I came of age in the 90s, which was not a decade known for its body positivity, and I was a devout reader of women’s magazines during that time. Looking back, I think I was desperate for clues about the “correct” ways to perform my femininity; my mother wasn’t especially interested in fashion, makeup and other “girly” pursuits, and I had no sisters nor friends with whom I felt comfortable enough to share my lack of knowledge or ask for help. Magazines helped me figure out the key rituals of femininity and how to perform them convincingly enough to feel like I could blend in with my peers to an acceptable degree; but all that information came with a heaping side of internalized fatphobia and misogyny that took me years to unpack (still working on it).

Despite the amount of print that magazines in my youth devoted to picking apart women’s bodies, I came out of my teen years without any clear understanding of my own body. I just knew that it could always be thinner and taller. So if clothes sometimes didn’t fit well, or didn’t look on me like they did on other people or in magazines, it was because of that: I wasn’t thin enough or tall enough. The pursuit of the former took me down some scary paths, including an eating disorder I was lucky enough to overcome without long-term adverse effects. But even as I slowly inched my way towards body acceptance in my late twenties, I still had massive blind spots. It wasn’t until after I turned 30 that I was able to finally look at my body and really see it – see it in an objective, judgment-neutral way.

And realize that my weight and height were the least useful metrics for understanding my body and how to dress it. Also that bodies differ in myriad of ways which can explain why a dress might look amazing on one person and meh on another person (and have nothing to do with weight).

Hands-down the bigger game-changer was realizing that I have a long torso and short legs.

If you’re as old as me, you probably remember that bath scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts tells Richard Gere that he’s got 34 inches of leg wrapped around him. Despite being only 1 inch shorter than Julia (I checked!), my inseam is 28.5 inches on a good day … so that gives you a sense of how much variability exists. Even if Julia and I were the same size, things are FOR SURE going to fit differently on her than me.

I feel like I “unlocked” the mystery of pants once I knew I had (comparatively) short legs. Being 5’7, I had never thought that I might actually benefit from petite sizing (which wasn’t even a thing when I was growing up) … and I do, massively. Petite length pants are my jam! Before I discovered petite sizing, I used to wear ankle crop (regular length) pants almost exclusively because I liked how they looked on me, without realizing that this was my “hack” for achieving the same result as petite-length pants.

Here is a good recent example of why petite-length pants work on me better than regular length:

These are the Banana Republic “Rivoli” pants I bought at the end of last year. I don’t have the sizing information for the model in the stock photo, so I can only hazard a guess at how tall she is, but I’m pretty sure she is wearing either the Regular or Tall size because most models do. You will notice she is wearing flat shoes and the pants graze the floor. Knowing what I know – and having read the reviews that mentioned that these pants have a lot of volume – I chose to buy the Petite version because I was pretty sure that getting the Regular would have required me to either hem the pants or wear high heels to avoid the ”pooling” of fabric at the bottom of my feet. These pants looks best, IMO, when they have a straight, unbroken line. You can see that the pants are as long on me (wearing a kitten heel) as they are on the model. If I hadn’t bought the Petite version, they wouldn’t have.

Knowledge of my short inseam helps in a variety of other ways. Take skirts. When I am looking at a stock photo, I know to make automatic adjustments regarding how a skirt (or dress) will fit on me, length-wise. If it’s mid-calf on the model, it will be nearly ankle length on me which is a bonus because I love maxis. But if it’s knee-length on the model, it will hit 2-3 inches below the knee on me – not a good spot based on the shape of my legs. In retrospect, I think one of the reasons why I quit wearing knee-length pencil skirts is that they rarely fit well – unless I could find petite-sizing, which only J. Crew seemed to offer at the time – and would often end up looking a bit shapeless. Here is a picture to illustrate how much difference a few inches can make:

My legs look the longest in the photo on the left, and my body looks most balanced (between torso and legs) in the middle photo. I love the outfit on the right, but it is not as “flattering” as the middle one in a traditional sense. I want to be clear that I am not saying one of these styles is better than the other because “flattering” is a personal choice not a mandate – sometimes I want to achieve a “flattering” look, sometimes it’s not a consideration at all. But being aware of how length impacts visual proportions means that I am in control and can decide how I want to look (and know how to achieve it).

The other half of the proportions equation is the long torso thing. And understanding the implications of that also helped me tremendously. For one thing, it helped me to understand (and make peace with) why the ultra-low rise jean trend of the early 2000s was so brutally unflattering to me. Let me put it in perspective: most high-waist jeans have a rise somewhere between 10-13 inches … but at 13 inches, the waistband just barely covers my belly button. My natural waist is another 2 inches higher than that. The waistband of low-rise jeans hit me at the wrong spot, digging into the soft flesh just above my hip bones – uncomfortable and not fun. Being able to buy medium- and high-rise jeans, starting in the mid-2010s, made a huge difference in my enjoyment of denim.

But the magic of high-waisted garments doesn’t end there because they also allow me to play with the visual proportions of my outfit – to make my bottom half look longer and more balanced if that’s my goal for a particular outfit. Here are some examples, with both pants and skirts:

I didn’t realize until I posted them here that both outfits on the right above feature the same crop top. And, funnily enough, crop tops were another revelation to me. Wearing them (usually paired with high waisted bottoms) allows me to showcase my waist AND create a long leg line visually, both of which are things I like. Ironically, I was afraid of crop tops for most of my adult life … another legacy of my magazine-reading youth.

Details: Babaton turtleneck, Topshop dress (both thrifted), Zara shoes (retail)

Thoughts: I really love this dress — the cut is fab and the pattern is fun — and I so wish that the quality was better. Alas, it’s cheap-feeling polyester. Topshop sometimes knocks it out of the park, design-wise, but still skimps on fabrics. That being said, this is my favourite way I’ve worn this dress so far. Layering a black turtleneck under a summer dress is the most basic way to do transitional dressing, but damn if it doesn’t work like a charm here. I bookended the turtleneck with chunky black boots, and threw in some bright green tights for a flash of colour.

Details: Massimo Dutti sweater, Echo scarf, Vince skirt (all secondhand)

Thoughts: I’m a little bit scared about wearing this skirt because I know I am bound to spill on it sooner or later and I am not sure how easy it will be to get stains out of this material … but I also really enjoy wearing it so *shrug*. Here’s hoping I can stay accident-free for as long as possible. I tend to stay away from this type of shiny satin material especially with skirts because some versions have a tendency to cling too much. Not this one, though; it has some weight to it (I was almost certain that it was cupro, but apparently it’s a polyester blend) which makes it hang nicely on the body.

Details: Lord & Taylor cardigan, Paul Smith scarf, UO pants, Gap jacket (all thrifted), Mia shoes (retail)

Thoughts: My fave shoes are back! When I tell you I’m excited, you have no idea. I still love these platform loafers so, so much. I feel like a genius for having chosen a pair with brown soles because this allows me to wear them with black and brown or both. Brilliant! I also feel really good about this pairing of magenta and whiskey brown; it works really well, while the black makes both colours look extra bright and sharp.

Details: Gap sweater, Issey Miyake dress, BCBG jacket, Zara shoes (all thrifted)

Thoughts: It’s an increasingly rare witchy outfit for me. I just haven’t felt drawn to black a lot lately, unless it’s mixed with white. Don’t know why and not gonna analyze it too much. But I wanted to go for something dark to test this new BCBG jacket I thrifted; the curved arms gave me Comme des Garcons vibes, so I wanted the most CdG outfit I could muster from my closet right now. I think this came together nicely. Wearing black these days feels like camouflage to me so I tend to wear it when I don’t want to stand out too much.

Details: InWear sweater, Jil Sander coat, Ralph Lauren skirt (all thrifted)

Thoughts: I could have sworn that I had worn this outfit before, but a quick scan through my IG suggests otherwise. You can’t blame me for thinking it though, because how perfect are these pieces together? Wearing head-to-toe brown brings more joy than black, most of the time these days. I think what I love is the depth and richness you can achieve by layering different shades of brown. Brown might be my beige! You know … the colour people don’t understand why you love, lol!

Details: Babaton turtleneck, Lord & Taylor sweater, H&M pants, Chico’s belt, Elena Wong coat, Modern Vice shoes (all thrifted), Tignanello bag (Poshmark)

Thoughts: My fave sartorial time of year is when I get reunited with my spring/summer coats, like this fun Elena Wong one. Over the years, I have accumulated quite a few lightweight coats and jackets and it’s exciting when the season starts relatively early because it means I have more opportunities to wear them all. For this outfit, I wanted to stick to the colour palette of the coat, so I chose neutrals with yellow as an accent. And you know what … yellow is a fantastic accent colour! Underrated!

Someone I follow on Instagram recently posted an image with a caption that stuck with me:

IT’S OKAY …

To wear old clothes.

To not upgrade your phone.

To buy second-hand items.

To live in a simple home.

It’s okay to live a simple life.

It so happens that I agree with each of these statements – because they reflect my own values and priorities – but that isn’t why the caption lingered in my mind. More than the words themselves, I was drawn to something that I felt the caption alluded to but failed to say out loud.

It’s okay if your life doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

For me, *these* are the magic words. The words that bring me a deep sense of contentment and peace. The words that feel like a deep exhale, a release of tension, worry, and anxiety.

It’s okay if your life doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

The original caption seems appealing (to some of us, at least) because it is validating certain experiences or values that are somewhat outside the norm. But in its specificity, it is missing the point (in my view). The point isn’t to delineate a specific way in which it’s okay to deviate from The Norm. The point is to demolish The Norm as a point of comparison. Better yet, to demolish comparison altogether.

The message need only say: IT’S OKAY.

[I mean, if we want to be extra specific, I guess it should say IT’S OKAY _{as long as it does no harm}]

For me, the last 2 years have been a journey of twinned, sometimes intertwined paths: self-discovery alongside grief; self-discovery through grief. I categorically reject the notion that hardships or loss are allotted to us as means to an end – “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – but I acknowledge that grief has fundamentally changed both the landscape of my life and the way I perceive it.  

One of the things I’ve reflected on a lot in the last 2 years is the concept of a “rich life”, a term I’m borrowing from the personal finance world even though I am not especially interested in the financial side of it. Your “rich life” isn’t what happens when you have the best that money can buy; it’s what happens when you live exactly as you feel called to live. Picture your ideal day in your mind; your “rich life” is your ideal day, every day. Of course, in a capitalist system, money is inevitably a necessary ingredient to any version of a “rich life” – even if that means nothing more extravagant than sitting on a porch all day, sipping coffee and reading a good book; but the capitalist credo of “more money for the sake of more money” isn’t what a “rich life” is about. A “rich life” is a life lived with intention – as though each day were a full cup that you savour to the very last drop. What the cup is filled with, that’s up to you to decide.

Ramit Sethi writes that “[p]art of creating your Rich Life is the willingness to be unapologetically different.” This is what has been resonating with me a lot lately. Grief was a world-shattering experience for me, but the upside is that it unmoored me – fully, for the first time – from a lot of the “shoulds” that had provided the framework for my life up to that point. Should do this. Should be that. All gone in the blink of an eye. In its place there was suddenly room. Room to look around, to take stock, to decide the “this” and the “that”. And in that process of discovery, I was isolated from the outside world because that’s something else that grief does. But, in this context, “protected” might be a good word too. I made decisions about what kind of life I wanted to live going forward, and I never once asked myself “how does this look to other people, how does it compare to what other people are doing”. I realized later, of course, that many parts of my “rich life” looked very different than The Norm and that realization brought forward another journey, this time of acceptance – and, beyond that, of celebration of being “unapologetically different”.

I want to be careful not to suggest that understanding your “rich life” is only possible through grief. While it was certainly a part of my journey, it wasn’t the key. What’s necessary is the willingness to go inward and find what is meaningful to you, without external judgments or values to distract you. Whatever prompts you or helps you along that path is going to be as unique to you as the destination itself.

IT’S OKAY.