Yes, you can wear that
A homesteaders guide to managing clothing anxiety in our image-obsessed world
[B]eware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Contemplative philosophy, especially of the nature-forward variety, fosters healing. Remembering that we are each star seeds borne of universal energy is magnificently humbling, exciting, and gratifying all at the same time. I’m never so powerful as when I am at my smallest and most insignificant.
Each morning upon rolling out of bed and grabbing a mug of coffee, my daughter and I make our ways into the living room for our daily dose of quiet time. Often, she’ll choose a stuffed animal or ten and occupy herself with fantastic conversation, while I pick up my book of the day.
This morning, I expected to revel in my cosmic insignificance in Thoreau’s Walden, especially as I look forward to an author call and a focused writing block for The Novel Nest writers community. (If ever you want to feel insignificant and cannot get outside to see nature or the stars, start a marathon project like writing a novel where you feel as though you’re progressing at a snail’s pace even as your thoughts race miles ahead.)
And showing up for authors in The Novel Nest has given me a fair bit of anxiety, an anxiety many new homesteaders face when scaling back and moving toward minimalism:
Anxiety about my clothes.
Anxiety About Clothing and Confidence Starts Early
Several years ago, I read a story about how self-confidence and body dysmorphia in little girls often presents by age six. The primary source of that dysmorphia? Moms.
Moms are hard on themselves. I can be, too. But we’re often hard on our daughters without realizing it, and it’s time to do better.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had issues with clothing, body positivity, and confidence. I remember my mom poking at her post-partum belly (after my younger brother was born) in the mirror and grimacing at the extra wiggle. I remember her pulling on an outfit, pulling it back off, and slamming the hanger back onto the bar in frustration. I remember flamingo-legged shoe parades and handbag-matching experiments. I also remember that, in the back of my mom’s closet, hung the pretty dresses.
Around age five, I was super into dresses. I loved how flowy they were, how freeing. How I could climb and play without fabric holding me back. But while at school one day, another kid asked with (perhaps perceived) snark in her voice: Why do you wear dresses every day?
Sometimes the simplest questions can feel like a finger jab in the chest, and her question, innocent as it may have been, took the joy out of dresses for me. I was too shy and embarrassed at my dress faux-pas to answer, but I put away my dresses for the foreseeable future. From that point, I lived in pants.
Through high-school and college, and even when I entered the corporate workforce, my fashion sense was essentially non-existent. I never really understood colors and textures and patterns and body shapes and cuts. And frankly, the idea of learning all that stuff was exhausting. I just wanted clothes that fit, were comfortable, and looked decent enough.
But struggling with body image means that even a great outfit can make you feel like a whale. Worse, it leads to a different kind of anxiety.
Classism and Wastefulness Lives in Dress Codes
About a year ago, I read a business book that almost made it onto my very short list of books I did not finish for one simple reason: The author dedicated an entire chapter to dressing professionally, so that folks take you seriously in the business world. But when “professional” attire has such a large range of acceptability, it’s hard to know where to begin.
The professional attire for a plumber is quite different from the professional attire of a door-to-door salesman is quite different from the professional attire of a laboratory technician is different from the professional attire of a . . .
While I understand, on some weird cultural level, the focus on professional clothing, fashion, as a concept, remains as alien to me as a wild animal from another part of the planet, as mysterious as a sea creature from the depths of the Mariana Trench.
In my life, the fashion industry hovered at the periphery of my pop-culture knowledge at any given time. Sure, I watched America’s Next Top Model like many other young women in my life, but that’s mostly since I’ve loved Tyra Banks since her Coyote Ugly days. (Y’all gon’ make me lose my mind, indeed, Tyra!)
But, like Piper Perabo’s character, I, too, dislike clothes shopping and am not afraid to laugh at something I just know I’m never going to wear. Shorts with a zippered crotch, anyone? (IYKYK)
The luxury of changing ones wardrobe with the changing seasons is never something I understood. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a lot when I was growing up, maybe it’s because I wore jeans that were too short, and shirts that were stained, and outfits that needed to be mended, but there were a million other things to spend that precious on, like food, family activities, educational supplies. We didn’t need fancy clothes to spend time together. We only needed them when we ventured out into the world.
I bloody hate stripping down to my skivvies in public to try on items that really should be washed and rid of chemical contaminants before any person wears them ever. Your skin is like a sponge. Poison on means poison in. Instead, I prefer to order my trusted eco-wash 311 Levis every so often (going on six years with my current jeans). And I’m the person who, once I find a top I love, want that top in all the colors so I don’t have to shop again for a good long time.
Today, many American adults spend an average of $160 per month on new clothes. That’s nearly $2,000 a year in superfluous spending. Unless you live inside a rock tumbler where your clothes are being battered 24/7, spending $160 per month on clothes is a first-world luxury of epic proportions that reeks of wasteful consumerism.
I don’t play the wasteful consumer game anymore. Other than procuring unmentionables and a swimsuit for my post-partum Mom bod (a lovely polka-dot one piece), the last time I went out clothes shopping for myself was back in April 2019, when I got only a couple of items—secondhand—for daily wear. Items that are still in rotation today.
At this point, I see little value in having new clothes.
The Fashion Industry is a Supervillain
When most people think of clothing, they think of the fashion industry, the runways, the models, the mannequins, the seasonal styles, the consumption.
I get it.
It’s easy to get caught up in the glitz and glamour and the famous Tyra Smize. It’s also easy to casually forget about the gritty underbelly of a problematic industry.
When I began connecting famous clothing brands to child exploitation and slavery, and sexual assault of fashion models, and more, I couldn’t unhear the stories, couldn’t unsee the damage.
But even if all my humanitarian concerns about the fashion industry were addressed to my liking, there still remains the fact that many decent people, when frantic over fashion, overlook or choose to ignore some uncomfortable environmental truths, like:
Eighty-five percent of all textiles go to landfill dumps.
Fast fashion uses so much water that clothing production dries up natural water sources causing droughts.
Washing synthetic clothing and fabrics releases microplastics equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles each year.
The fast fashion industry produces more pollution than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Fashion, like the weather, changes with the seasons, so environmental waste is a known side effect. Very many good people get caught up in keeping up with the fashion joneses that they forget about ethical consumption.
‘Reduce’ and ‘Reuse’ Come Before ‘Recycle’ in the 3Rs Hierarchy
Maybe it’s the size (teensy!) of my refurbished dresser, or the length of my closet bar, or my general dislike of unnecessary clutter, but when it comes to clothing, less is more.
My approach to clothes shopping rests on two questions:
Is it practical?
It is comfortable?
Comfort is fairly self-explanatory, though the definition of the word changes for everyone. For me, practicality comes down to what I can do in my clothes.
Jeans are good for strolling, writing, and gardening; yoga pants are good for stretching and sleeping (and cradling my menstrual belly when needed).
Tanks, tee shirts, and sleeves of one kind or another, be they from flannel button-ups, cotton hoodies, or whatnot, make up the bulk of my wardrobe.
I’m all about layers.
If I can’t wear a piece in more than one setting, it’s difficult for me to justify the cost—both the financial cost of buying something so broadly useless and the ecological cost of contributing to the fast-fashion industry.
Old Clothes, New Outlook
Maybe it’s because I’ve noticed an increase in the number of personal-style coaches on LinkedIn. Maybe I’m noticing more content because of latent feelings related to the filtered-everything reality that seems to be Instagram. Maybe it’s because the cold weather has landed in Vermont and I’m considering my own comfort over the coming months (hello, flannel!). Regardless of the source of my recent considerations, Thoreau’s quote gave me pause.
Why do people insist on having new clothes when they haven’t changed or done enough to justify such newness?
Why do Americans pump billions of dollars into an industry that makes money by making us feel fat and ugly?
Why, when there’s a closet or dresser full of appropriate wearables, must we procure more and more?
Why, when we already have enough, are we gluttonous in our consumption?
Why don’t more Americans pull back? Repair holes? Stitch seams? Upcycle?
Why don’t more folks dye old clothes that need a refresh, or cut pieces into new styles?
Why are folks putting perfectly good, if “outdated,” pieces of clothing in plastic garbage bags rather than donating them to the next person?
Maybe a change in outlook, a review of what is truly necessary, is required.
Home Is Where Your Newfound Confidence Starts
If you’re new to homesteading and the scaled-back lifestyle that comes with it, know:
Your clothes don’t show your expertise or your credentials. Your work does.
Your clothes won’t make you beautiful or respectable. Your work does.
Your clothes won’t get you hired or fired. Your work will.
Your clothes don’t care about you. You do.
If you pour your entire identity into your appearance, into clothing, into making yourself appear bigger and more glamorous than you are, into buying all the new and fashionable clothes you can, you may be crushed under the weight of superficiality, of ego. You’re particpating in comparison culture, which is a bane to homesteaders just getting their feet under them.
That bigness you crave will render you powerless to an ever-changing rat-race of an industry that not only doesn’t care about you but doesn’t care about the planet either.
Since you’re homesteading or plan to homestead in the future, chances are you care more about family and the planet than keeping up with current fashion trends. And if you need some farmstead fashion inspiration and energy, Tonya at the Wild Carrot Farmstead has a way of making you feel beautiful even when wearing cargo pants.
Instead, your confidence comes from what you do with your hands, the items you create, the plants you grow, the things you teach your children, your stewardship of Mother Earth.
When we do good, we renew ourselves. We become Thoreau’s changed wearers deserving of new clothes.
I choose to remain insignificant and unfashionable to maintain my powerful connection to Mother Earth. And now, when I appear on camera to my clients, I will thank my practical clothing for the comfort and warmth.
