PIn Me Up

All of everyone who's anyone at this point in my life probably has heard the news a time or two or a thousand that I am headed to Viva Las Vegas in a month or so. I am very excited about it, because if there is one thing I love, it's rockabilly music, and if there is something else I love, it is bourbon, which will hopefully be in plentiful supply at VLV. I also love: vintage clothing, swing dancing, high heels, eyeliner, and being admired. And all of those things are certain to be present when I go. All except one, I fear. There will be thousands and thousands of girls there, and I am guessing that hundreds and hundreds of them will be much, much lovelier than I.

Now, I know that there is a whisper of protest rising from certain quarters. Before I have to sit through the choruses of my loyal fans telling me exactly how pretty I am (not that I normally mind in the least!), let me just point out that that doesn't bother me that much. These girls do this on a daily basis, something that I am constrained by circumstance from doing, and practice makes perfect. Have you seen pictures of these girls? They make the Lindsay/Britney/Paris school of glamour look crude to the point of prehistoric. They are works of art. I am - well. Rather artless. I can't even begin to contemplate the amount of work required daily to shape me from random-landscape-over-a-motel-bed to up-and-coming-young-artist-with-a-bright-future-in-abstract-modernism. I feel like it puts me at a disadvantage when viewed next to the lovelies who has religiously been following vintage diets as well as vintage fashion trends. (An aside: my mother was obsessed with the grapefruit diet when I was a child. This is significant mostly because my mother was a perfect size 8 until she got out of the Army. I do not have any strange aversions to grapefruit, although it would be understandable if I did.)


So then the question: do I spend $65 on a marvelous reproduction vintage swimsuit that I might chicken out and not wear in the indescribable heat of Sin City, or do admit that some of us are built to wear cap sleeves, pareos and gigantic sunhats? Resign myself to eating tomato aspic, grapefruit juice, and iceberg lettuce for four weeks, or buy some highly elasticated shapewear? Try to sell my nonrefundable ticket for half price and stay home feeling sorry for myself and eating as much cookie dough ice cream as I can afford with my savings that were intended for souvenirs and buckets of nickels for the cheap slots? Decisions, decisions.