me and my clothes

Ok. Picture this:

I walk into work one morning. The sun is shining and I'm excited and in good spirits. I am about to hold my first presentation at my job where I worked for just over a month. A lot of the project managers will attend my presentation, and of course I'm a bit nervous and have made an effort to look presentable.

I'm dressed in a pair of black, loose fitted linen trousers and a green shirt with a black jacket. On my finger I'm wearing a ring with green stones and for once I've blow dried my hair. I feel confident and full of beans.

At the coffee machine, queueing up with my fellow colleagues for the compulsory 08.45 am coffee break, H eyes me up and down.

Have you lost weight? She says.


H is a woman in her early sixties. She has worked for the company for 20 years, just like most of her (and my) fellow colleagues. They have never been promoted, changed departments nor do they believe in life after work. H used to say things like "here's the office's tiny tot" to clients when I first started, pointing at me, always making sure I knew I was thirty years her junior and, in her eyes, still a child.

This "tiny tot"-shit finally came to an end after I repeatedly told the clients Yes, thank god there's new blood coming into this office to dilute this old biddy-syndrome here with a pleaseant and innocent smile.

So anyway, let's move back to this particular day where my weight was mentioned about an hour before my first presentation at the company:

No, I answer and brace myself for what's coming.

Oh, she says pitifully, perhaps it's just that your bum actually FITS into those trousers your wearing today. Usually your trousers are so tight around your bottom they look like they're about to split.

I say nothing. Nor does anyone else in the coffee machine queue. I feel surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves. She eyes me up and down again:

Do you change your outfit EVERY day?!

Actually I do, I say, adding jokingly it's mostly for their benefit as I have bad B.O. and would smell otherwise. Then I laugh a little applogetic and what I hope to be - disarming.

Well, she says - obviously disguisted with my large wardrobe - I tend to spend my money on more IMPORTANT things in life but clothes.

I sit down at the coffee table. Not really in the mood to carry on the conversation about my clothes. Nor does it feel nice to sit around the table for 15 minutes with these women.


And your hair, she says, surely it's not natural?!

I look at her and think to myself that my hair and I are probably the only god damn natural things in the room.

Need I say that the presentation went perfect, but that I for some reason was a bit gloomy for the rest of the day anyway...