On one of the morning talk-shows this morning (I don't usually watch them but I think it was Ann Curry on the Today show), they had some woman (?) on who recently completed an experiment. Apparently, she is a "clothes-horse" type of a woman and loves clothes. She has way too many clothes, and she wanted to see if she could pick 6 items of clothing and wear only those six items for 30 days.

I watched what was left of the segment (I had missed the beginning) and by the end, I was quite put out. And insulted. And the more I thought about it, the madder I got. Thus, this entry.

It's the mentality of the HAVES versus the HAVE-NOTs that irks me.

The HAVES come in all flavours. Pretty/attractive. Wealthy/well-off. Slim/anorexic. And lourding it over all the rest of us - the HAVE-NOTs.

For that was what this segment was really about.

Lourding it over us.

I have to include myself in the HAVE-NOTs category, even though to some it may seem like I have a lot. I don't when it comes to the above characteristics - i.e. physical beauty; money in the bank (and lots of it); a trim/slim body.

It seems that those are the main things we are judged on these days - having a new outfit for every day, possibly a different hair-do, different make-up, shoes that require an entire closet to house, fancy jewelry for every day of the year, accessories galore. Those are the measures of women today.

Well kiss my grits!

I'm sure I am not alone in saying that I am NOT a conventional beautiful face (FAR from it), I have just enough (sometimes and sometimes not) money to pay my bills each month, my body went out of control years ago and I can't get it back, etc. So where does that leave us?

6 items of clothing to wear for 30 days?

I'm lucky if I have 6 items right now that fit me that I can throw on when I go out in public. Staying home, I wear the same uniform every single day. All my jeans are exactly the same because they feel comfortable. I just keep washing them and when they are threadbare from washing so much, I buy new ones. I usually only have two pair at a time.

I noticed that this woman did have a number of accessories that she wore to make her 6 items of clothing look different each day. So it's not really true that she was limited to ONLY 6 things to wear. She had necklaces, belts, and make-up and hair-do's that always seemed to change.

I wear NO accessories. I've even taken off my wedding ring lately because it was hurting my hand. I'm still alive. I haven't keeled over and died because I'm not in a new outfit with all the accoutrements every single day!

Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this. But I just felt, at the end of that segment, watching those three women sitting there in that TV studio, all gussied-up in designer clothes, most likely not worrying one little iota about where the money will come from to pay the grocery bill this week, and I thought that to make such a BIG DEAL out of wearing ONLY 6 ITEMS for 30 days was a total insult to all those of us out here in REAL LIFE LAND who don't have much more than that anyway!

I always thought it was more important what was on the inside than on the outside, ladies!

I suppose people who wear a uniform every day are just about the lowest of the low, to them. Nuns, police, firefighters, nurses. Oh yeah, those poor slobs, having to wear the same old thing day-in and day-out.

Not!

Cheers for the 6-items-or-less people out here!

Bex