Laundry, Or, the Lifeboat.

Nothing de-glamorizes one’s own clothes like washing them. Especially taking them to the laundromat in a falling-apart plastic basket topped with a brimming laundry bag, dumping everything into a triple-loader, lifting the machine’s rubber flap to pour detergent into the compartment wet and sticky from the powder and liquid detergent from dozens, perhaps hundreds of unknown neighbors.

Doing laundry doesn’t feel clean at the neighborhood laundromat, but I don’t mind it that much. I’ve never been someone you’d describe as "polished" or someone in whose house you’d expect to find gleaming surfaces. When the clothes come out of the triple-loader machine, the I'm satisfied with the idea that they’re clean.

Not that I’d call myself messy or unattractive either. (Although, who would choose to classify herself that way? I think we all have a sliding scale for these adjectives, and for me, they lie somewhere south of the neatness of my own appearance.)

Today, though, while I did my laundry, I brought in a copy of Bust magazine to read. This is a magazine that tries to balance feminist politics with selling you a specific, indie-chic aesthetic. You know: "Down with the patriarchy, because this lady's are on top! On top dressed in a corset and fishnets with a sleek Betty-Page ‘do, her creamy skin rubbed with apple-mint moisturizer—whose product info you can find on page 150!"

And so on. So, I’m sitting there, alternately enjoying the magazine, and thinking: "I should grown my hair like that," and "Oh, isn’t that little mod dress cute—and $350? Sigh"--when my clothes finish drying, and I wheel my cart over to retrieve and fold them.

Folding laundry is dull, and I often think of folding my own clothes as particularly dull. Having recently graduated from a career as coffee-shop barista to one of writing for a small local publication, my wardrobe ranges the gamut from ratty t-shirts to bleach-stained corduroys with holes in unseemly places. I’ve bought some new clothes recently, but with my current paychecks, Marshalls is about as top-of-the-line as it gets. The models and up-and-coming comic book artists in Bust sport checkered gingam tops and retro skirts crafted by some NYC artist with price tags in the hundreds, while I sport the same two wool thrift store skirts with assorted knit-tops from Ross, with price tags in the single-digits.

But what actually pisses me off is not that I cannot have these gorgeous objects, but the fact that I’m made to want them in the first place. I don’t blame any one person or periodical for this desire, but rather a society that says the highest pleasures are to be found through acquisition of new things. After September 11th, what was our order from the Commander in Chief but to fucking buy, buy, buy, and save the homeland? Because that’s been the way here, for decades—it’s the American way of life, the one thing that has truly trickled down to the masses, to all of us.

When my father sees me dressed in cut-off jeans and a t-shirt I've had since high-school, he suggests—not unkindly—that I treat myself to some new clothes. Friends say the same thing, and hell, it comes from my own head, too. At the laundromat, my clothes all looked faded and sad in the grim fluorescent light,down to the blouse I scored at Target two weeks ago. When I’m feeling low, I sometimes do “treat myself” by buying new clothes, because these old ones represent the shabbiness that Is Me at my depths. Some new pink Pumas would certainly make me the snappy, carefree gal I really want to be, right? Even though I have a closetful of shoes at home.
And today, as I lugged the full laundry basket-And bag back to my car, my dresser at home was not even half empty.

And let’s not even get started on the implications held by that most charged of clothing: underwear. When I’m single, my underwear runs toward the roomy and the cotton. The kind of underwear you can forget you’re wearing and don’t have to hike up or pull out of unpleasant places. Then, when courting, I go on that shopping trip familiar to many hetero gals: the pretty underwear trip.

Now, pause the monologue for a minute, and rewind to me: pulling clothes from the metal cart at the laundromat earlier today, and folding them. Check out that underwear pile: Hmmm. Alice sure has let her underwear go again. I spy white cotton with loose elastic. Faded floral patterns. Alice is somewhat aware of the 40-something man sitting directly behind her, who could look up from his book at any moment to investigate this pile, and the archetypical scenario plays out in her head--There-- behind those other thoughts of how to get everything done today: Yes, the old, "Oops, handsome stranger, looks like your boxers somehow got mixed in with my lacy underthings, so now there’s sexual tension,"-one. No chance of that with Alice's ugly-ass (no pun, etc, etc.) drawers, no! No doubt the gentleman would wrinkle his nose at the mere thought of his boxers coming anywhere close to her hole-ridden (Mine? Never!) underpants, and discreetly throw his own in the green plastic trash can near the front, once the lady’s back is turned.

So there. The core of participation in this New, New New Clothes Cultcha’ comes right down to our skivvies: Sex is mostly about unwrapping a pretty package in our society.
When I had my first glance at dirty magazines as a girl, I remember the thought crossing my mind that the sorority girl whom the plumber had dropped in on, looked "prettier" before she removed the lacey red bra. And in times of tumult in relationships past, when the signs that The End Was indeed Near, I’ll confess that one of my last-ditch efforts have included buying pretty underwear.

Left to my own devices, my socks frequently do not match. Oh, and they come from a bag of unmatched socks of my father’s that I raided last time I visited my parents. When I went on a backpacking trip to Mexico a couple years ago, those in my group all wore the same three or four shirts for a month. This mattered much less than what we saw and did. Every day, I try to figure out how to live that way, but somehow it’s harder. I am not immune, but I’m doing my best.