changes you've made to your "look"

Awwwwe....thanks 9er. That's so sweet. I didn't say I drank wine and smelled of hydrangeas. I shall drink my PBR and have the eau de jock strap whilest in my suit.

Once upon a time I wore those. I tend to be nearly 7 foot in stuff like that though.

 

We have a fashion trend down South that I hope and pray is only a regional thing, and the rest of you aren't subjected to this hilarity. I have also been hoping and praying for 2 years that it's also only a temporary thing, but it's still hanging on somehow.

Cowboy boots.

I have no problem with cowboy boots ordinarily. I own a pair. They are quite functional here on the farm, and I wear mine with blue jeans when I need to do some hard work.

However, young girls (black and white) have adopted this ridiculous look where they wear cowboy boots with EVERYTHING. Sundresses and cowboy boots. Gym shorts and cowboy boots. Bikinis and cowboy boots. What. The. Fuck? I could understand wearing cowboy boots with a pair of Daisy Dukes, but GYM SHORTS?!?! Are they going to be roping and branding a volleyball later?

My wife told me between giggles that Britney Spears dressed that way for a time, and it caught on. And they walk around in groups dressed like this. I'm only assuming that the girl who owns sensible or stylish shoes is outcast in some way. Whenever we see one of these goofs walking towards us, my wife will elbow me because she knows I'm biting my lip to keep from laughing my face off.

And they're not just normal, solid leather cowboy boots. They're the highly festive, rootin' tootin' Roy Rogers kiddie cowboy boots.

Holy shit, I can't wait for this trend to pass away.

 

This pretty much sums up where I am.



That being said, my hair is past my shoulders and longer than it's been in over twenty five years. I wanted to grow it out one more time in my life and am very close to getting it cut to a more respectable length.

 

Well, Ive grown a moustache for "Movember"

In my mind I look like a cross between Tom Sellock and Wyatt Earp

In reality, like a gay Dutch bank clerk

 

My eyebags have grown eyebags of their own as the flesh slides slowly from my face.

 

i lost a bunch of weight at the beginning of the millenium. like alot. but it took quite a while for my image of myself to catch up. this caused problems. such things do. one's image of oneself does not respond directly to the material situation.

when i was in chicago, my fellow clairaudient and i decided that, since we were musicians, it made sense to grow out our hair. so i did that. i wore a ponytail for a while. my beard was quite large. i determined that, at the rate i was going, i could potentially approximate the zz top look. i am not a particular fan of zz top, except for their first album: i like it but never listen to it. there's too much interesting new music in the world. but i digress. my beard, for reasons that remain a mystery to me (despite repeated interrogations) decided that it did not want to grow beyond a certain length. i am not sure what happened once that length was reached. it seemed to me quite strange. what is going on with you? i would wonder.

when i got to tiny town i decided to learn to speak capitalist. turns out that capitalism is fucking stupid, but not in the way i thought. in order to infiltrate capitalism, i cut my hair and beard. then i developed a relationship with my mother. turns out she's more than a little neurotic and has a Problem if my hair passes a certain length the exact nature of which seems to me to move around. the alternatives this presents me with are: listen to various passive-aggressive comments about the unibomber while eating some miserable, gummy pseudo-pastry in a dunkin donuts that she likes for reasons i cannot even begin to fathom; or periodically reduce the overall hirsute geometry behind which i deploy my fine self. for a while i have chosen b. the trade-off seems ok. for now. the problem is--apart from the neurosis--that she works in boston and therefore fancies herself an expert on beard stylings because she sees a variety of them in her travels. sometimes i object, pointing out the arbitrariness of her dataset. but given the neurotic driver of this whole thing, she does not yield. so i start talking about socio-economic matters and, every so often, visit the neo-nazi tattoo-covered barber at the local sporty establishment who tells me long stories about his drug intake while sculpting the beard and hair into whatever topiary suits his humor at the moment. i have noticed a correlation between the hair situation and the drugs he tells me about taking at the time. what i cannot figure out is how to relay this criterion to madre mio.

such is the state of things.

phrased another way: my hair is shorter.

 

Your barber tells stories with your beard and cuts your hair to soothe your mother.
I like the state of your things!

ZZ-Top's third album Tres Hombres is also excellent.

 

I didn't really have any conscious sense of style as a kid so dressed in pretty much any old thing, which at one point did include a near-fluorescent yellow tracksuit, that being the sort of thing folks would actually wear with a straight face. It's a matter of regret that I have no photos of me wearing that thing.

I think when I got to about 13 I started to care about my appearance a bit, but only to the extent of maybe tank tops and jeans and cargo/baggy pants (I think this was an All Saints thing, i.e. the girl group) and I started blowing my hair out straight daily and doing nailpolish regularly and such. I got to 16ish and went mild rock chick via a brief goth phase. I think my style after all that was not unlike a toned-down Brody Dalle (didn't model my look on her, it just happened to be like that). This toned down gradually in my early 20s until I found myself kicking about in jeans and tshirts again. Wintertime is long sweater dresses/tunics over jeans. Footwear has been predominantly Converse All Stars or Adidas Sambas for a long time.

From time to time I 'decide' I'm going to give my style an overhaul and I buy a bunch of dresses and wear them regularly for a while, but I always end up gravitating back towards the jeans and tshirts. I kind of accept that dresses aren't going to be much more than dress-up special occasion wear for me now.

I've also had phases of trying to spice up my appearance with accessories, so went through a period of wearing interesting shoes and another period of hats, and another period of head/neck scarves. The only thing I've managed to make stick for the long term is wearing slightly outlandish earrings.

I did a fairly exhaustive timeline of my hair in 2006 and since then it's just been back and forth between bob length and longer length depending on my whim. When I have one I want the other, but I'm trying to get myself to settle on something in the middle now. I wear it straight but it's naturally wavy and a pain in the ass.

OK, this went on for a lot longer than I intended. I'm pretty sure you don't need this many pictures of a forum noob either but I enjoyed putting together this post.

 

"...another period of hats."

Hah! I don't know about anybody else, but that's pretty classy. I like it.

 

I also meant to say that I really enjoyed Poetry 's timeline and progression, including the stuff about weight/body. That stuff has formed a pretty major part of my own feelings about my 'look' but I think if I did a timeline of my yoyo-ing we could be here all year reading that. So I just wanted to say that I relate to the way that ties into the other things about look/image.
--- merged: Nov 22, 2012 4:10 AM ---

I relate to this as well actually. Well, not quite the argyle socks (although they'd be pretty high on the list of good socks, if I were going to make socks one of my 'things') but when I find something that I like or something that just works, I have to have it in several different colours.

 

A little shy of a week into november I got off the fence and decided to go full No-Shave November. A few things have resulted from this... firstly my mediterranean/semitic genetics have made their presence unquestionable as my mother claims I look like an arab (or "ethnic" as my friends call it), and secondly I've had almost this exact conversation about four times now:

"No-Shave November?"
"Yep, started a week late actually."
"... I hate you, I hate your face."

Combined with my recent conversion from tshirts and jeans held up by a shoestring full time to at minimum khakis and tucked in tshirts with a belt, ranging up to buttondowns on a day to day basis I now apparently look about five years older at a minimum. My dress clothes have gotten an overhaul too, with the solid color polos being shuffled into "Business Silly" and replaced by waistcoats and suits for proper dress wear.

All I need to do now is get back in shape like I was before the surgery, or preferrably a little bit BETTER so I can avoid needing another one >.>

 

Shadowex3 'king GREAT torso! ... I remember the history and process of your surgery. Been reading stuff about those meshes recently. Not a nice thing to have to have, it seems. Is it beginning to feel a bit more like 'you' now? Good to have a goal that you've already achieved 'already been there --> can do it again' kind of thing. Very glad that you're on the mend. Take care.



My change to my 'look'

My weight drop is a return to a 'before' of about twenty years ago.

For the last five years, my style had been about adding warmth or modesty to lard, and to be a shapeless 'billow' to hide the precise consistency of that lard.

As a dancer, I've preferred to wear clothes that emphasise the shape of my body of the purpose of highlighting the movements I make. Since this is 'part of' me, rather than something I 'do' once a week, then it will be like this at the supermarket or in the street, as well as on the stage.

I do not flounce or mince. It's just that I've got a certain way of moving where I'm aware of the rhythm and harmony. Moving among families and sopping carts with my basket is, for me, a kind of ballet.

Therefore my chosen clothes reflect this. I have been getting back to that kind of way. I'm a bit bothered that I might be looking like male mutton dressed as lamb, but the world will just have to suck it in. I CAN move well in it. Thank God. I've only been off the sticks since the beginning of this year, and don't want to go back on them.

Lol ... conveniently forgot the BIGGEST 'style' change .... from Sticks to NO sticks .. yipeeee.

Losing weight also meant that I no longer have to wear Braces (US = suspenders) ... my hip bones are now making the correct shelf to stop my trousers falling down. It is beauty to wear tight waisted trousers with long sleeve t-shirt tucked in them. HAH .... And I've taken to wearing boots rather than sloppy trainers. One pair is .

Oh bugger this ... I'm getting totally embarrassed ...


Ahhhh ... but before I stop ..I've now got a selection of CAPS .... one of them is a Stargate SG1-style green military cap. Another is a black S.W.A.T style cap with TAPOUT proudly emblazoned on it, to let the world know that I sit in front of the TV watching, for hours, nearly naked men laying on top of each other in a cage and grunting while being watched by millions. Also got a couple of tight beanies ... more like skull caps. Feel kinda street-hard.

OH ... And I went back to wearing contact lenses. That was a big one .. I'd not been wearing them for about ten years. I'd kind of 'given up' some feelings about myself.

I might do some clothed photos to illustrate these. I just might.

All the best.

 

I've always loved wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, a tucked chambray shirt, and a blazer, and I think it looks really good on me. Currently, this is "my look."

I also grew out my hair in order to make a donation to Locks of Love, which happened this past March. I asked the hair stylist to leave a couple of inches for a new ponytail so that I could grow another one to donate, and it's progressing nicely. As time has gone by, however, I am growing tired of the long hair and contemplating another change. I don't just want to chop it off in some kind of highway patrol haircut - I'd actually like to get something styled this time. But something I could easily maintain. Having red hair makes it a little difficult, though, because the exact same hairstyle that makes George Clooney look irresistible would make me look like Howdy Doody.

My wife is currently searching for something she thinks would look good on me, and any day now I could show up at TFP with a new do.

 

I have grown my hair to a pretty long length, and I don't where gray colors any longer.

I guess there are no real changes yet. After the new year I'm thinking about cutting my hair. hmm...

 

I'm in the midst of changing my body yet again. When I was married (~6-7 years ago), I got up to 230 pounds...which is a LOT of weight on a 5'2 girl. I don't know how much I weigh now, to be honest, but I DO know I'm somewhere under 180. Being able to say I've dropped 50 pounds is kind of rad. People who didn't know me back then don't immediately recognize me in pictures, which is also kind of rad. I'd love to be able to say I dropped 100 pounds, but that may or may not be realistic. We'll see.

Style-wise, I've stayed pretty much the same since I was a teenager. I'm most comfortable in jeans and a tee, or jeans and a tank. I'll occasionally wear khakis, and if I want to feel pretty, I'll throw on a skirt. I'm still not very fond of dresses. I DO wear nice blouses more often now, either at work, or visiting family (mine or Eden's), when I don't want to look 16. My tee shirts now sport geeky snark more than athletic teams/logos, but that's the only real change.

The major change is makeup. I only wore makeup for plays in high school, otherwise, nothing more than chapstick. I started wearing makeup when I was about 27, and I started wearing eyeliner this year. At first, I looked like a teenager experimenting with my mom's makeup. I've gotten the hang of it a bit better now, and before the eyeliner, it was hard to tell I was wearing any. I still look like a clown wearing lipstick, though, so maybe that will be next year's learning experiment.