no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Against my better judgment, bc I did not want to give them any of my dollars, I bought a pretty blue blouse at Nordstrom. Worse case scenario, I'll wear the skirt, blouse, pumps and hope the fact that it's going to be in the 90s makes this seem acceptable. Also going to Stupid Terrible Lane Bryant after work bc sometimes they have passable career wear.

You have a grey skirt and a black skirt, right? So if you find a black jacket, wear the grey skirt. If you find a checked or patterned jacket, wear the black skirt. All you need is a blouse for under that and you're good, I think? But I don't know about law jobs, and I don't know about law jobs in Chicago.

Heat is probably an excellent excuse for no jacket all--at the very least it's an excuse for not wearing stockings of any kind, which is A++ with me.

Fat people shop at Macy's, Nordstrom, Lane Bryant and there is also an Avenue and a… shit I can't remember the name of it but it's an Avenue-level chain and Jill Scott shilled a weird bra for them a few years ago. No suits at those last two places. There's a great plus size boutique in Bucktown but no suits there either.

Everything else is on line.

Department stores are really the only ticket which is what makes their stock decisions so frustrating.

xp job is a laughable long shot so I'm not that stressed about it, tbh.

I know it's boring but I'll say it again: I only ever find "career" clothes at stupid boring department stores in Muskegon, MI, because honestly I don't want a black skirt to be fashion-forward, I want it to be a black skirt. Do you have time to drive out to the suburbs somewhere? I'll bet they carry larger sizes and a better range of plus-sized clothes at suburban stores than at city ones.

Totally sucks about the Pendleton jkt because that's kind of as nice as it gets, ime. I have a couple of vintage P-ton skirts that I will never give even up if I never fit into them again. Maybe it would be worthwhile to take it to a...dressmaker? I don't know, but if it could be rescued, there's your win for next time.

Nordstrom has TWO plus size suits - one that is the same plastic one at Macy's except gray and one that is some hideous fucking are-you-kidding-me-who-really-wears-this-shit soft suiting nonsense with an abstract brush stroke pattern jacket.

argh are you fucking kidding me with this shit, Nordstrom? somehow it's what i expect from macy's but i want Nordstrom to be reasonable. Jenny, now is as good a time as any to tell you that my latest unemployment fantasy is to open up a boutique that sells straight and plus-size clothing. in this fantasy, i hire you as a consultant and you quit your job that you hate.

i assume you've already exhausted your options but does Talbot's carry suits?

also your entire rant about movies is otm

Yeah I'm still processing the woman-as-security-blanket-and-Zimmer-frame rant but thanks for it.

Talbots does but the Mag Mile Talbots closed, which is tragic bc I love Talbots for stuffy work clothes. Going to the 'burbs is a good idea but I don't think it's going to happen. Maybe for next time.

I feel like I'm shooting down all the ideas and I don't mean to do that! They are good ideas and I am grateful!

Laurel, I was going to buy a black sheath dress (knit so not ideal but it could pass) with an exposed zipper but it was $480.

horseshoe, I accept you business proposal.

By the way, to anyone else who's reading: La Lechera and I have been talking about words like "yammer" and "blither" and how de-valuing they are to women's dialogue and I'm feeling an especial motivation to support whatever style of dialogue women engage in, so anyone who was on the fence about posting itt, bring it.

xp FOUR HUNDRED AND...fucking A. You need a Filene's Basement.

We have a Filene's but it totally sucks imo. I went there once and it was just full of, like, trash. Shitty products. I like Marshall's, but I also hate hate hate buying sensible clothes.

I second Laurel's post encouragement. Yammer on, sisters. Yammer on.

Filene's on State St. closed. I have limited patience for Marshalls, TJMax, etc. Finding clothes that I like and that fit is hard enough without having to dig through disorganized piles of crap first.

Yeah I told Laurel about this guy I was friends with who interrupted me to tell me that I was "yammering" and I was just like wait, I was just "talking" (we were on the phone) and then I thought "Yknow, this guy is a total dick" and now, a million years later, I think he may have been negging. Mission unaccomplished, pal. We are not friends anymore nor did we remain friends long after this incident.

I referred to this claim that I was yammering (rather than carrying on enthusiastically as I tend to do) as the yammer hammer. Don't get whacked by it, folks.

I mean, it would be ok if it had been done in good fun, and really -- I can be kind of annoying, I know that -- I can take a joke. But he interrupted me and said "If you would stop ~yammering~ for one second" and I just thought to myself that this is not how I expect a friend to treat me.

Chicago sounds hard. Filene's here isn't my FAVORITE store, but I got my birthday dress there and another fancy dress that I haven't even worn yet because it's so fancy, and they were both AWESOME deals. All my stand-by stores are getting a terrible rap there!

"If you would stop ~yammering~ for one second"

maybe he should stop talking like he's from the 1950s for one second !!!!!!!!!

Possibly relevant, with the paragraph starting with "Actually at this point" a nice antidote to The Fucking Poem.

The stop yammering guy is a horrible person and I wish him ill.

I feel like a link is missing from that poast and that makes me impatient because I know it's going go to be something good and I want to read it.

Ha yes - http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/29/chronicles-of-mansplaining-professor-feminism-and-the-deleted-comments-of-doom/

It's loooong and in the context of the response to a recent (hilarious and OTM (note: I liked the two books I read just fine)) post she made about Game of Thrones, et al but it's good.

what was the last movie or TV show that depicted a hetero couple who are at least attempting some kind of equality in their relationship and where the woman was not merely there for succor or service, or even worse, was entirely defined by her relationships with the men around her?

friday night lights, maybe, which got a lot of attn for being a tv show that portrayed a marriage realistically. (it's an entertaining show, despite football!) she calls him on his shit, refuses to move with him when he accepts a job in another town without consulting her, stands up to him regularly. and he generally does get a clue about her pov eventually.

the fact that the show got so much attn for portraying a marriage where the wife struggles to be heard and respected equally--well, that supports jenny's rant. because that's pretty much unheard of.

thx for rant. and for that horrifying, thought-provoking poem, laurel.

and thx for post encouragement. xp yay things to read.

<3 u, boo!

lollllllllllll @ "Bitch, I have a Rolls Royce".

Someone in a car told me I have a nice ass, yesterday, while I was biking home in the dark.

That was nice of him, and nice for me, because I was just wondering about my ass.

sometimes when you're riding your bike around all you can think is, god i just won't be able to go on if some moron doesn't want to fuck me. so that was nice of him.

It's good to know that even wearing baggy jeans and sneakers and a big messenger bag over my back that makes me look like something that never leaves the confines of Notre Dame Cathedral doesn't take away from my sheer sexiness to men in cars.

I'm on the third read-through of the Sady Doyle piece because different parts of it are hitting all different typewriter keys in my brain, and Rube Goldberg-type things are happening up there.

That feeling is scary but I love it.

Well the thing is I am already kinda out there about my "pet" (another dismissive word but not specifically gendered...maybe) issues, because obv people who are gonna transgress them find any objection "strident", amirite? But there are deffo groups of people I do stuff with that I would have to become like a facing-in-all-directions-at-once tornado of rebuttals if I didn't just give them death glares and move away toward someone else.

I'm thinking about needing to re-set my settings. My baselines for objecting to criticisms of myself, or patronizing talk from men OR women, or whatever, are set way way too high, in the sense that red lights on the control panel do NOT go off when someone tells me how I should change, or talks to me like I'm 5, or devalues my ideas or feelings or my body or my self. I would like to know how that happened and then change THAT about myself, for sure.

jenny, this is too late for your friday interview, but have you looked into tailor-made suits? i have no idea on the cost of something like that (i have never worn a suit, having come even remotely close to working in a corporate environment).

There's a bit in Alan Partridge where he tries to get invited to an influential businesswoman's "Ladies' evening" or something and when he's not allowed he's all "ohhh what, loads of women talking blabbering crap?!" So if I hear anyone talk about blathering women then they instantly turn into Alan Partridge to me.

yammer
blather
blither
dither
blabber

fendi
prada

Sheep blether, it's a livestock word. Well actually apparently it's a Scots dialect word from Old Norse or something, that means to "talk nonsense" and applies to anyone. So it's not the word's fault how it gets used. But after this, I'm going to have a more noticing ear for anti-woman applications.

hm, dither is more like not being able to decide what to do?

the tiger beatdown post Jenny linked reminds me of a favorite blogpost of mine.

Smirks, smarms, provokes, and blathers until you go crazy, then calls you crazy.

^^^phrase that has haunted me since i read it

I liked the tiger beatdown post a lot, but not the girlbomb one so much. Where Sady Doyle's article takes a recent experience and explores the way in which it relates to and reinforces social patterns, the girlbomb one seems to be much more of an antagonistic generalisation. I think it's just written more glibly and dismissively, and a tiny "but I'm not really saying they're all like this" doesn't actually provide a workaround for generalisations (and to be honest I read it as a petulant tit-for-tat sarcasm anyway).

yeah she definitely got a lot of criticism along those lines for it. it is definitely more glib and less careful than the tiger beatdown post. i think i have just known too many dudes of the type erlbaum describes.

Poking around through the links posted today led me to YA Lit Bitch and this interview with Laurie Halse Anderson and it's really good.

I didn't know any of those guys because TA DAAH I don't think we had any kind of feminist organization at my college. Or...maybe we did and no one went? I didn't go, but now that I think of it, I think it might have been run by dudes.

Oh, they definitely exist, and I did boggle at the idea of a college feminist group being run solely by dudes (as mentioned in the comments) - if that isn't co-opting your space I don't know what is. But yeah, I just didn't connect with the writing and felt like the issue could have been dealt with better.

fendi
prada

irl lol

xp No, I agree, it felt flippant and unserious, but I know that stuff has more resonance for people with those experiences. The Sady piece is obv on another level but I think the lighter/smaller one was prob only intended to be a hasty jokey stab at its topic.

xp to Jenny - if you've got a J. Jill around, I like their Simple 120 line tailored wool jacket. Not boxy in plus sizes. They have a skirt in that line, but it's really long (I'm a trouser person myself).

my prob is that the hasty joke stab belittles the everyday experiences without the splash factor of "weirdo poster blabbing about natural breasts"

Well yes. I was trying to be less condemning because horseshoe liked it. But yes!

i didn't mean to condemn :(

No, I mean! Oh boy. I think it's fine if you do it because you are not condemny. I was just trying to be uncharacteristically sensitive. Needs work.

hs knows i love her

luv u boo