Sticks and stones may break my bones, Sticks and Stripes may... get me hypes?

Light-blue flowy summer dress, Sticks and Stripes. Light pink bowler hat, Monki. Cheetah print peep-toe wedges with ankle straps, luichiny.

(Photos by me.)

Today summer decided to make a surprise reappearance, and it seemed like an opportunity as good as any to wear my new, fabulously flowy dress from Sticks and Stripes. I have so much respect for founder Brit Furgeson, who truly takes responsibility for the environmental aspects of her designs: the fabric she uses for her dresses is made out of wood pulp (and is so wonderfully fluid and light!), and for each purchased dress, Sticks and Stripes will plant a tree on your behalf. I'm always inspired by people who are actually making an effort to sustain our incredible planet - and it's a much-needed reminder that I ought to work a lot harder myself when it comes to this subject.

I got these cheetah print wedges in NYC, and I can't decide if I love or hate them. Which is basically a good thing. That keeps things interesting, and it means that at least they're not too plain! If you decide you hate them because of their immense tackiness, I completely get it. But I came to the conclusion that I do love them... at least today I do.

(Oh, and the stupid title of this post is simply a case of really bad Lookbook.nu humor.)

I Keep Dancing On My Own.

Strapless flower print dress, H&M. Cheetah print litas, Jeffrey Campbell. Black leather belt, Gina Tricot.

As soon as I got in front of the camera in this outfit, I started to move like a prima ballerina wannabe. I find that interesting, since the outfit itself obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with ballet dancing - and still, somehow, it does. There's something about the hair tied back in a bun, the bare shoulders, the wide skirt and the high heels that makes my mind immediately associate to a ballerina.

If you read my story about my love for horses, you might remember that the horses were an exception to the rule: everything else I tried out, I just had to be a natural at. I needed people to tell me, "oh wow, Annika, you're so great at this, I can't believe you've never done it before!". Otherwise, I felt like a complete failure and told my parents, "I hate this, it's boring and I'm never going to do it again". The more talent I had, the longer I would stick around - I did gymnastics for a while, as well as high jumping, played the piano and sang in a choir - until other people started becoming a lot better than me, and so I quit those activities, too. I guess the only thing I was always really good at was writing, and well, that's probably why I ended up writing for a living.

Anyway - dancing was not one of the things I had a talent for. Quite the opposite. Like so many other kids, I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and my mom took me to a dance studio to let me try it. I have no idea how old I was - six? Mom, help me out if you read this - but what I do remember is that we didn't get to try any of those cool moves I'd seen on tv. Instead, we were walking around in a circle, while the teacher repeated the sentence "pick the apples... and put them in the basket". And we were, as you can imagine, pretending to pick apples from a tree and put them in an invisible basket on the floor. Coordination has never really been my forte, and it wouldn't surprise me if I tripped on my own feet at least three times while picking the imaginary apples. When I asked the instructor when we'd get to dance Swan Lake, she laughed and told me we had a lot more pretend apple picking to do before we'd get to that. Needless to say, that was not the answer I was hoping for, and my dream of becoming a prima ballerina died there and then.

During the last twenty years of my life, the only dancing I've been doing has been on the crowded dancefloors of various clubs, and alone at home, with the music turned up extremely loud and noone watching or judging. That suits me a lot better than years of imaginary apple picking. But that doesn't mean I can't put on a pretty dress and pretend to be on my way to rehearsal for my latest lead role at the Royal Opera House in London!

...oh, and since I stole the title of this post from the amazing Robyn, here's the song for you:

"And it's not like we can use a pickaxe to reshape you like a sculpture, haha!"

Flower print tank top, H&M. Bird print pencil skirt, Nümph. Cheetah print litas, Jeffrey Campbell. Flower print sunglasses, Monki.

You know what? I'm being brave right now. It might not seem like it to anyone else, but I am. Why? Because I'm wearing my insecurity-skirt.

I bought this skirt online maybe five years ago now - I thought the bird print was lovely and figured the sharp-set waist would look good on me. And it did. But I still never, ever wore it.

I suppose everyone has their "thing". That thing about yourself that you hate as a teenager, then slowly come to accept, learn to live with. Even though you might forever wish that particular part of you could be just a little bit different.

Well, for me, it's my hips. A winter night about a year and a half ago I wrote a story about how it all started, and I thought I'd try and translate parts of it for you. I know I suck at writing in English, but my plan is to get better and better and better with time!

It was a Wednesday. Along the sidewalks people where slipping and sliding on the slush and hard-packed ice, kind of like today, but on this particular Wednesday I was fifteen.

The agency office was located on a narrow back street and the walls were covered in photographs. The motives were all the same: girls in fancy hairstyles dressed in exotic haute couture clothing, or barely any clothes at all. The were all very beautiful and very thin.

The woman who smiled and shook my hand had asked me to stop by since I had potential. That's what she said. Then she fetched the measuring tape from a drawer and told me to undress. Her hands were cold.

When she had measured every single part of my body she said it again: that I had potential. There were only a few minor problems. My nose, for instance. My short legs. My weak jawline. My knobbly knees, my broad shoulders, my birthmarks. And, above all, my hips.

"A lot of this can be corrected", the woman with the measuring tape proclaimed, almost consolingly. "But I want to be honest with you right from the start: hips are very difficult. You can see yourself how the hip bones are sticking out here on the sides, so even if you manage to get rid of all this excess fat on your bottom, the hips will still be too wide. And it's not like we can use a pickaxe to reshape you like a sculpture, haha! That sure would be something!"

But I did have potential, so she figured I should give it a try. Lose about twenty pounds - "it's all about eating healthy and drinking lots of water" - and then come back. Because she could see something in me. With just a little bit of work, I might one day become one of the girls up on that wall.

You would have thought I'd get it by then. That whatever it was I was looking for, there was no way I would find it there, in a business that obviously didn't think I was good enough.

I ended up working as a model for seven years. How did that even happen? It can't be that the next agency that approached me gave me a glass of milk and some chocolate chip cookies and was kind enough not to bring up the idea of using a pickaxe on my hip bones. It just can't. 

Sure, I was flattered, I wanted to be adored and admired as much as the next teenage girl. But I can't seriously have imagined that seeing my photo in a magazine, with a fancy hairstyle and dressed in haute couture, would have made me feel beautiful. I must have known better.

Sometimes I think I was actually looking to be humiliated. That the confirmation I needed had nothing to do with feeling beautiful, but the exact opposite. Proof that I didn't measure up. The relief in hearing somebody else say it.

It was a Wednesday. I know that because I remember skipping my piano lesson.

I got dressed and said thank you, for what I don't know. Then I went out into the darkness. I remember shaking. But then again, it was a cold winter that year.

(Published in Sofis mode #8 2010)

So there you go. Before that day, I had never even considered my hips. I mean, they were just sort of... there. But from that moment on, I despised my hips, I hated every goddamn inch that just wouldn't come off no matter how much I exercised or how little I ate. I started wearing clothes that would accentuate my waist and then hide all the stupid wideness below, and when I did start modeling a while later, I was always certain that the moment anyone realized how wide my hips actually were, they would kick me out head first.

Sure, all of this was a long time ago. Today I can handle my hips, I even kind of like them. But I still remember how I tried on this skirt, looked in the mirror and immediately started thinking about that pickaxe. I wanted so bad to be a marble sculpture at that moment. Just reshape my body the way it was supposed to look.

Therefor, I'm being brave right now. I found the skirt in a box full of old clothes and I decided that today is the day that I throw that imaginary pick-axe away. Because I love my life, I love my body and I'm not going to let some bitter, unfulfilled middle aged woman with a sick body image decide what I wear anymore.

If I want to wear a pencil skirt with birds on it, I will. Even if it lets the world see that yes, I am a woman and yes, I do have hips. So sue me.

Walk a mile in my shoes?

 

This past week I've had quite a lot of people asking where I bought the cheetah print Jeffrey Campbell litas I'm wearing in my blog header. The answer is that I got them at the LF store in Venice Beach, but I thought I'd let you know that they do sell them at Solestruck (or at least very similar ones).

(Nope, I'm definitely not being sponsored already - just googled it and found the shoes there.) :)

I know shoes are only material things and material things don't bring you happiness... but I must say that my life is just a liiiittle bit more enjoyable since I got my cheetah litas!