When trendy is torture

Legions of women suffer in the name of fashion. Admit it, at one point in your life you’ve allowed yourself to be tortured by what was fashionable. I can think of many painful experiences I’ve had in the past just because I wanted to be fashionably trendy.

Sometime ago, pointed four-inch stilettos were in vogue. It was really double torture for the trying-hard victims of fashion. Not only were our toes cramping because of the pointed tip of the shoes but our leg muscles were also being tortured because of the four-inch heels we had to endure. But endure we did, even at the risk of having sprained ankles and legs.

I almost fell down the stairs of Euphoria disco in the early ‘90s while wearing such stilettos. “Grin and bear it” in the name of fashion was my motto at the time.

Thank our lucky stars that the rounded and square-toed, low-heeled shoes came into being, giving our calloused toes and recovered sprained ankles some relief. But not without the unwanted consequences of growing bunions, rough soles, corns under and over the toes. Nope, I will never forget those days.  Just very recently, pointed, high stilettos were resurrected but this time around, I’m saying thanks but no thanks. Let the young fashion victims succumb to their seductive charm; they can suffer the way we did during our time. What about high-heeled sandals with sexy, gold thin straps running across the feet?  Don’t we just love the way they make our legs look sexy in our short slinky dresses? But try walking from end to end of SM Mall of Asia wearing those and you will soon be dropping by a drugstore to put a Band-aid on the bloody cuts they have caused.

In the 1970s and early ‘80s, very tight jeans were all the rage. At the time, jeans didn’t have Lycra in them — they did not stretch the way they do now. But it was fashionable to buy one size smaller than your size, in which case we had to lie down without exhaling in order to zip up. Some of us even wore corsets that nipped two inches off our waist or Scarlet O’Hara bustiers that we wore over our jeans.  

Fiorucci jeans were my favorite because they fitted me so well. They were fashionably tight but I could still breathe in them. One time, my favorite Fiorucci was put in the dryer by our new lavandera and it shrank two sizes smaller. I insisted on wearing it to a party even if it was so tight that I needed my helper to zip up. The tightness blocked my circulation and halfway through the evening, I fainted from lack of oxygen. I guess I learned  my lesson from that experience. My mother gave away those favorite jeans to my skinny cousin.

Did you ever try to wear colored contact lenses to match the color of your dress? I did. In 1999, I was in New York and I had a formal affair to attend. I went to some optical shop I passed on Lexington Ave. and asked the optician for green contact lenses with no grade. I told him that I wanted to match my emerald dress. He discouraged me by saying that it took some practice to perfect putting contact lenses and if my function was that same night, I might not succeed in putting the lenses the right way, much less stay comfortable in them. I am not one to be discouraged easily so I insisted on buying them. Arguing that the customer is always right, he finally sold me a pair.

It took me two hours to get dressed because I could not put the green contacts on. During the dinner party, unaccustomed as I was to foreign objects in my eyes, I was teary-eyed until my mascara started streaking down my face. Instead of looking gorgeously green-eyed, I looked like Pierrot the clown with two black lines streaking down my face. I managed to salvage the evening by going to the ladies’ room and taking out those green lenses and flushing them down the toilet for good!

Oversized bags came into fashion around four years ago. Almost every brand came out with their versions and a lot of ladies used them. With an oversized bag, you tend to put your entire desk and refrigerator in it. It worked well and not so well for a friend of mine. One time she put bread, cheese and some fruits aside from her makeup kit, her agenda book, two cell phones and linen material that she just bought, and other things. She went to the mall and did not realize until late in the day that somebody who kept bumping her (a pickpocket’s modus operandi) must have tried to steal her wallet but did not succeed because of the contents of her bag. Her expensive bag had a big slash, which was how she concluded she almost got robbed. She continued using her bag filled to the brim until one day, she developed tendinitis of the shoulder. It caused her a fortune going for treatments — more than the cost of her Gucci bag. No kidding!

Nowadays there are no strict rules on what one could use and not use. Vintage fashion is in vogue so you can use what you wore decades ago if you still feel comfortable in it. One word of advice: Don’t suffer anymore for the sake of looking trendy. There are ways and means to look fashionable without pain. You will even look more beautiful because your toes, leg muscles, waist and eyes are not tortured!