily wore the dresses my mother used to make. She was imaginative and always added a feature (a frill around the neck, a mock-petticoat peeking out from under the hem). As an adult, I would recognize in myself my mother’s fondness for an added feature that does not appear on the paper pattern.

Above, I’m the last girl (folding her arms) in the front row. My first-grade-through-matric school years were marked by uniforms, sewed by me or my mother. For elementary school, she stitched bottle-green jumpers and white blouses.

My high school uniform, sewed by my mother and me: royal blue dress with blouse (summer) and navy blue jumper with white shirt (winter), accessorized with a silver/blue striped tie in winter, an “air hostess” cap all year round. Above, my matric (senior) class. At the photo center, our science and (homeroom) teacher, my beloved Mrs. de Vos stands in the black-and-white dress. A yellow blonde girl sits by Mrs. de Vos’s left arm, I am the brown-haired girl sitting by the teacher’s right arm

After school hours, we boarding-school girls were allowed to change from our uniform to our own home clothes—mine still home-made. I also still wore white socks with my black all purpose shoes, while my peers had graduated to nylons. When I was about 13 and in the equivalent of an American sophomore school grade, I heard a girl whisper in line behind me, “Look at those white socks.” And, from her friend, “She’s too old to wear a dress like that.” She was talking about the waist-to-hem ruffles that my mother had so painstakingly layered to form the skirt of my  white summer church dress (had to be white). Unwittingly, until the frilly dress moment I dressed (had been dressed) for the girl I used to be rather than the teen I was becoming.

THE ODD ONE OUT

The fact of me always having been young for my grade had a dampening effect on my teen clothing-related self-confidence. Since I started school at 5 and completed my primary and secondary education in eleven rather than twelve years, I was always a year or two younger than my grade mates. I was 16 when I completed high school. (From my current perspective, the clothes my parents had provided when I was 13 or so do not strike me as inappropriate as I’d experienced them at the time.) In my matric year, I received a scholarship to be an exchange student in the USA. Given that the American school year starts halfway through the calendar year whereas the South African one starts in late January, I would—before my USA trip—start my university education in February 1966. Six months later (age 16), I departed  for  Carroll High School, Iowa, to do a second version of a final-year-in-high-school, this time as an American senior.

Gerda (left, with a semester of university behind her) graduates from her American high school at age 17 (1967)

Given that I lived with the Henning family in Breda, Iowa, my university wardrobe wasn’t too unsuitable for the milieu—other than that my dresses were too short for conservative rural America. In other aspects too—”unmatching”colors in the same outfit—my clothes appeared odd. While my parents provided pocket money, it did not reach to store-bought clothing or fabrics. Also, I had no suitable winter clothing. My generous family stepped in with trips to the store. I myself was urgently aware of grooming habits I would have to change: in my boarding school, none of my friends and I had time to “do” our hair other than washing it. I’d have to grow to my hair and acquire some “product.” (I never did achieve the bouncy, upturned hairstyle called “the flip” and the cheerleader hair toss that goes with it: both seemed to have been be a ticket for admission to the highest echelon of popular girls.) The other change I faced was that I’d never before worn pants, whether short or ankle-length. Jeans had been unheard of! Again, my American family came through like the household deities of ancient Rome.

Gerda biking in Breda, Iowa, wearing floral jeans and an orange shirt

SEVEN SISTER-GODDESSES CREATE THE GARMENTS OF LIFE

My purpose for this post is NOT to subject you to a slideshow of my younger Selves’s style. Even should I have wanted to do so, the photos I’ve shown above are the only ones that save survived until now. My purpose is rather to examine the deep connection between clothing and TIME, whether world-historically or in an individual’s own life experiences. Almost every world culture had mythic Rulers of Time. In Balkan mythology, for example, multiple sister-goddesses in tandem designed a person’s existence from birth to death: 1),  the spinner creates the thread of life ; 2), the cutter sets the topography and extent of a person’s life; 3), the weaver entwines the thread into fabric; 4), the breaker/spoiler damages the fabric, resulting in illness or misfortune; 5), the protector scolds the spoiler and inspires individuals with courage, resilience, and high morale; 6), the cutter snips the cloth at the conclusion of the wearers’s days; 6), the laundress (of course these gods had to be female, for what Homer would ever would have an Achilles do the laundry?)… the laundress  cleanses the cut cloth to prepare it for the supreme deity ((male, of course), who would either designate as a shroud for its former wearer or recycle it to be the temporal possession of someone yet to be born.

A talismanic tunic—a garment believed to possess magical power—made in Mali during the early 20th century. It is presumed to bring good luck, ward off evil, or offer supernatural protection. The “charm gown’s” potency protects its wearer both psychically and physically. It acts as an inspiring or influential symbol.

“NOT MY FAULT THAT YOU THOUGHT I WAS NORMAL—BUT THAT’S ON YOU“

During my odd-one-out period, I of course didn’t deliberately dress “oddly,” I just really did not have much choice. In any case, I usually  had so many things to do that I did not have time to brood—and I was fortunate enough to have a number of places where I was loved and thoroughly approved of. I was, however, not oblivious that there were occasions when I did not fit in. Accordingly, I avoided known types of embarrassment as much as possible. (It was a comfort that a boarder friend of mine did appreciate my mother’s handicraft. Once when she visited the farm, she asked my mother’s help to radically rework a dress she owned. I remember sulkily reading my book on the couch whilefrom my then perspective—my mother was monopolizing my visitor and did not care that I was bored.) I never told anyone about these embarrassments until now. I never cried about my anomalous state, while I did cry when I could not sleep the whole night and failed a Latin test… It was obvious to me then that the people who noted my difference were in the RIGHT. “THEY” knew the “CORRECT” ways of dressing. It was up to me to gain the real-life power to somehow fit with my peers. I’d have to build up knowledge and earn money. Stoically, I focused on getting an education.

(P.S., I loved studying! In classes where the teacher read test scores out loud from bad to good and you had to stand and show yourself when one’s name came up, my fellow students knew that mine was usually the last one called. Clothes-shaming faded compared to the validation my ego received in academics. (Oh, how the Presumptuous One has fallen!)

“STYLE IS KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY, AND NOT GIVING A DAMN”

Above, some of the Selves of my younger days. During my university years, I was lucky enough to have an internship during breaks. I earned some money, bought fabrics, and started experimenting: like my mother, I altered patterns to make the piece look different from the illustration on the envelope. For example, with the pink dance dress above, I opened the left-hand side seam to show my leg. With my wedding dress, I added lace to the bodice in front. Now and then I was able to buy a dress. In the second photo, my store-bought minidress, which would be too short to wear in Iowa. It didn’t take too many years (a time span brailled with bloopers) to have come upon a Self-of-My-Own, that exciting but ever-morphing entity. Soon I adopted Orson Wells’s statement (section title above) as my own maxim.  

 

Above, some of the outfits that no longer work. They have in common: too many items to look after, like tie and waistcoat; need for pantyhose (farewell my artsy printed ones…); see-through tops or tops with too much white fabric (because I mess and stain so much); need for dry-cleaning; pants made from denim or other non-stretchy fabrics; pants not wide enough to ge shoes through when I accidentally put on my shoes before my socks; pants with fixed waist bands and zippers or buttons,—after 4 pelvic floor surgeries, I bade farewell to my beautiful collection of  leggings with tummy-control panels and my jeans. Hello elastic waists.

1), Getting rid of everything that’s not perfectly comfortable. The main thing I still own in this department, to paraphrase Whoopi Goldberg, “is something I have to  get off my chest.” Therefore, I dumped  my bras—even sports bras—that I’d kept “just in case.” Instead, I’ve discovered the “shelf bra,” which consists of a camisole with a snug band running horizontally under the bust to create a “shelf” that gently lifts and supports the boobs. OR…

Text at top: “Damn straight I go braless!  Bottom, “It pulls all the wrinkles out of my face!” Thanks for the keeper card, Sally Shaum. Isn’t it uplifting that we don’t have to lift the girls up any more?

2), Another advantage: You can give away items to people who want them while you can still share their pleasure in them, instead of letting others do the clean-up of your house when you’re about to be dressed in your shroud. Just yesterday a gave my grandson Kanye a gorgeous (men’s) teeshirt (too big for me) that had been treated with layers of pigment and washed back to expose fractured layers of rust and mineral tones against an olive background. My grandson is no fashion follower, but he loved the earthiness of the shirt and wore it throughout the whole evening of his 19th birthday celebration.

3), Pattern mixing is the most important “rule” in my sense of personal style. As I’ve had to do for many years because of memory loss and confusion, I’ll make pairs out of the surviving comfortable no-see-through pants and tops “that talk to each other” (heard it from my mother): those with art prints, stripes, checks, plaids, abstract designs, interesting textures, and/or compatible volumes. I hang each of these pairs (or triplets or…) on hangers and each combination lives by itself  in my closet, between two white pillowcases. Below are some of the keepers.