Last year, I showed up at a magazine launch party wearing my favorite outfit at the time—a pink PVC minidress. I’ve always liked parodying the look of the stereotypical blonde tart, and this dress was very S&M Barbie. Early in the night, a guy approached me at the bar, put his hand on my lower butt, and asked if I was a stripper. I smiled and told him I was a journalist. This sent him into hysterics, and when the laughter finally subsided, he said, “Come on, be serious.” This exchange was repeated a couple more times before I finally shouted, “Is there no room for irony in the world? I’m smart, but I dress like a bimbo—get it?” He responded with a look of both confusion and terror.
The way we dress is how we construct our personal narrative. It’s the clearest gesture of our desires, our identity, and how we feel about ourselves on any given day—whether it’s powerful, sexy, fat, whatever. And for me, since high school, skimpy clothing is what has helped me tell the story I want to tell (much to the dismay of my devout Catholic parents). More than once, my mother was called into school to bring me a change of clothes after a teacher deemed my outfit inappropriate. I had a volcanic sexual energy (like many teenagers), but lacking an emotional or creative outlet for it, it manifested physically, in the form of mesh belly shirts and skirts so short they were more like glorified belts.
In my early twenties, I regularly went out in short shorts and a bra top. I knew exactly what I was doing—an outfit like that is rightly analyzed as a want for attention, and I welcomed the lewd comments and lustful stares. Being provocative felt exciting. I was experimenting with the reactions I could elicit from an overt display of my sexuality, and the attention I attracted made me feel confident and powerful.
But now that I’m in my late twenties, something has shifted. I’ve suddenly felt compelled to ditch my micro-dresses for a wardrobe of crewneck sweaters and pencil skirts—and this from someone who once wrote on her personal blog, “There’s no such thing as an outfit that’s too tight or too see-through.” Am I giving in to societal pressure to be “age-appropriate”? Am I just growing up? Or is my desire to look less slutty a sign that there’s something in life that I want but am not getting?
Let me set one thing straight: It’s not like I’ve suddenly ditched my skank-wear in favor of a giant paper bag. I obviously still want to look sexy, just in a different, cleverer way. Because if there’s one thing I know I’m not getting, it’s interest from the type of guy I want to date. I want to attract the type who is enticed by sophistication, rather than by a woman who looks easy. And I hope my new wardrobe is going to act as a filter. As I grow more secure in my own identity and rely less on being overtly sexual as a means of validation, I feel ready to filter out a lower tier of sexual attention.
Sex, I’ve come to realize, isn’t just about bare flesh; it’s about knowing how to use suggestion and mystery to seduce and allure. I’ve learned that by only showing off a little bit of skin, you stimulate the imagination of the person who’s looking at you, rather than simply feeding their animalistic desires. Dressing with restraint implies confidence, and that intrigues people. Having already experimented with dressing risqué, I now want to channel a different side of myself. Perhaps it’s the natural swing of the pendulum.
I want to be clear: I think all women should be able to wear whatever they want at any age, and that being a powerful woman—sexually or otherwise—has less to do with age or clothes and everything to do with energy and a state of mind. But oftentimes, what we choose to wear prepares us physically and mentally, like an actor getting into costume. A creative director friend of mine, Lauren, recently recalled the panic she experienced when having her first child; she felt like she wasn’t properly equipped to be a mother. She was living the life of a nomadic surfer at the time, and says she wasn’t skilled in a lot of the “big categories that make mothers good, like lunch-making.” Then, when she had the baby, she suddenly started dressing like the mom from E.T.: turtleneck sweaters, wool over-the-knee skirts, secretarial bows, lots of beige—all very seventies. “I didn’t realize it at the time—it was very intuitive—but I just thought, I’ll rock the look, and we’ll move on from there.” Lauren’s clothes gave her the strength to do something she didn’t know she could.
Recently, I went on a date with a guy I really liked. It went great—we had dinner, we laughed, we kissed. And at the end of the evening he said, “Can I get you a cab home?” My immediate thought was, Are you kidding me? I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t also want to spend the night together. I interpreted this as rejection and went home feeling bummed. It wasn’t until a couple days later, when he called to ask me out again, that I had an epiphany: Maybe, in my more demure clothing, rather than being perceived as one-night-stand girl, I’m now the type who requires courting (that may sound old-fashioned, but old-fashioned might be interesting for a change). It wasn’t so much the sweater I was wearing, but how I felt and behaved when I was wearing it. Every time we get dressed we’re selling ourselves, and I’m over feeling cheap.
Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever. Read her last post, “Three’s a Crowd: Can an Open Relationship Work?”
On Sciortino: Michael Kors rib-trim sleeveless turtleneck, $575; michaelkors.com
Hair: Charlie Taylor; Makeup: Asami Taguchi
The post Sexy Not Skimpy:
What to Wear as 30 Looms appeared first on Vogue.