French News & Views

"I Have Nothing to Wear!"

It's been weeks, if not months, since I've written a News & Views post and, as you know, I'm always saving little bits of this and that to share with you.

Because there is no common thread, I won't try to construct transition sentences. I'll take the easy way out:   mini headlines.

Nothing to Wear!

Psychologists, Elise Ricadat and Lydia Taieb recently collaborated on a book that addresses a subject with which both are confronted several times each day among their patients: stressful, unhealthy, curious relationships with clothes.

Ricadat and Taieb try to unravel the familial histories that are responsible for women trying to find their identities through retail therapy.

"A woman can be standing in front of her over-flowing closet, filled with clothes chosen by her and think, 'I have nothing to wear,'" Taieb said. "She thought when she purchased them that they were 'her', but once they're are hanging in her closet they no longer speak to her."

The book examines a mother's influence. One patient would never wear red, another -- though she longed to -- would never buy boots. In both cases their mothers told them loose "sexual" women wore them, thus a color and an accessory became taboo.

I've almost finished reading Rien A Me Mettre! and am fascinated by the significance of clothes for most women. Some women, the authors point out, have healthy relationships with their closets and they wear their clothes not the inverse, but it is the women who "feel empty" and look for meaning through their vestment purchases who suffer in search of a definition of who they are and not what to wear.

As Coco Chanel said: "Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress."

That is perhaps the single most important message of their book.

Next Time Steal One of These. . .

As you know, I condone theft from his closet. Mostly, I've advocated white shirts or maybe ones in the palest blue or pink. But this spring, if we have an adventurous man in our lives (unfortunately I do not), you might pull out something with snappy checks.

Since you're not investing in the chemise, i.e. buying it, you don't care if it's a fashion fad. You wear it, wash it and put it back where you found it. It would be nice if you ironed it.

All Plumped Up -- Not

Hyaluronic acid in the form of cute, shiny pink pills.

I have no idea whether it worked or not. I'm sort of falling into the "not" camp. You may remember I told you a month ago that I started taking my hyaluronic acid internally.

My great friend and pharmacist, Christine, gave me a box of Biocyte hyaluronic forte pills. The promise on the box is a "visible 27 percent difference in skin elasticity and plumpness." Seriously, you've got to ask yourself, "where did they get 27 percent?" Why not 25 or 30 percent?

Obviously I would like to report back "measurable improvement" as the marketing blah-blah tells us, but I can't. Then I noticed -- just now -- that I'm supposed to continue for another two months which makes me think 27 divided by three is nine so I suppose a nine percent improvement would be difficult to see unless I lived in a laboratory.

Christine gave me the 40 Euro box of pills because she likes to experiment on me. I think I'll abort the mission and continue my hyaluronic acid externally. (Maybe.)