Dressup Day
I had to dress up the other day. Not like when I was a kid and we actually played dress-ups. Those were the best days. We had a cupboard with an exploding haul of bright, glittery fabrics and oversized skirts with incredible 1970s high heels and strange-coloured lipsticks. We’d put together sartorial assemblies designed to make us feel however we wanted to feel. Pretty, maybe. Or bossy. Monstrous, sometimes. The photos from these days are great. Us kids looking at the camera as though we know you know we’re play-acting. We’re in on the joke. Sometimes, you can tell an adult has purchased a new ensemble actually designed to be a costume. In those ones, we look itchy and bored. You can tell it didn’t come from us.
The event I attended the other day wasn’t as fun as those dress-ups were. I had to look presentable. Such an adult word. There was, at this event, a hair-and-makeup artist. ’How do you like it?’ she asked breezily as I lowered myself into the chair.
Public Service Announcement: perhaps adults could do with more dress-ups. Not all the time, maybe. Dress-ups aren’t dress-ups if they’re normal. But sometimes, when things are a bit samey, maybe dress-ups (or something like them) are just what the doctor ordered.
As I walked away from the event at which I had to presentable and back into my extremely unpresentable life, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and decided I didn’t look better, but I looked like a more presentable me. This gave me an idea. Maybe, for a day, I could attempt to be that presentable version of me. Use that new-found presentability to adjust the settings if only temporarily. I decided to do, that day, all the things that would benefit from me looking presentable. I had needed, for example, to get a new photo for my licence. I’d been meaning to do it for weeks. So Presentable Me got my photo taken. The only problem with this genius solution was that there was (and remains) no chance that any cop, in any future scenario, glancing down at the picture on my licence and then looking back up to me in my messy car, late for school drop-off, hair unbrushed and pyjama top covered in cat hair, will ever believe the presentable person in the picture could be me.
Nevertheless, this concept of running with the image change if only for certain purposes strikes me as something that could be applied more broadly in adult life.
I have a friend who doesn’t like cleaning but does like it when the house is cleaned. Do you know what she does? Dresses up as a cleaner. Nothing too over the top, as though she were going to a costume party, but she puts on Doc Martens, wears industrial strength cleaning gloves, and ties a bandana over her hair. Her hair requires nothing short of a slight breeze. Certainly it does not require a bandana. But in the bandana and the boots and the gloves (and with the right soundtrack) she can imagine she’s in a cleaning-the-house montage in a romcom or something.
Why don’t I do this more?
Why did I not wear spectacles when I wanted to be taken seriously in meetings? Just because I didn’t require spectacles? Lame!
Even as a metaphor, this trick should work. You don’t have to literally dress up as someone to be a slightly a different version of yourself. You can just vibe it. Sometimes I vibe being the kind of person who is thinking of buying an investment property. Hilarious! Might as well pretend to be a space alien! But it does help, when nosing around some neighbour’s house that you noticed was open for inspection, to give the real estate agent the impression you’re to be taken seriously. Why? Who cares what the real estate agent thinks? It’s not for the real estate agent, though, is it. It’s so that you feel less guilty about the fact that you’re only there because you’ve always been curious about how come that old man over the road is so darn grumpy and frankly you’re looking for clues.
Maybe sometimes we can nudge ourselves away from the version of ourselves that can’t do the things or won’t do the things or simply wants to do other things. Imagine yourself a hair-and-makeup artist asking you simply: how do you like it? Your answer can be anything you like.
From ed 743 of The Big Issue from last year. Please buy from vendors!