This attempt to simplify my life is taking on a life of its own already. Issues are coming to me and obliging me to think thorough them. My previous post considering religious objects and their relative value would have never occurred to me as something to work through but when a reader brings it up, it should be addressed. And comments about that post (on my Facebook wall) led me to think even further into the issue.
Now, I have had to work through my own personal relationship to the clothes I own. You'd think I'd have approached this first since the book I'm writing deals with the contemporary American clothing dilemma. And I had--in the abstract. First, let me say (if you don't know me well enough to know this already): I love beautiful clothes. I love coordinating an outfit. I derive much pleasure from clothes. I had decided years ago that I'd rather have a small, quality wardrobe than a mass of cheap things. And so, until this past weekend, I owned five good dresses, three good suits, three good skirts, and a handful of sweaters and blouses. When I say "good," I mean they were primarily from Banana Republic and Anne Taylor. I had two good purses and a half dozen good shoes--by which I mean I could wear them with the suits. I had made one serious decision about these items over the course of the last year: these "American" garments, produced in countries where labor is cheap, are products of a garment industry that creates poverty in the world.
After reading Gandhi's autobiography, in which he examines so meticulously the economic, social, and moral decisions of what to wear, I felt called to do the same. The details are the subject of my book, but the decision I made for the summer was to wear only handloomed saris from India. In this way, I could still revel in beautiful garments but without the cognitive dissonance of wearing sweatshop products. I'll have to post on all the reasons I embraced the sari soon. For now, I want to examine my relationship to those "American" garments that hung in my closet all summer unworn. In fact, the dresses, suits, etc. remained unworn into the fall semester as I began the semester wearing only saris to teach in. And, in the future, I'll have to write about the reactions I encountered doing that. But, this weekend, I was forced to consider what to do with my "American" wardrobe.
In the course of Facebook discussion about the inevitable garage sale to come, a former student sent me a private message asking if this garage sale would include any of my professional wardrobe. The answer to that would have just been "no." But her message also include an explanation of her situation. She was in sudden need of professional interview clothes and, at the same time, in sudden difficulty financially. I'm ashamed to say that my first reaction was to hang on to the clothes. But once I started thinking it through, I had to acknowledge that this was a test of my authenticity. I needed to let the clothes go, not just generally, but very specifically to this young woman. If I hadn't been confronted with a person who really needed the clothes, I would not have wanted to let go of them yet. I put so much energy into collecting those items. I loved the way I looked in them. They made me feel like the professor.
Parting with the clothes could have been wrenching. I could have justified putting them in a garage sale because they might fetch some now much-needed money. But most of those clothes are a size 4. The shoes are size 6 1/2. There aren't a lot of women in Cherokee County who could wear them. Even if they sold, they'd probably be carted off by the buyer to a resale shop where it would be a race between the few women who came in and could fit into them and the moths. I'd bet on the moths in that siutation. When I saw how well the clothes fit this young woman, it was a joyful experience giving them to her. These clothes solved a real problem for her. I got to witness her relief and it was genuinely priceless.
This clothing give-away experience has been a good lesson for me as I write about the difficulty of what to wear in America. Clothing only has any monetary value if it serves a rhetorical purpose. In this country, we are awash in cheap clothes. They are cheap in price but also cheaply made. No clothing for sale at the Walmart, K-Mart, Target, etc. is going to make the young people who shop there look ready for a serious job interview--not in the world of the middle class. All of that clothing is disposable--and a huge amount of it does, in fact, end up being disposed of without anyone having ever bought and worn it. But clothing that performs a rhetorical function retains a value. It is tragic that such clothing must be tied to the misery of what is politely called "developing nations," which is just a euphemism for the poor.
As the young woman in question obliged me to justify my not taking any money for the items, I found myself explaining the fresh realization that I really don't need them anymore. I quit my job as a professor to become a writer. Since my writing is on the subject of clothing's power, it made good sense for me to take a radical step toward sartorial authenticity. Wearing those "American" clothes would actually undermine my message. And, should I ever find myself in need of interview clothes myself, I have retained one suit. If I am able to write and sell the books I want to write, I will dispose of the remaining one. But, I can't help but think that any interview I have any time soon will be far less about my clothes than it would be for a young person just starting out. I have a Ph.D. and 19 years of college teaching experience. It's just not going to matter as much whether I'm dressed "professionally" or not. Showing up in a sari can enhance the quirky professor image that no one really holds against an established academic. I've got my middle-class respectability accounted for now. But since the clothes still have the power to speak of middle-lass respectability, it would have been irresponsible of me to throw them away. It would have been futile to sell them. Only giving them to someone who needs them right now, because she is trying to get herself established in the world, feels right. I am grateful to this young woman for giving me new insights into my project that I could have gotten in no better way.
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