Urban Blight and Thrifting

[mallorys_camera]

Went thrifting with Lois Lane yesterday.

Lois Lane has fabulous clothes sense, playful and arch. She also has fun with makeup.

I actually like clothes and makeup, too, but they’re so much work! Compounded by the fact that I am a big girl, so stuff that’s designed to look fabulous on smaller frames does not look fabulous on me, since fashion is not one of those things that scales.

If I were a size 6, I’d have an entirely new all-designer wardrobe after yesterday’s trip!

As I am a size 12—I’m not overweight; I’m tall and big-boned—it’s easier to dress like a bag lady.

Although I did score a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans and a rather natty linen/silk Nehru jacket-type thing that’s just retro enough to be stylish. Ten bucks total at the cash register!









Afterwards, we sloshed around downtown Poughkeepsie in the grey, icy rain for a couple of hours, Lois Lane being one of those rare individuals who shares my obsession with economic geography—meaning, like me, she enjoys looking at those old, hideously rundown buildings, trying to imagine why they’re here, what they looked like when they were new and represented somebody’s dreams of progress.

Downtown Poughkeepsie—which not so very long ago was a real human town but today is a den of drug deals, shootings, and miscreance of all sorts—is just filled with buildings like that.



This building, for example, with its ornate faience trim was once pretty fucking gorgeous. What the hell happened to Poughkeepsie that turned this beautiful building into an abandoned shithole?

Lois Lane was born and raised on the east Mid-Hudson riverbank, and even she’s unclear about the etiology. “Well, IBM pulled out. So Poughkeepsie lost its middleclass base. And then, I guess, other people moved in.”

Apparently, Poughkeepsie’s downtown is about to undergo a huge urban renewal within the next year or so, so Lois Lane and I have a date to march around the city and do Art Photos of the blight before it all disappears.

###

“So. Can you see a difference?” Lois Lane asked.

She was talking about her Welbutrin and her therapy.

A couple of months ago, Lois Lane decided to take advantage of her veterans benefits—she was once a Marine!—to get healthy.

Her question, of course, was a loaded one.

When I first met Lois Lane, I thought immediately—in my beloved MaryBeth’s exact inflection—She’s a find.

So smart! So funny! So nice!

But obviously gun-shy for reasons I didn’t understand.

As I got to know her better and she opened up to me, I began to understand. I’ve known a lot of people with horrific childhoods. My own childhood was pretty Grande Guignol! But Lois Lane has all beat. It’s amazing that she survived her childhood.

“Well. It wasn’t for lack of trying to do otherwise,” she laughs.

Her adult life has been filled with the kind of interludes you honestly think people can never come back from.

That she did bounce from them is testimony to awesome reserves of psychological and spiritual strength.

“Well, you’re more accessible,” I answered cautiously. “Of course, it’s difficult to say whether that’s because we’ve known each other now for a longish time, so we’re more comfortable around each other.”

Comments

[rebeccmeister]

I am envious of your thrifting trip! The only Goodwill nearby to us is small and not great, and I share your challenge of being just average-sized enough that it's harder to find good stuff at thrift stores. (my bff is petite and always has amazing luck)

[mallorys_camera]

The best places to go thrifting are actually those ladies' auxiliary stores associated with upscale hospitals 'cause the women who support them are always getting rid of designer clothing. 😃 I would imagine there are more of those in Albany than in the Hudson Valley.

[lethe1]

In the photos, you look a lot less big-boned than Lois Lane does (not that it matters IMO).

I love your Robin Hood outfit!

[robby]

Is she really "Lois Lane"?

Wasn't Lana Lane the redhead?

[mallorys_camera]

That's not her real name, no. 😃

For various reasons that I won't reveal publicly, it's an apt pseudonym. 😃

[mallorys_camera]

Ha, ha! I will never wear the Robin Hood outfit in public, of course. Like most of my clothes, it hangs in my closet! 😃

Lois Lane is really curvy and surprisingly buff. (Her biceps is rock solid!) And she's cute in photos, but she's a beauty in person.

[asakiyume]

Putting this comment here because I think I prefer it here? IDK .... But I'll go delete it from LJ.

You're super good looking and in great shape--you would never, EVER strike me as overweight. Ehh, but what does it matter--I mean, what's one more opinion, one way or another?

Lois Lane sounds amazing. Many people live through shitty lives--this sobers me: I have not lived through a shitty live--but some live through exceptionally shitty ones, and it sounds like she's one. And yet here they are. People like that are wonderful miracles.

[mallorys_camera]

Honestly? Given everything she's been through, she's a complete miracle. I'm not sure she understands that about herself, so I repeat it every chance I get.

I have many character flaws, but vanity has never been one of them. 😃 My interest is in health. I always looked at my physical appearance when I was younger as a kind of super-power that made it easy (or easier 😃) to get stuff that I wanted. Now that I'm old, it doesn't matter what I look like 'cause I'm essentially invisible.

That said, clothes that look great on women with thinner bones do not look great on me even when they're sized up. Big-boned women's clothes need a different aesthetic. Designers are just starting to understand that.

Yes, I know—you're a DW person! If you answer me on LJ, I'll feel very confused! 😃

[asakiyume]

I was such a diehard LJer and DW negger, and yet look at me now :-\

I tried to adopt cute, tiny 1980s Japanese style when I lived in Japan in the 1980s and nope--it doesn't work. Now my style model is the older women I see on Latin American novelas ... and the women I tutor (at the adult-ed and high school program, not the jail! Orange and green pajama-things are *not* my preferred style).