Stylish with Substance

*Update* This piece was long and I was so upset ("my feewings wuh huwt") that I just wanted it posted, so I later made revisions to improve its readability, just improve the article's quality. (We should all simmer on huge entries!) Enjoy!

This outrageous (literally) GAP ad is the buzzing news, destined for infamy:

"Put some pants on!"
Small Text: "Because we can't all look good in shorts."

Photo: Huffington Post & Stephanie Marcus

Ex-squeeze my love handles, er I mean, sexy hips?

How insulting!!! As someone of the cellulited-gender - yes, entire gender (heck even a man I know *hushnottelling* has some on his rear end), and past the stickly teen years, I'm horrified. I fear further for  the eyes of the larger-sized than I.

Ugh. I call for a boycott/protest of GAP. Quick, someone start a Facebook campaign for that one! Check! Done! Look below to "like" the page! (Related in the buzzosphere, Target boycott, read all about it, if you haven't yet.)

Seriously (although I'm dead serious about the boycott, too!) though, cellulite is normal. What's abnormal is airbrushing and photoshopping. What's wrong is hiding normal, yes even healthy, bodies from public eye.

And what I learned recently, a while before this ad, is that "public eye" does not just mean magazines and TV. It means beautiful, healthy, slightly less healthy, etc., women of small, medium, large sizes - great legs or not - are afraid to bare those legs. But we have a right to bare legs! Because we feel our legs are "less worthy" than those in fashion ads (please!), we might opt only for bermuda shorts. Even when those shorten us (our legs), and therefore, widen (our entire frames). Short-shorts lengthen like a great pair of heels. So yes, they even thin us out, if a pear-shape is our problem.

Asking the question, "should some people not wear shorts?" (the Frisky) due to this ad is understandable coming from a shocked viewpoint. But asking that question is also akin to asking,

"Should female human beings not wear shorts?"

It's ridiculous. Sure, not all women have cellulite - but they should merely wait a few years. Even thin, toned middle-aged women get cellulite ... as low down the leg as the back of  the knee. Still, we can't ban shorts for women over 35, can we? What about those with beautiful curves and cellulite at 19? When will it end?

The slippery slope argument can be made, and made well I believe, in the shorts debate.

I've already written my plea to women of today in a draft for a future post about staying cool & stylish in the summer heat, but I will steal from it.

Don't be afraid to bare your cellulite. If you don't feel hot enough to stay cool in the epitome of summer fashion -shorts, you might just be wrong. Curves and cellulite are absolutely normal, and we need more images of these things, of real women, in the world. ... I won't be ashamed of something that's absolutely average.

Maybe I hate other parts, but I can live with even the least thin parts of my legs, and the rest of the world should too.

What about you? Please make some sort of pledge. Comment, Twitter, Facebook, Blog.

And please like the "cause" on this Facebook page that I did just create.

The code is below. But it's hard to read.

I didn't create this blog title thinking it only reflects moi. I believe the name describes every normal woman who loves fashion. Loving style does not subtract from our substance!

The problem is some think it does. I'd rather not even face that, but I see now it's true. Not just from my life, but from Internet trends you likely know of.

Grechen from Grechen Blogs, etc. just wrote about this, among many others on the related topics of fashionista bashing.

"(People think) if you love fashion, you’re stupid & frivolous…blah blah blah. ...  The world is made up of 2 types of people: those who love fashion and those who don’t. and those who don’t really really really don’t understand those who do."

Oh boy do I know the second half of that quote is true! But I don't understand it. I see fashion as a part of femininity, and let me tell those people: I don't understand a woman (straight or bi, let's say) who doesn't like fashion! So there.

I just wanted to let visitors know that I'm not showing a superior attitude with the blog name, I'm including my readers, most definitely, as well.

By the way, I have an important website note for readers! I will (finally) be changing the Feedburner URL. It will probably become is feeds.feedburner.com/stylishwithsubstance, but I'll update here as to whether or not the change was successful (name available with them). You must resubscribe after the change!

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Do periods gross you out? Sure, they do. Are you a woman and you still find them intolerable? Duh. They're even worse for women than for those wimpy men! But as young adult females, we must endure them.

But do we not talk about them, even as we all go through them? Why does it seem to me that women opt out of the therepeutic benefits of commisserating over our monthly curses?

If a lady's husband brings home flowers and she posts this as her status on Facebook, there's rejoice over his sweet sentiment through likes and comments. Then there's the man who does the wonderful thing of bringing home the Midol (it happend for me, swoon) ... crickets (I bet*). At least if my hypothosis is correct, this will continue to prove the case. Crickets, including rhetorical silence (it is through type) from women.

*I waited for myself to be proved wrong, and okay, I have a wonderfully close family and I can often count on them for support through likes and comments. Whew! I do feel loved after all. Buy why is there continuing to be less comparitive support over something every single woman can relate to? Less support than for Facebook game chit-chat, sport cheers, whatever.

I still get the sense that most people, including women, just sort of ignore the big P in another "P"; public.

And then there I am. On Twitter even. Many cycles, I find myself making it clear, like clockwork, that, well, I'm a raging hormone of PMS.

And that's OK. I know I'm better writing for a female audience.

Though I wonder, am I alienating, or including? Do please prove my fears wrong!

I invite a change in attitude. Just like you want your boyfriend to buy tampons (I've heard tale it happening!) and not freak out like a whiny child over, dun dun dun, blood (as long as it's not in the theatre, of course), I want to b!tch about menstrual cycles. All because I'm not currently cintrubing to overpopulation. Sheesh! What gratitude, mother nature. You ladies read me?!

Bonus: Guess what I blogged about one month ago? Yup. Chocolate.