So I mentioned in an earlier post that I was doing this Dressing Your Truth thing, and that I was a Type 4 – Bold Striking Woman in that system.

Which – okay. I definitely have a lot of Type 4 tendencies, and there’s lots of expressions of type 4 energy that seem very familiar.

Thing is, I’m getting to where I struggle with how I look again, this time just with better clothes and makeup. Type 4’s are “stunning” and “striking” and “classic” and “refined” and those types of keywords. And I’m a dumpy looking fat woman 95% of the time. I’m learning to wear makeup differently, which has been … sometimes a little scary (but every experiment will have failures), and that does help. And I’m learning to appreciate contrast in my face with bold lip colors to match the bold hues in my clothes.

But I don’t feel “stunning” most of the time. I just feel… like me, just maybe with better clothes.

Car buying selfie. This lip is fantastic.
Pearls are the wrong color, but everything else is good. Well, maybe not the eyeshadow.
Substantial necklace. Hot pink lip gloss. Fuzzy, unkempt hair.
Ready for Yule. This lip is hot pink, but looks neutral on me.
Okay, here I look stunning. The neon orange and black, and the orange lip? Yeah.

So I guess when you come down to it, I can see it sometimes, but most days I’m the “nothing” side of “all or nothing”. I work from home, so it’s not really a thing for me to get dressed to makeup every day – I live alone, and it doesn’t make enough of a difference for it to feel worth it when the only people who will see it are the cats and my reflection in the mirror.

Thankfully, “classic” and “simple” and “reflective” are all Type 4 style words. The words I’m mostly trying on for myself are “competent” and “simple” and “refined” and maybe “deliberate”. As I look through my old Pinterest board (which is not DYT compatible at ALL), I see that I like comfortable outfits that go easily to many levels of dress, but which are not too fussy and yet still pulled together – they look like outfits, not like just a shirt and jeans.

And I think that’s what I need to perfect. I’ve often just worn a dress and a coordinating head scarf and called it good. I often wear the same jewelry for years on end. But that doesn’t lend itself to “outfits” that feel like I’m put together in any meaningful way.

What I like about all of the pictures I featured in this post is that they feel like they’re pulled together – even if it’s just by a neon orange scarf. So I think that’s what I’m going to shoot for more of the time. Not every day (some days I barely manage to get out of my pyjamas), but I’d like to start feeling like I have on clothes that look competent and pulled together.

Maybe that’s my expression of Type 4, rather than “striking” or “stunning”.

Style Grumbles and Thoughts
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