leggings or: how I learned to stop worrying and love dresses

Oh, hi. I'm not a fashion blogger. I'm not even fashionable. But I am a girl and I think almost every female in modernized countries has had a fashion epiphany at some point, so I'm going to share mine. To start off, I'm going to admit that my epiphany is something that's probably common sense to most other people of my sex, but it was pretty revolutionary to me, so that's all that matters.

I love dresses. I hate dresses. I have since I was in middle school. The right dress is comfortable and makes you look good with no effort on your part. The wrong dress is terribly uncomfortable and makes you look awful no matter what kind of figure you have. A t-shirt and jeans was just a lot easier, so why would I even bother with the more difficult dress option? As a result, I gave up on wearing dresses a long time ago.

I think it was last year that I started to feel dress envy. I would see girls at the store wearing dresses that were cute and casual and they looked effortless. I wanted that. Wearing jeans every day had finally started to feel limiting. It would be nice to throw a dress into the mix once in a while, so I decided to give dresses another shot.

It didn't go that well at first. I didn't want to wear floor length dresses, but I felt really exposed wearing what I thought was the most flattering length of dress on me (a few inches above the knee). I knew I wasn't really "exposed" so I thought  I was just going to have to get used to it. Instead, I just shoved the few dresses I had bought in the back of the closet rather than feel awkward and uncomfortable wearing one. I thought wearing tights might help, but I quickly realized that I can't wear tights over a hour without getting a run in them or snagging them on something. Plus, I still felt naked with them on and wearing tights in the Texas summer just seemed silly.

I think I saw a girl in the gorcery store wearing a dress with leggings when it finally clicked. I'm sure I had seen tons of girls wearing dresses with leggings before that, but these wheels turn slow, guys. Leggings. They're a lot thicker than tights, so I wouldn't feel naked and they're cotton so they won't snag like tights. 

I bought capri length ones for the summer and ankle length ones for the winter. And now my wardrobe options have completely opened up. There were still other problems I had with dresses, but they seemed a lot easier to solve than the "naked feeling" one. Dress a bit too baggy and shapeless? Put a belt on it.

Don't feel like showing your arms with a sleeveless dress?  Put on a cardigan, dummy.

It really did take too much time and effort to figure all of this out. Sometimes I feel really bad at being a girl. But still, I'm kind of proud of myself for persevering since I was pretty close to giving up and trying again in another 30 years.