My little skirt

A disclaimer (that I feel compelled to offer one is testament to having a woman's body in these times. And there is the corresponding fact that, were I a man, it wouldn't even occur to me to need to disclaim in the first place): I am about to write about having a body, at age 39, I'm happy with. Indeed, one I should have just got on and been glitteringly happy with for 20 years.

It's about my skirt. The short one. And possibly one, maybe two, no, three pairs of shorts I currently cycle through on a weekly basis. This is in a region of Australia where one can only feel irrelevant when Kmart introduces its winter stock of jeans, jackets and cardigans in April. These are the clothes in which I feel most comfortable. It's always hot here. I have a dozen eggs I could poach on the dirt now to prove it.

Anyway, the skirt in question is short, fitted, faded maroon and courderoy. God, that sounds bad. The last thing I owned in courderoy I'm certain I carried library books from primary school home in. But it fits snuggly  (as opposed to the noun, Snuggy, which, apart from having no use for up here, I am forbidden by pride and the Lord - I'm sure - to wear). My little courderoy miniskirt cosies up to my hips and looks...chic? I reckons anyway, with a tan belt. The shorts are tan, khaki, both worn with this very same belt and, from the waist down, look just fine, thank you very much. Now, you can't see me and you don't know me. But if I might be so bold, thus crushing the stereotype of the 'woman's self esteem vortex of terror' thingy for just a sentence, I've got the legs for it.

In fact, at 39, my legs are twice as good as they were twenty years ago. I worked on that, twenty years ago. And now, after two decades of constant second guessing and disbelief about this newfound slimness (which still feels newfound in some ways) I'm one of those skinny bitches who can put a hand through their thighs. Oh, gentleman, no, not there. Yes, just above my knees, doofuses. That's right, stand up, knees together, and there's that gaping hole. Not that this should be a prerequisite whatsoever for short skirts and shorts. But, for whatever quirks of culture and Zeitgest, I have thinnish legs of the medially concave variety which nobody appears to mind being in short attire...yet.

Yet.

As I mentioned parenthetically, some part of me thinks I'm going to wake up any day back in the body of my nineteen year old self. I ate more boston bun icing, coffee scrolls, jam and cream doughnuts, hot chips, cold Coke, deep fried icecream and double battered sausages in my final years of high school than you'd see in one of those all-American food stuffing competitions. And then I rewrote my body, over one year. I dropped 20 kilos (yep, easy at that. Just like lugging around a 20 litre tub of Hellman's Mayonaise and simply, wooop! dropping it). Became an aerobics instructor (junkie), dumped meat (obsessively) and existed on a diet of coffee, yoghurt, Diet Coke and a lettuce (just one lettuce, which delighted my eyes, if not my palette, by looking somewhat like chocolate fondue after about nine months).

We used to joke amongst our aerobics instructor selves that we'd be forever reminding the class to rehydrate with buckets of water after a heart slogging session of rampant 90s disco mix, then toddle off to the cafe and rehydrate our posh sneakered limbs wth a litre, sometimes two, of gut rotting, tooth decaying diet cola. Two litres. That's each. Each. One such instructor friend had a bone scan done once, only to be told she must never - particularly not on her honeymoon when wanton, giddy-headed activity might be at its peak - bungy jump. Apparently she would shatter. Splinter all over those icy New Zealand waters. Which might impact on her ability to coordinate any future easywalk-steptouch combos. And as for the grapevine. Ha! She'd probably come out of that a pulpy, over caffeinated Shiraz. Not a good look.

When I began this blog, it was to be a rumination upon the approach to 40, which I am gearing up for wholeheartedly, if not whole skirtedly. And here's the issue. I would say that finally, just recently - we're talking months maybe, definitely not years -  I have woken less often wondering if the mirror will greet me with all the lard I left behind. And not necessarily because I dread it. More because I'm comfortable with ageing in my head. It's like there's this, 'well, for a 39 year old, you shouldn't be complaining if you've wound up, created, fed, survived with...this. My body and I have reached, well, mostly anyway, an amicable arrangement. This is an arrangement whereby I never step on scales. In addition, I refuse to succumb to the evil logic that I WILL in fact be usurped, wholly, overnight and unsuspectingly by my physique circa 1989. I also actively defy the voices reminding me in that cruelly circular fashion how fluid retention loves stress and salt, thereby I can avoid becoming catatonic with stress over the surely approaching bloating and remedying it with hot chips. Mmmmm...hot chips. And then there's the little voice in my ear, incidental perhaps (because it's not an inner ear voice but someone else's), but nonetheless potent, of my husband this year. 'You're looking scrawny'.

Scrawny? I believe I'm the same height as Kate Moss. And having read something about her ridiculous body stats in 1992, I am quite confident I weigh about twelve kilo's MORE than her. Indeed, when pregnant I probably weighed 36 more. Of course, his comment, versus my perception that I am just sort of fine, or pretty much maybe most days ok with what I see, means that my mirror is lying, if only by a tad. Reminding me that I'm not necessarily objective about my body, unlike most other women...

Kaboom ching.

So, body and I, just getting our act together now. That's the situation. Hence, this is surely the time to embrace, let's say a decade, of wanton, short short and skirt wearing lusciousness. I'll be upon a boat of confidence smooth sailing the roaring forties.

However. In steps Western culture to slap me around a bit. I'm sorry, mass media. You women's magazines, fashion beacons, betrayers of bones beneath haute couture, you suck. You DO (AND YOU DO KNOW THIS) have an immensely constrictive, all consuming power over women's self esteem. We are copiers. Photocopiers. Were we to insert a Photoshop chip into our hypothalamuses, we would airbrush before and after the hairbrush. Blah blah blah. I'm not going address the debate about where the lines are drawn between what we think and what we're told to think and what it's suggested we think and feel and castigate ourselves about.  Might as well tame a tidal wave. And I ain't Moses. Not today anyway (maybe next week if I can muster the energy in between cooking scones with four year olds, running in the park and dashing about preventing small children from drowning or eating whole bowls of dried macaroni, sometimes both at once.)

You see, I'm starting to get this edgy feeling. Not that people are looking. No, it is. It is that people are looking. They're seeing the short skirt. The shorts. The hipster belt. The legs even. And then they're seeing the face. I love a sunburnt cheekbone, complexion weathered veins, with crow's feet run like scarring...and she's in short shorts, AGAIN. I'm aware of Madonna. And I do battle with her 'look'. On the one hand, my logical, defiant self screams, 'You go girl!' Go the biceps, go the taut crevices, go the blonde dye and the Jesus and the CFM dance moves etc. But then, there's this sinking in my gut. 50. I wouldn't be doing this if we were talking about John Travolta, Brad Pitt and George Clooney (nearly 50 fellas, it's ok, not yet). But what does it with Madonna is that, in her desire to defy the stereotype of women and ageing, her face is the least graceful aspect of her body. Mine might be developing telltale creases. But she's pulled out this f-off huge iron and obliterated her history. This does nothing to reverse ageing. All it does is remind the world that she's fucking terrified of it. Such would appear to be the case with Kylie, untold other celebrities and this woman I met poolside in Broome last November. She was from the Peninsula in Melbourne. I was worried when she dived into the pool; her face appeared so frozen it were as if she had been plugged in and a swimming foray would simply mean electric shock and Cactusville.

So, what to do with the skirt? The shorts? The visible thighs with the elongated donut hole proclaiming some strange, ridiculous success as a western woman. Do I keep the skirt until forty, then ditch it? Do I wear the shorts until the whistles stop? (Oh, that's right, they have.) Do I - now here's the thing - do I wait until I hear from a second hand source, a friend's obtuse Facebook status or a passerby at the shops, that there's this woman who should SO cover her legs and dress 'her age'? Do I wait until my husband tells me that I'm scrawny AND I need to put on some pants, goddamnit? Or maybe, and this is what I'm hoping, there will come a day when I will simply wake, dress in any of these items and decide...no. Not me anymore. And go to Millars to buy bermuda shorts (in matching beige with my husband)?

God help me.

Or someone?

Anyway, advice appreciated.

I must return to my scones, begging for butter, all swollen with sultanas and luscious coconut milk. Right now I have conjealed dough all over my courderoy miniskirt, a baby self raising hand print on my bum and a single currant stuck to my left knee. Elegance is an understatement. This is the look de jour and the doorbell has just rung.