Saturday, March 8, 2008

scrubs n' stuff

The whole premise for this blog entry is that I really, really need some new clothes for work. This led to a shopping experience that I'll relate shortly, but first I need to insert an obnoxious opinion.

My life would probably be a lot easier if I bit the bullet, gave in, and started wearing scrubs. Some people who do my kind of job do. Some people like me wear street clothes. Some people wear street clothes and a lab coat. There's no standardization. I've rejected the lab coat and the scrubs partly because I work with a lot of very little kids, and experience has taught me that the scarier and more liable to suddenly jab them with a needle that you look, the more trust issues you have to overcome before you can do anything to them, even if it doesn't (and it doesn't) involve any jabbing.

But mostly I've avoided scrubs because I find them the sloppiest and most unprofessional looking garment anyone can wear and it galls me that over the past fifteen or twenty years they have become the default clothing for anyone who does anything in a hospital or doctor's office. Send 'em back to the OR where they belong. If you're doing brain surgery or assisting with brain surgery, you get a pass from me for wearing the equivalent of pajamas to work. The rest of you all? I don't care how cute and stylish your scrubs are. I've got cute and stylish Old Navy pj bottoms, too, but that doesn't mean they're acceptable for wearing in public, never mind seeing patients. Wear some fucking actual clothes.

Okay, I feel better.

Anyway, seeing that I do wear fucking actual clothes to work, and the ones that fit and I wear all the time are getting worse for wear, I need some new ones. So, the other day when I was out doing an errand that needed to get done, I figured I would also take the opportunity to try on clothes and hopefully buy something. Now, another tangent--

I've been doing pretty good with not hating my body as of late, and thus, being quite nice to it, exercising regularly (well, except for that little mini-hiatus, but really, exercising more regularly than I usually do in the winter) and buying it pretty camis and stuff. (Is it weird that I'm talking about my body in the third person? Deal.) But, anyway, been doing okay with allowing myself to feel attractive.

So the other day, I try on this pair of jeans. Yes, I know I said I was supposed to be looking for clothes for work. So? (There's another tangent here, but I'll leave it for the end.) Anyway, I tried on this pair of jeans and they made my ass and thighs look awesome, if I do say so. However. They were cut way too low and even though they were not too tight at all, just the cut of them gave me an unacceptable level of muffin top, and I was immediately filled with a rush of extreme self-loathing. I mean, the whole dressing room experience was also tainted by the fact that the weather was making my hair frizz, and the five-year-old jacket I had on was looking kinda wrinkled and disheveled, and the lighting was ass, so I wasn't predisposed to looking into the mirror and thinking, "ooo, pretty." But what those pants did to my stomach filled me with such a sudden, visceral disgust for my body, I can't even tell you.

And I know it was irrational. Look at the sentence: "what those pants did..." I know that logically what I should think and feel is, wow, those pants are cut weird, making your ass look great while your stomach looks like hell, not, gah! you're hideous, Andrea. But logic and reality are two different things, huh? It really pisses me off that I can let all the good feelings I've been having about my body just fall away so easily, even in the face of knowing I'm being illogical.

Oh, and that final tangent. Part of the reason that shopping for clothes for work is so hard, and why I put it off till my work clothes are threadbare, and get seduced by trying on jeans while I'm supposed to be doing it, is that I really feel my body is only flattered by wearing either a.) jeans or b.) dresses, neither of which are really what I'm supposed to be looking for in work clothes.

This is why people go for scrubs. Everyone looks like ass in scrubs, so you can just let it go.

xoxo

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