In which I am not afraid of the 'Fraud Police'

 

(These photos were taken last week, the morning before I dyed my hair. However, after dying it I was too impatient to celebrate the new hair, so the snowy pictures got put up first. This is why it may appear as though my hair can travel through time.)

 

Sometimes I feel like an impostor in the world of fashion. I love clothes and dressing-up, but the little things make me feel small, like I'm not really a grown-up, like I don't belong:

• I don't really know how to wear make-up. I sort of guessed at putting on lipstick and am only slowly improving with it. 

• I only own three pots of eyeshadow. I only wear them to go clubbing.

• I hardly ever pluck my eyebrows and when I do it hurts and I whine and they never ever look even. I actually have a scar under one eyebrow from an operation I had when I was a kid so I don't think they ever will be even. I don't have the pain-stamina to pluck them into a thin neat line so I just do an approximation of how I think they should look. 

• I can't walk in heels very well. I wear little heels, never more than 3". I had a friend who always said I was a 'wuss' about heels. In total there are only own 2 pairs of going-out heels in our shoe rack. They are both oxford heels, nothing strappy at all.

When I go clubbing I go in the kind of clothes you see me in on these pages. I wear patterned dresses with my gold brogues and a mini satchel bag and my level 1 of make-up. There are these other girls there who I look at as though they are from another world. They have sexy white dresses and 6" heels and I know that they are probably the same age as me, yet miles apart. They are so tall (and I am so short) that I feel myself wither away into insecurity.

I make myself a little clubbing box where I dance like mad, check out the hot girls and pretend like I am a nearly a normal adult.

There are a lot of new year's resolutions about losing weight or getting fitter. These are great goals for the right person. However, I am victim of a fear of the Fraud Police.

Amanda Palmer has this great commencement speech on the fear that the Fraud Police are going to show up in the night and knock on your day and say,
"We've been watching you. We have evidence that you have absolutely no idea what you are doing and have been accused of making-shit-up-as-you-go-along."
She says that everyone has that: brain surgeons, teachers, psychologists.. They all fear that they have no idea what they are doing, but the Fraud Police don't exist and they won't get you.

All of these insecurities are not really about fashion at all. It's just about me being afraid of failure and not believing in myself.

But I'm really getting better.

So part of my new year's re-set is to like fashion without worrying about not fitting in, or on the flipside worrying whether trying to fit in makes me fail as a feminist; not to worry whether I can put lipstick competently on or whether I look too young without it.
I am going to be confident about myself wearing and doing things exactly the way I want to, exactly the way I am.

Outfit details

This is an outfit I actually wore to work, fulfilling one of my new year's goals. I'm determined to ''glam" up a little this year and to wear more of my wardrobe. I have a casual dress workplace which allows for a lot of creativity that I don't make enough of.

I've worn this dress twice before on this blog. It is one of my 'go-to' pieces as they say. It tends to go with pretty much everything in my wardrobe and I have dressed it up enough to be interview wear and worn it with sandals on the beach before. 

Dress: Camden market, Shoes: Blowfish, Belt: New Look, Jacket: H&M, Beret: present, Necklace: present