Happy Friday 13th, everyone!
8:35 p.m.
One of my students called this morning to let me know that she was performing in the studio class at noon, so I went. She sang reasonably well, but appeared in her usual sweater and jeans. I rarely see this girl dressed up, mostly because she is grossly fat and probably doesn�t own too many nice clothes. She�ll be doing a half recital mid-March, and I worry about her appearance. Oh well, she�s not the first fat soprano to shop for a recital gown, that�s for sure. But there were a number of other singers, also sopranos, who took the stage today, students of the other singing teacher, and they all dressed up. Black dresses and extraordinarily high heels seemed to be the costume of choice. My ankles ache just thinking about them. Two of the girls were very slim and attractive, and looked very nice up there in front of the Hamburg Steinway. The third, though, is what you would call zaftig in Yiddish, translated as �a nice girl who will never wear a size 8�. Not that she�s fat really, but voluptuous, the kind of figure that doesn�t age well, if you know what I mean.
So this girl, who does have a really lovely voice, wore a sleeveless black mini dress (if she had bent over the vice squad would have had to be alerted) that hugged her ample figure, black stockings, and sky-high heels. Okay, the short skirt was inappropriate for singing on stage in, but the real clincher was the top of the dress. It was a plunging vee which left great tracts of land exposed, and she�s got great tracts of land. My first thought was, �Oh my, I can see her lungs!� When she was finished and resumed her seat, I could see that her bra actually peeked out under her arms and at her cleavage, and it wasn�t even a black bra, which just made her look cheap.
Now, I may be old fashioned (I probably seem like a real dinosaur to some readers), but when I was in junior high and high school there were girls who dressed in a certain fashion, and we �nice� girls did not associate with them. They were the ones who wore lots of eye makeup, bleached their hair, and wore skirts that were too short and tops that were too low, and so on and so forth. Now it seems that everyone dresses that way! Even my daughter wears what I would deem inappropriate clothing and dyes her hair unnatural colours (not the eye makeup, thank the gourd), and all her girlfriends dress this way as well. I just saw an article in the paper stating that what used to be �naughty� is now for everyone, and is considered �fashionable�, as in Madonna-inspired underwear as outerwear.
There�s another thing, too. When I was in JH and HS, hip huggers and pop tops were de rigeur. Hey, I remember going to school in grade 9 (c. 1971) with my entire midriff exposed and my mother very reluctant to let me out the door. But I had a nice midriff. Girls who dressed that way generally were slim, had flat bellies, and looked good in that style. It was very rare to see an overweight kid at that age anyway, and if you did, she certainly did not expose her emergency starvation rations for public scrutiny. But now it seems that all girls, no matter their shape, are wearing low pants with tops that don�t tuck in, and it is often not a pretty sight. Sometimes it is downright disgusting, especially when I�m trying to have my lunch in the cafeteria and a bevy of bounteous bellies comes bouncing into view. I am starting to wonder if I should dress like them, exposing my ces�rian scar and stretch marks, to see what kind of reactions I get. It might make a good sociological study.
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