I wore a bra for almost a whole day recently. Well, not quite a bra – more of a yoga top with a shelf bra. And by “almost a whole day” I probably mean about six hours. Which, on that day, was an eternity during which half of my brain cells were engaged at any given time with how uncomfortable I was. As far as I recall, this is a perfectly fine top that I have never had any issues with before. But we are nearly a full year into pandemic changes, and my rules for clothing during most of that time have been 1. Doesn’t touch me, and/or 2. Doesn’t feel like wearing anything. Bras don’t make the cut. Not much does, really.

I find I’m thinking about clothes a lot lately, while wearing basically the same outfit every day. I have nighttime jammies and daytime jammies. Sometimes, like today, I wear my nighttime jammies all the next day. My t-shirt is purple, which seems fitting, as I seem to have developed early onset “when I am old woman I shall wear purple.” I didn’t have to do the pandemic growing out of the grey hair, since I had grey hair for several decades pre-pandemic, nor is this a really drastic change to my personal style. I have worked from home for a lot of years, and my nod to office wear most days used to be that I had several dress (for me) shirts hanging on the back of my desk chair, and if I had a video call with anyone who I thought might care, I’d put one of them on over my standard t-shirt and jeans. Jeans. I remember jeans.

For the first month or two of pandemic office wear, newly remote employees still wore at least nice tops to video calls. Now it’s all pandemic-casual, and t-shirts abound. Or maybe I’ve stopped noticing. Probably a combination of the two. I have exactly one pair of higher heeled office shoes, and they are in a drawer in the office I used to sometimes go to in another state, where they may remain until someone unearths them and finds them a new home. Even if I go back to the office I don’t expect I will go back to those shoes. In my thinking about clothing, I find that I’m wondering about people who wore all the office clothes all the time: suits, high heels – pantyhose, for god’s sake. Will anyone go back to wearing pantyhose?

I’m thinking a lot about why I wear or do certain things related to my appearance. In addition to not wearing bras, I haven’t shaved my legs in a year. That’s not an unusual state of affairs for me, but until last summer I usually at least shaved them in the warmer months. Why, though? I don’t care if my legs are hairy. There are things I don’t care about for my own sake that somehow I have cared about over the years. I’ll be 54 this year and I still remember being 13 and walking up to a store (it was The Gap, of course I remember the store) in Friendship Heights. Just as I reached for the door handle one of a trio of college age guys who had just passed me called to me, “You do NOT look good in short shorts” and he and his buddies all laughed. Solidly 40 years ago, and it still – what? Hurts? Not exactly. Or rather, not specifically. It hurts in that it reminds me how judgemental and hateful people can be about other people’s appearances, and it hurts more to know that I have ever changed anything about my appearance because I’m trying to avoid that kind of judgement. Even not wearing shorts of any length in public for too many years. Even shaving my legs. Even wearing a bra.

I’m pissed off that one of the reasons I’m glad I’m in the age range where women are largely invisible is that no one is going to judge someone they don’t even see. I’m pissed off at the number of things people are sold – literally and figuratively – as “self care,” as things that make us feel better, are things that either make us adhere more closely to the current cultural beauty standards or things that make us more attractive to the opposite sex. Those two things are in conflict more often than the so-called beauty industry would like us to believe, but neither one has anything to with how we feel about ourselves.

I’m wholeheartedly in favor of anyone doing what makes them feel good – wear make-up, don’t wear make-up. If you want to wear a ball gown or a three piece suit to the breakfast table, go for it. But even I, with my already absolute minimum of social niceties where clothing, hair, and make-up are concerned, do things solely because they are the things we do when we go out in public. And really, why? If I’m not physically comfortable NOT wearing a bra – as I would not be if I were going running, or riding a horse – sure, I’ll put one on. But going to the grocery store? Or, for that matter, going to the office? What kind of havoc-wreaking power do my unrestrained breasts have, and can I channel it into something useful?

I haven’t thrown the bras out – yet. But the longer I don’t have anyone but myself and Rose to dress for, to behave for, to speak for, the closer I get to finding out what my natural state is. And the closer I get to finding out what my natural state is, the more I like it.