The anxiety of an intro post...

and all the things I want to make sure you know.

It was not easy to name this newsletter. There were lots of ideas thrown around. My husband suggested “these clogs will be the death of me” which I say repeatedly whenever I twist my ankle in them, and that was definitely my favorite working title for a while. But it didn’t really give a sense of the necessity of unlearning what we’ve been taught about fashion. 

I chose “unflattering” because I want us to reject the concept of flattering as it is commonly used (i.e. clothing used to make your body look smaller - and yes, I’m aware that some people use the word flattering in a non-body-size-related way, but that’s not what I’m talking about here). I want us to reject fashion rules we’ve been taught that uphold the patriarchy and white supremacy. I want us to prioritize our own comfort over being pleasing to others’ eyes. I want us to listen to our intuition and our bodies and hear what they’re telling us they need. I want us not to need to use optical illusions to create a certain shape and just show up unapologetically as ourselves. I want to us to have permission to wear what’s “unflattering” if it brings us joy and makes us feel good in our bodies. 

If we let go of some of the effort of showing up a certain way in our clothes, how could we use that time and energy? The first thing that comes to mind is that we could rest. Rest mentally and physically. We could devote more time to supporting the causes we believe are important. We could achieve stuff, if we’re into achieving (I’m not 😬). We could spend more time with the people we love. All kinds of things. 

And why start a Substack newsletter? I’m always walking the knife’s edge of mild stress tipping over into overwhelming anxiety, so it was a big decision to add something else to the mix. Mostly, it’s for building community. I get really thoughtful responses to my emails and social media posts, but the only person who sees those interesting perspectives is me. There’s nowhere for *you* to see those and then answer with your own thoughtful response.

Here’s what I’m hoping this Substack will be: 

• All my writing in one place. 

• A place where I can share the knowledge I’ve learned after seeing the experiences of hundreds of clients over 10 years. 

• A place for you to come to ask those wardrobe questions you’ve never felt comfortable asking, because we’re all expected to pretend performing style comes naturally to us because, duh, we’re women and that’s what we do. 🙄

• A place where we support each other (yes, me included) on the difficult journey of working on our body image through the lens of what we wear. 

• A place where I can help guide you through the minefield that is dressing your body while on an intuitive eating or body neutrality journey.

• A place where we challenge things you might never have thought about: why exactly do we need to define our waist? Why do we need to wear heels? What does the concept of “professionalism” really mean? Why do we have to wear “our colors”? What are you still doing that your mom drilled into you that you need to do? Why do we continue to wear clothes that don’t fit and physically hurt our bodies? And we get to break down all these concepts together, which often means that we all learn new perspectives. 

• A place where after questioning everything, we get to choose which pieces of it we want to keep and which we want to let go of. 

Here are the details for this newsletter:

Free content will include:

• One new essay per month

• One essay "from the vault" 

• One Style AMA post

• Occasional round up posts

Paid content includes:

• Monthly "My finds" post with links to the best stuff I saw while shopping for clients

• Ability to comment and participate in weekly discussion threads (this week this will be free for everyone!)

• Ability to submit questions for Style AMA posts

• Coming soon: my essays in podcast form

Regular posts will be sent on Tuesdays, and discussion threads will be sent on Thursdays. For this launch week, I’ll be posting a couple of additional times with posts from the vault that will give you a sense of what I’m all about.

Important disclaimer: as much as I want to do this perfectly, I’m trying to embrace “done is better than perfect”, so I’m sure there will lots of revisions and changes along the way.

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A little more about me, which will hereafter live on the about page:

Here’s my elevator pitch: I provide style help to women who’ve always felt uncomfortable in their clothes and who want to uncover their authentic style. We process and release the societal constructs they’ve been operating under through online personal styling services. I use principles of Intuitive Eating and Health At Every Size in my work. My clients and readers learn to listen to what it is they really want to wear and look like, without the influence of their mothers, society, or fashion magazines.

I’m an introvert, a highly-sensitive person, an INFJ, a Human Design projector, an empath, and a Cancer. While all that means that I’m constantly overwhelmed by emotion and sensory overload, it also means that I’m super-intuitive about seeing what’s going on with other people and super-empathetic, which comes in handy when clients have to get vulnerable with me.

As far as personal details go, I’ve been married for almost 13 years to someone I’ve known for 24 years. It is certainly not all sunshine and rainbows but even though we are in and out of couples therapy often (or perhaps *because* we are), I’m very happy with my relationship. A lot of my bandwidth is taken up by parenting, which has been a difficult path for me (see: highly sensitive introvert). We have two children, ages 9 and 4. 

I had a whole career in classical music, and burnt out multiple times before finally stepping away to start this business.

I don’t think there is a certain time of life when you must have kids, but most of the moms around me are definitely not 45 with a 4 year old. 

I’ve lived in Mobile AL, Portland OR, Oberlin OH, Houston TX, NYC, Miami FL, and have now been in St. Louis MO for the last 17 (😳) years, longer than anywhere. 

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I’d love to hear more from you (after this week’s launch, commenting will be a paid feature)! What things would you like me to cover here? What are you curious about? What about clothes do you find the most frustrating?

I’m so glad you’re here to be a part of this community.