So I wore a new dress today. Sort of. I also did my hair differently, but this story isn't about my hair, except that it might have magnified the effect of the new dress.
It wasn't a new, new dress. My mother made it. We picked out the pattern and fabric over a year ago. She gave it to me at Christmas, I think. And it's hung in my closet since then.
I knew it was a bit of a departure from my usual style when we picked out the pattern. But I thought I'd try something new. Once it was here, however, I was unconvinced.
The dress fit very nicely, and I love the way the skirt is. But the top is just a little odd, for me. Plus, it had these really long, skinny ties at the top. I'm not really a bow at the neck kind of person.
But today I was in the mood for something different. (That's been a theme lately, I guess. The new hair debuted on Thursday, simply from blow-drying differently.) So I decided to wear the dress, albeit with a black blazer over it, to cover the weirdness of the top, and the stringy ties tucked inside.
But, of course, this is the Heart of Dixie and it's not Labor Day yet, so the blazer was a delusion. It didn't even make it to Sunday School.
And here's the thing: I got a ton of compliments on my dress today. It really is a pretty cute dress. I'm sure I would totally love it on someone else. But the top still seems weird to me. (I tied knots in the strings and cut them shorter when I got home today. Sorry, Mom!)
But people seemed to like it a lot. Or else they just noticed that it's not much like the things I normally wear.
I am convinced that we're not always saying what we mean when we give someone a compliment. Usually compliments about clothing or hair follow a set pattern, which is "I like your ______." I'm not sure all of them did this morning, but that is the most common compliment.
What I think we really mean, a lot of the time, is "You are wearing something unusual, thereby taking a risk, and I admire the courage that demonstrates."
Which is also a perfectly lovely thing to say to people. And makes those "I like your shirt" comments make a lot more sense when they're said to people wearing horridly loud, ugly shirts.
The stock compliment is sometimes even preceeded or followed by an observation that the object in question is different. (When said about hair, this frequently though unintentionally leads the recipient to wonder if the complimenter usually doesn't like their hair.)
I'm not trying to slight the compliments I got today. I was grateful for them. Especially since no one except my husband mentioned my new hair the other day. I'm just saying that, frequently, we aren't saying what we really mean when we compliment people.
It doesn't really matter though, because the result is the same. I'm probably going to wear the dress a lot more often now.
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1 comment:
I think it is fine to shorten the ties, especially if you aren't going to make a bow with them. They probably should be shorter. I'm not sure the knot will be enough to keep them from raveling out though, with that fabric. A product called 'fray-check' would do the trick, I think.
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