Today I was walking behind three Manhattan women, all wearing a near-identical uniform. Each woman had on black leggings, coupled with a blazer or serious cardigan, long enough to cover what needed to be covered, with a scarf draped around their necks, to draw the eye away from problem areas. Each woman was wearing her sunglasses shoved onto the top of her head, and dangled an outsize designer handbag in the crook of her arm. Every item was either black, grey or burgundy. When these women first spotted each other, did they realize that they resembled a midtown version of the Lollipop Guild? Did they feel mortified or reassured?
When a young gay man wears his sunglasses perched on top of his head, is he deliberately trying to evoke Jacqueline Onassis and Lee Radziwill?
Are tissue-thin, second-skin yoga pants even appropriate for doing yoga?
Today I saw a man wearing a diamond tennis bracelet, the sort of thing a philandering husband buys his long-suffering wife as an apology. Was I supposed to think that this man was either extremely gender-confident, or an absent-minded thief?
How many seperate tote bags and purses, when heaped over one woman’s back and arms, are too many? At what point should I worry that this woman was just evicted from her home?
When I see a person in business attire and a helmet biking to work, why do I always worry about the smell of sweat once they get there?
When I see a child wearing an expensive store-bought Disney princess costume, and it’s not Halloween, is it permissible to inform that child, “A real princess wouldn’t be caught dead in rayon taffeta”?
