Suitcase Series: Stacy Bailey

Welcome back to the suitcase series, where I interview my friends about their relationship to clothes and creative work. I am so fortunate to have a variety of brilliant creative friends who work in different fields to make a better world. Stacy was my first and best friend in college, when at first I didn’t want to stay. Our friendship has shaped my life in so many ways. She’s an incredible art teacher and creative thinker who supports and encourages all the people around her. I’m so grateful we got to meet up lately, and that she modeled this Sunday Suit for me.

Addie: When you wake up in the morning, how are you wanting to show up?

Stacy: Oh my goodness. In the last two years, I've gotten more intuitive with everything. I mean, eating dressing, and I've been a lot more kind to myself in general. That's my new thing. I have a vibe every morning that I have to figure out. So it's like a music vibe, a clothes vibe, what I feel like eating, so I wake up just like, "Hmmm, what's my vibe today?" So, I used to pick out my clothes the night before, but I can't do that any more, because I don't know what my vibe will be. I really really have to follow it, or else I'm just uncomfortable all day.

I want to show up as whatever vibe I feel, so if it's calm, sometimes I need soft textures, and so if I'm feeling more chaotic, or if I'm needing comfort, I have certain clothes that I know will make me feel held. Oh, it feels so nice. Sometimes I wake up, and I'm like, "I feel like a boss bitch today, so what's that outfit?" Or sometimes I wake up and I know what shoes I want to wear, and I pick everything based on that. I just know what shirt or what pants, so sometimes I have a vibe of one thing I know I want to wear, and then I make it up from there, but I'm very intentional about what I wear every day. It has to match or express my vibe.

Addie: I think of it sometimes like affirmations I'm putting on.

Stacy: Yeah, and I've gotten to be so kind to myself. I call it, it feels like zero. Which means like, it's comfortable no matter how you're moving, so if I wear something and I can feel it on my body at a certain part, sometimes I'm fine, and sometimes I can not deal and I have to change.

Addie: I'm definitely that way with what bra I wear. There's an influencer online, and they're the main person where the way they talk about gender expression actually resonates and connects with me, but also, I feel like you could substitute everywhere they say gender, and use the words personal style and it would make just as much sense.

Stacy: Okay, yeah.

Addie: But there are definitely days where I need my boobs smooshed up close, like a sports bra, but also like stays that working women wore in the 18th century, it feels like tight and smooth, and that's what's comfortable, and there are also days where I need to be like soft, and let my body do what it does on it's own.

Stacy: That is so true. I don't wear a bra. And I let myself stop wearing a bra, I guess to be honest after my divorce, and I asked myself, "What are all the things I've been wanting to do?" I can do them now. So if I'm not at work, I am not wearing a bra. I don't care who it makes uncomfortable, I don't care if you can see my nipples, like why? I wouldn't feel offended if I saw someone's nipples. Also, I see men's nipples through their shirts, aalll the time, and no one says anything about it. I do have to wear a bra to work, but I don't do underwire.

Addie: The only purpose of an underwire bra is to give breasts the shape that people expected them to be, that they were supposed to be, but why is there a shape that breasts are supposed to be that's not how they actually are? Those standards of what a boob is supposed to be shaped like, differently than it naturally is shaped like, have changed a thousand times. Any way that I want my boobs to be shaped today was the "valid" standard at some point in history. What if the way our bodies are actually shaped is what they're supposed to look like?

Stacy: Weird. Ha.

Addie: On that same vein, what are some practical considerations for dressing for work?

Stacy: Once I got divorced and I realized I had a body shape, I was dressing in like oversized shirts, and dressing in more boy clothes, because I don't know I was unhappy or lazy, or whatever you want to call it, but I didn't know I had a waist, and I didn't know that I had an actual shape, and suddenly, I started wearing like, crop tops, and I was like, "Oh my gosh I have a waist?" I had no idea, and so suddenly I feel comfortable in a lot more feminine silhouettes. And I can't wear a lot of that to work, I can't have like a tiny portion of my torso showing, even though that's really stupid, because I can have my arm showing, but this part of my skin…I can't with demonizing the body, as an artist and an art teacher, it's really hard for me to subscribe to any dress code. But I just have like six undershirts in every color, so I'll just wear an undershirt and a crop top sometimes, usually the same color as the crop top, but if it's like a beige color, they think I'm actually showing my midriff *gasp*. I do enjoy crop tops. A lot of my shirts are cut short, so I do have to figure out how to wear it to school. And I have the kind of nipples that are pointy and never go down. I have to like, if I'm wearing a white shirt that's tight, I have to wear like five layers. I have to wear an undershirt and another tshirt and those bullshit pads that come in sports bras and always fall out. Those are my two main issues dressing for work. I like crop tops, and my nipples are hard to cover, but other, you know, I'm an art teacher, so I can get away with wearing any kind of style, and I'm very expressive with my clothes just, as I said, I like to match my vibe, so the colors I'm wearing, the cloth I'm wearing is all about the mood that I'm in, and I can wear jeans, and if I wear tight work out pants, there is a dress code that says our shirts have to go past our butt, which I'm just like, some of my skinny pants are similarly tight, so I have to wear like an oversized plaid, or like a jacket that covers. I've kind of gotten a reputation and they don't mess with me too much because I'll call it out for an arbitrary rule, and I don't subscribe to that.

Addie: And now you're at a school that allows you to be more open than before.

Stacy: Yes, after losing my job and the lawsuit, they can't say anything about that again. I show up as myself, as a teacher, there's some topics that you don't talk about in class, I guess, like politics, If they ask me who I'm voting for, I just say, "I'm not supposed to talk about that with you."They want to know why, and I say, "Well, you see me as a person in power and that might influence your beliefs which is kind of bizarre because we are supposed to influence their beliefs. We're supposed to teach them how to think, and how to be. It can be difficult to follow, because you're supposed to have relationships with the kids and be vulnerable, but don't get too close. It's tricky because they want us to build trust and relationships that are meaningful with them, but also not talk about our personal lives in a way that's going to influence them or affect them, and I'm like, how are we supposed to do that?

Addie: I have teenagers of my own now, and am doing some youth ministry stuff, because I'm seeing, when I was a teenager, I didn't realize how much I was being influenced by the things I was being exposed to and if you had told me that my view of the world was distorted, I wouldn't have believed you, I couldn't have, you can only see what you can see.

Stacy: What I try to do, is I show up as myself. As weird and silly and bizarre, and as an art teacher I have more space to be weird. I do know that. And the roll of an artist is to question power, and it is to push the boundaries and question everything, and I do have a space where I can do that, but I try to show them that the most important thing is to get to know yourself. I'm here as myself, you get to be here as yourself. So if I have any influence over them, it's to get to know themselves, and I'm just modeling that. If a rule doesn't fit me, I throw it out.

Addie: Modeling. Show don’t tell. I think one of the biggest things that's influenced my parenting in the last few years is how much I was told, we do this for our kids, because it's what's best for them, but it's sacrificing yourself. In the long run, I don't want them to learn that that's what being an adult is. I'm not raising them to have a good childhood with a world that revolves around them, and then it's over.

Stacy: Right.

Addie: So I can seem like I'm prioritizing them, but what I'm really teaching them is to never take themselves seriously for the rest of their lives, and that's not who I want them to be. I want to give them tools I didn't have, even though they won't know they need them until they get there.

Stacy: That's why one of the best things you can teach kids is to be flexible and to trust themselves. Because, as we've seen life is full of, you never know what the hell is going to happen. It goes up. It goes down. It's beautiful. It's horrifying.

Addie: I think people have come up against this in different ways, that have come out of evangelicalism. I read Untamed by Glennon Doyle.

Stacy: Yeah, me too.

Addie: She talks about listening to the knowing, and I spent the next, like, three to six months terrified. Like how do you know? You could be tempted? You could be wrong? How do we just listen to ourselves. It's out of control. And I realized at some point. I always know. I can tell the difference between temptation to do something wrong, and what my intuition is actually telling me. Sometimes there is something easier and tempting, that is ultimately the wrong thing, but you know. If you're honest enough to ask the question. You know. It's not tricky or confusing where there's something inside of you that's misleading.

Stacy: Once you get to the place where you start to trust your own knowing, because it was trained out of us. That's why I love being around children, is because they have that knowing and they're very unapologetic about following it. They'll roll on the ground if they need to and they mitigate their nervous systems. They'll scream, they'll make weird sounds. They'll hop around. What are they doing? They're calming their nervous systems. We should be learning from how kids act, and studying it and writing it down as a way to continue to live.

Addie: I've been trying to figure out lately if my kids are not ruined because they have all such different neurological needs, and it's been such a wonderful gift, I think, to give them a place, where they've never been taught not to do those things, but now I'm going to send them out into the adult world, and those places are not created for their needs. I haven't given them any tools for navigating those places. In a lot of ways, I still don't have the tools for navigating those places.

Stacy: No because they are inheriting a world where more people like us are in charge, and people like me are allowing it in the classroom. My mom would get hit for speaking Spanish. People weren't allowed to be left handed. We're seeing things have evolved in the classroom, and eventually the workplace is going to have to reflect that as well. I sometimes have a moral dilemma, because we know all of their divergences and needs and adaptations, but the real world is not built for them yet. I read a test out loud to a senior and then he's supposed to go get a job. He's not prepared.

Addie: I believe that the weirdest quirkiest parts of ourselves is how we all know the divine. Something created the world and the universe and is the force of everything that is love and life-giving and creative in the universe. We all know that thing and have a connection and a relationship with that thing through the weirdest parts of each other, because that's the parts we couldn't know without each other. I want to facilitate and enable kids and the people that I work with, the people who buy clothes and whatever, to be that thing. That's the part that we've been taught to try to file off to fit in a certain shaped hole.

Stacy: I've had a difficult relationship with my body since I was thirteen or fourteen. I had like an eating disorder, so I was too skinny. I was fainting and stuff, so they put me on emergency weight gain medication, so I gained about a hundred pounds in a year. So I have all of these stretch marks all over my body and then I was medicated until I was 20. From like 15-20. Millennials are like the first generation where they like experimented with medicating our brains, and I don't think that was a good move, but then, I got so big, and I was so zombie and sedated, that when I finally got off of those medications, I was left with a body I didn't understand, so I had a hard time with clothes in general, with my body. With sizing and numbers, so I would fixate on weight, or I would fixate on measuring myself, and so, clothes has been a really difficult relationship for my whole life. Because I would use it to control myself. I would have certain pairs of pants to try on to punish myself, so if they didn't fit I would have these weeks of punishment, working out and eating certain ways. I finally started to let that go, in my thirties I think. I've gotten more relaxed with it, and been like, "You know, I'm going to buy a size eight, because it's more comfortable for me." But up until my thirties I was like, "Absolutely you will not be doing that, you will fit into these pants." I was very militaristic.

Addie: I remember, you were bigger when we first started school. You wore a lot of knit and athletic things with quirky accessories, and I just thought that was your thing. There was no indication, that you were unhappy with your appearance or style, and then at one point you announced that you had been watching What Not To Wear, and now you knew all the rules and what you had been doing wrong. And in some ways I think it helped you be more confident, because you started to think about dressing how you wanted to look, but at the same time I could see those voices telling you all the time, this is wrong, and the joy going out of it a little.

Stacy: I was very tormented about my body for a long time, and in the last two year… I still have trouble when I go to try on pants, I'm usually a size 10 now, sometimes a 12, and I am okay with that, but if I was to put on a size 12 and they didn't fit, I have to do so much mitigating of my nervous system to make me not be manic. I used to be manic, I would go into self harm mode, and suicidal ideation. It was very detrimental for me to be triggered in that way, which is one of the reasons I hate shopping. I've gotten so much stronger with myself, and kind and loving to myself, but for some reason, buying clothes like that is still triggering to me.

Addie: I can tell you, standard in the industry, because they make one size and grade it up and down proportionally on each part, so standard in women's clothes is hips that are ten inches bigger than your waist. And yours are about thirteen and a half, which is beautiful, that's what most people love and adore and look for, but clothes are not made to fit it.

Stacy: I know, I can't wear normal clothes.

Addie: Your going to be hard pressed to find pants in a store that will fit both your waist and your hips, and it’s the clothes that are wrong for you, not the other way around.

Stacy: Absolutely. Thank you for saying that, because I feel that. So what I do, is when I see someone that has a large ass or hips like I do, I ask them, where did you get those pants, because I cannot find any pants, They have to specifically say curvy, or they won't fit. If I get them past my hips then the waist is too big, which that's not the worst thing, but my legs are also kind of short I think, so I have to specifically buy curvy pants. I used to just go to the Gap and they had one pant that I knew fit, so I would just get it in all the colors.

I hired a stylist when I got divorced, because I was just overwhelmed with everything, and it was like a splurge, I know, I spent a bunch of money on it, but I was like, "I don't want to think, I want a new way of looking at myself, I feel feminine, I feel like I have a waist for the first time." My body is actually bigger than it used to be, so I must have had this waist the whole time, and I do know that I've had body dysmorphia. I look at myself, and I think if I saw a girl who looked like me, I think it would be okay, but then I still have parts of my body where I think, "Oh if they see that…" I still struggle with that it was kind of common for us to have eating disorders in the early 2000s, a lot of us did, but we don't talk about being in our thirties and you still think about it.

Addie: We talk bad about diet culture, and we talk bad about eating disorders, but we still presume that people's bodies look the way they do because they've chosen that, so we assume that other people see our bodies and think this is the way we choose to look. Like, if you're bigger, it's because you've decided to give up, and honestly, giving up is totally a valid choice, but my body does not look the way I would like it to, and I am working to have the time and capacity to do more about it than I can right now, but there are seasons in your life where you don't have the capacity to eat to a certain standard, or work out a rigorous amount. I realized at some point that I was framing it that way. I feel like people look at me and see lazy, because people that look good put work into their bodies, and then I realized that I've put a lot of work into my body looking the way it does too. I've carried six babies, I nursed them as long as they wanted to even when that was countless hours spent on my couch watching my house get messy beyond my control, and having creative ideas I couldn't execute, because my hands were full. Those were choices and sacrifices that I made, that required a lot of effort from me. It took just as much intentional effort as someone who did a training program.

Stacy: It's just as valuable and work and beautiful, that's why I think that what you're doing is so cool, and I think that what you're doing is getting back to how life…I don't want to say should, I don't like shoulds, but like the idea of sizes that are so different no matter what brand you get. That's so infuriating for most women, but the simplicity of measuring your body and having clothes made to fit your body, it's so simple.

Addie: I kind of want to start prescribing now, or recommending: I loved getting your measurements from someone who I knew cared for you and loves your body. I think that's so, like…

Stacy: Did she say anything to you?

Addie: No, she just said this is for Stacy, but I knew that it was a girlfriend, so…

Stacy: Because they knew I was going to have trouble with it.

Addie: It makes it a loving experience, instead of a judging experience.

Stacy: That was actually a really hilarious encounter, because I had measured my bust, waist, and hips for when I buy clothes online, and I fixated on those numbers, and I tried to stop eating certain things, and I was like, "No. Girl, I thought we were past this. It's so irritating sometimes.

So I told them, both of my girlfriends, "I'm trying to be nice to myself, but I'm still fixated on numbers. I didn't know I still have that hang up with my body, because I'm so comfortable with my body, and I don't work out five times a week like I used to. I'm okay with being soft. I'm disappointed that I'm still like this. I need to do all of these measurements for one of my friends making me clothes." And they were like, "We'll help you." And I was like, "Oh my God, that's my worst fear. To be seen up close and measured."

But I was planning for them both to meet, because one of them does these sound baths, and they had met like that, but they she was like working. So this was like a, let's meet and hang out all together, because the kind of poly that I do is kitchen table, where everyone knows each other and it's all fine. So we hadn't actually hung out like that, and they didn't talk about it before, but they were like, "Alright, we're going to do the measuring, let's do it, We'd love to." And I was like, "What?!" And we got the measuring tape out. She's like, "You're not even going to see the numbers. Give me her instagram. I'm going to send it straight to her." So one of them would distract me, and the other one would measure, and I was like, "This is my worst fear being realized." I had to put my leg up, so she could measure my thigh, and I was like, "Oh my God!" But it was really precious and they were doing it to help me, and it really did. It only took about ten minutes or so, and they had never met, but they had a common goal, and I was uncomfortable and they were thinking they might be uncomfortable, but it brought them together for me, but also I was the uncomfortable one, which they thought was hilarious. So that whole scenario is something I'm never going to forget, because it was like, right here. I was like, "This is not how I thought this was going to go." And the one doing the measuring pulled my pants down. I was like, "This is a lot." But it was really funny. It was really fun for everybody involved.

Addie: I love that so much.

Addie: Tell me what music you're into right now.

Stacy: Oh my gosh. That's all part of my vibe I have to find it. When I'm getting dressed to go out I listen to Beyonce's Renaissance album. In the morning I'm more of a chill vibe, so like, Tracy Chapman. I'm still pretty old school. The things I listened to in High School are still like having a renaissance for me.

Addie: Molly and I listen to so much Alison Krauss and Mary Chapin Carpenter still, like we grew up with, and Tracy Chapman, and even like now, I'm listening to Chris Pureka,

Stacy: Oh my gosh.

Addie: Which is still kind of the same vibe coming back around.

Stacy: That's how I am going back to like those times, like the Garden State soundtrack. All the things I liked in the early 2000s. Jeff Buckley, and some of my students actually know who he is. I'm trying to think of new people. Like Sylvan Esso's newer, and I do enjoy her vibe a lot. I go to the radio on Spotify now, you can just stream and it knows your likes.

A lot of times I'll have a mood for a song that I like, in the morning when I'm trying to find my vibe, I'll think, "Oh this is my song today, and then I'll go to the radio of that song, and I'll just play that in my classroom all day, and I just put the filter up of no explicit whatever.

Stacy: I've been trying to get back in touch with my high school and college self, like the part of me that I kept safe from my religion, because my religion was very tied up into that time period of my life, but I always was silly and I always was curious. So I'm trying to go back to that time and revisit who I really was before it got translated through religion, and that's been really fun. Being more childlike, and accepting more childish things in myself.

Addie: Yes, instagram always has those story prompts that are like, "Share a picture of you as a kid that's this or that." And I only really have one picture on my phone of when I was a kid, besides a couple of posed family things or a yearbook photo, but it's kind of perfect for everything. I'm like five in the living room with my hat and boots and stick horse, and a pink bikini, and I remember feeling like that was it, I was the ultimate thing.

Stacy: Yes. Perfect.

Addie: I think if I can just hold her in my head and do right by her. I'm doing pretty good if I let her get to be the adult she would want to be.

Stacy: Yeah, and I love our generation for realizing that, for thinking about who we were as a kid and being the adult we wish we could have had. I think a lot of us are doing that. People with children, or people who are teachers, or just a lot of people in general. I've been dating a lot of moms recently, which surprised me, I didn't know I wanted that, but combined I have four kids in my life now. It's so cool to see people our age giving kids choices and to be autonomous, and understanding the idea of a stress cycle, that when a kid gets in a mood they have to complete their stress cycle and if they don't they hold it in their bodies and they'll get sick. And I'm like, that's why we've all been sick, and we're all anxious. But it's so cool to see parents who are teaching their kids how to do that as children, and allowing them the space to do it. I can't even! It's going to be so cool when they grow up. It's already cool

Stacy: I think when you stop being creative is when you start to die. It's nice to see you being creative. I've been more creative in the past couple of years, and you feel so much lighter, at least I do. When I'm creating something, I don't know if you get into this mode when you're creating something where it just, you know you're doing it right, and you're expressing whatever it is in you that has to come out. It's like that makes me feel alive.

Addie: We were created with at least five senses, really more, depending on how you count what, in a world full of strawberries and mountains and sex and music, and it wasn't an accident.

Stacy: Right. I feel like Alicia Keys, I forget what song it was (here), but when she sang it that was one of my realizations, she said something like, "We live in a world where we glorify war, and we demonize sex." She's like, "How preposterous is that?" You would be so proud of your kids to join the military where you know they're going to actually probably kill someone, or be part of it, but if your child was to go toward a pleasurable sexual life, oh my god, that's awful, how could they. It doesn't make sense.

Addie: I think it was CT who told me in college that in Europe they are horrified by the amount of graphic violence in American films, and they have a lot more nudity, and I at first coming from the background we come from, was surprised, but of course, we have gotten it really backward about what things are offensive and gross.

Addie: Are you reading something right now that you love?

Stacy: I read like four or five books at a time, just little pieces, so I'm reading…I'm re-reading my favorite author is Annie Dillard, Teaching A Stone To Talk, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and For The Time Being are like my favorite of her books, and I read them for probably a decade, just on repeat, I haven't for a while, so I'm starting to re-read some of her books, and then I've got this Joy Sullivan is my new favorite poet

Addie: Yeah! That's the book I brought with me on this trip, Instructions for Traveling West.

Stacy: Have you read it? You're reading it.

Addie: I'm like halfway.

Stacy: Love it. I started a writing club, like recently about a year ago with some of my friends, just because a lot of us write. For what purpose we don't know. We're just writing. It's something that we do. I had enough friends that I knew did it, I was just like, "What if we just got together, like every other week, and shared and maybe gave ourselves prompts?" So now we do it, and I realized that a lot of us like writing poetry, so I've been reading more poetry, and she's amazing. I'll read any book she writes from now on. And I'm reading this self portrait book. I can't remember the title. It's a historical book about the relationship between women artists and stories of women artists and their relationship with self portraits. It's really cool, and I teach art history advanced placement. It's given me a lot of background that's not taught in my curriculum. So when I'm doing research on what I'm teaching, the women's story is almost never told.

Addie: Yeah

Stacy: So I have to do a lot of research outside of that to give my students a more realistic version of history. So in my spare time a read a lot of women's history just to stay caught up, so I can give my students more of a picture of what's actually true.

Addie: I've gotten the perspective recently— there's a website called TeachRock that's about music history, but it ties in all the other subjects, and their newest project is called A People's Playbook, U.S. History with Music as a Primary Source, and it's the idea that we're taught so much of history as like government and dates.

Stacy: Right.

Addie: But that's not really the experience. Art is what gives us a window into the actual experience of ordinary people. So what if instead of starting with history and throwing a little art in, we learn all history as art history.

Stacy: Yes!

Addie: It tells us about the experience of different time periods.

Stacy: That's what I tell my students, although it is my passion, Art History, I'm like, this is the most realistic, honest way of learning about history that exists. Because sure you're going to learn about the wars, and you're going to learn about who was in power at those times. That's what normal history classes teach you, but what you get to learn in art history is the human experience. Something happened to these people, good or bad, and they had to get it out of their bodies, and this is what it looks like. It's such a fun way of teaching history and learning history. I think it should be mandatory.

Addie: Because we often learn history and then realize later that this stuffy textbook is still just one person's perspective and interpretation. At least art is up front about that. One of my favorite instagram follows is @rare.device, Dr. Shannon Flaherty who is an art history professor in the midwest, and they have like, encyclopedic art history knowledge around the world, but specifically they share a lot about the queer and socialist aspects within art history because it's all one story. I've learned so much. I grew up in a house where I was hearing my whole life, "They're trying to put gay stuff in everything." And I've learned from Shannon how many of these artists we have actual documentation that they were always gay, it's not new, and it affected everything. We're not changing the story gay, it was always a gay story. So many of our most feeling, and most compelled to express themselves people throughout history have been cultural outliers, have been people who wanted to escape the mold, have been people who were fighting for access to quality of life for all of the people around them instead of a few deemed deserving. It wasn't always explicit, because it was often more dangerous, but the coding, recognizable to like minds, was always there.

Stacy: And yeah, we're just finally being honest about who these people were and their intentions for their characters. It's like I understand that modern art, which is like art from the 1880s forward is a reaction to machines. It's a reaction to the camera. It's a reaction to the industrial revolution. Like trains and people having these simple slow lives suddenly become so fast paced. A camera is much faster than your hand. A train is much faster than a horse. And these sensitive people like me, now that I see myself as an artist, they experience it so much deeper, and they can't not express it or they'll die.

Addie: I've been thinking lately how so much of modern art being more minimalist is largely because when they only had crude instruments, the feat to accomplish was to see how realistic they could be with it, when all of these incredible new technologies and mediums evolve in complexity, figuring out and exploring that tool is enough.

Stacy: And I think minimalism, was a reaction to original burn out culture, to where things are moving so fast, there are clocks everywhere, and now there are alarms. Can you imagine? They'd never lived with things like that, and then suddenly they're being expected to live like this, so then the goal of art changes. Art becomes a reprieve. It gives your brain a break. You don't want to look at something where you have to look at the light, and like, figure it out, and it's really busy, you want something like, *sigh* "Oh my God, that's just a blue square. haaaa." Yeah. I love that I get to teach about art.

Addie: I saw this on your shelf when I came in. It's been on my list.

Stacy: Women Holding Things? It's illustrated and very short pieces, you could read it in a morning, like an hour and a half. It's super sweet. It's a good one. But yeah, lots of my extra time reading is research based. I almost never read fiction.

Addie: I read so many different things, but I feel like it's all part of the work. Everything's connected. Even the silly and trivial. Like Bridgerton. It's self aware that it's silly and trivial, and that's the point, and because of it, this last week I was talking with the boys about how throughout history, so much of what was considered beautiful, like the most trendy rich people clothes, was about, how can we make this so visibly uncomfortable that it's obvious this person does not have to perform labor for themselves.

Stacy: Oh gosh, yeah.

Addie: That was the whole point. At some point I realized, when I was learning about corsetry, I was like "I just don't really prefer front lacing ones. For some reason that just seams tackier, and more slutty than the ones that are smooth on the front." And then I was watching a historical get dressed with me video that was like, this is what an eighteenth century working class woman would have because she put it on herself. It had never occurred to me that back lacing corsets, only your made can lace it up. So we've all been trained by media and culture to think that front lacing corsets is what slutty cheap people wore, in a tavern or brothel, is because that's what most people wore. We were supposed to be conditioned to think that it was distasteful to have clothes that you have to put on yourself. So like, all the shirtwaist girls, when they started to wear men's style shirts, during industrialization. The picture we have of Anne Shirley and women in factory picket lines and suffragettes. In some ways today that seems like a really conservative boring way to dress, but it was women asserting, I put my own clothes on.

Stacy: How interesting, to learn something like that.

Addie: Is it possible that there's anything that you expected to talk about that we didn't talk about?

Stacy: Haha. No. I didn't know how this was going to go. I just like to see anyone finding something true about themselves or being creative in general, so your idea is so cool, and I think once you get going with it, it's going to be really helpful to a lot of people. Especially people like me who, I think a lot of women don't like shopping any more because we're too busy and overwhelmed with everything.

Addie: And because I think we all know that we're supposed to feel better about our bodies, but it's not easy to flip the switch. So now we're holding, I don't really like my body, and I'm supposed to like my body at the same time.

Stacy: Going to find clothes in a store is so difficult because we're not all made the same. I think what you're doing is really cool, because when I learn like a really good true way to do something it ruins everything else for me, so you're going to ruin a lot of things for me. I'll be like, "I could just buy something that is actually made for my body instead of tormenting myself that I don't fit this number that wasn't even made for my body." And now I just hate capitalism even more. So like, great thanks. Haha. Mass production is bull shit.