zeldafitz

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

The Retro Slut

I work in a pink granite office building that was unceremoniously plopped on the ancestral breeding ground of a community of Canada geese. By unceremoniously, I mean that there appears to have been little foresight or spirituality connected to the placement and execution of the building. It has a random feel, like it's not pointing in the right direction; it's at odds with nature; the geese are confused; and if they just moved it slightly to the right or the left, then the building would be in synch.

Inside, my office building looks like a set from "L.A. Law," all cherry wood, hushed lighting and faux green marble floors. The guards are sweet, daft islanders with heavy accents, friendly smiles and barely concealed desires to be in other climates far, far away. Like me.

My office is inhabited by a cast of characters, like all offices. We have the black Lucille Ball, because every white person has a black counterpart and Lucille Ball is no exception. We have the black Leslie Uggams, which is redundant because Leslie Uggams is already black, and we have Retro Slut who is white and a very "foxy" little lady. By "foxy," I mean in its most relevant form, as a positive, descriptive moniker of the 1970's, a decade Retro Slut is scrupulously recreating.

Retro Slut has voluminous, pre-Raphaelite, natural blond curls, that she voluntarily dyes black, and a perfect, absolutely topnotch, yoga butt. It is the equivalent of a symmetrical, upturned nose (circa: every Sandra Dee film made in the 1960's), except it's a butt. She is probably a Size Zero and wears copious amounts of black mascara--Maybelline Great Lash?--and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm all about the mascara, but that's where our similarities end.

She shops for her '70's attire at "vintage" clothing stores, which I can't comprehend because the correct definition of "vintage" is something to do with the 1930's or 1940's, or any other decade I can't personally recall. I wasn't old in the '70's, I was a child-- a small child for the majority of the decade-- however I can't quite process that clothes from a decade that I remember could be classified, stored and sold as "vintage."

Here's the real rub: when you remember a decade, and someone is faithfully trying to recreate it fashionwise, it's easy to bust them on exactly what they think is cool from then, now. Case in point: the poncho. It wasn't cool then, or if it was, it was so brief and such an understandable mistake that we can just get on with it, but it was never, ever meant to be resurrected. Also, the ghetto-style, leather, billed cap: no. It was always dorky; it was always one of the Jackson Five's coordinated costume accessories; it was not meant for historical syndication. And yet, Retro Slut, with the yoga butt and the dyed black Pre-Raphaelite curls, wears the billed leather "pimp" hat in concert with Daisy Duke tops accented with elastic puffy sleeves.

I remember my blue striped halter top. I do. I loved it. I also loved my gingham, blue and white body suit with the too-large lapels and eyelet cuffs that I proudly combined with elephant-flare, hip-hugger, faded blue jeans. How cool was I? Not very. I wore that get-up to a new-school visit and the teacher asked the class, "Who would like to escort Zelda around for the day?" To which there was one reply, from a fellow nerd who took pity on me and decided to weather the stigma of squiring around a dork for the day.

But I digress, and perhaps it is my own tremendously bad memories of '70's clothes that causes me to be so exacting about Retro Slut (RS). Or maybe it's that she looks liked she rolled Jodie Foster for some of her hooker outfits from "Taxi Driver." Not sure. In any event, fall is the season to avoid RS. Because that's when the leopard-print, plush, swing coat [from Saks Fifth Avenue!] shakes off the mothballs and makes a scruffy appearance, not unlike Grizzabella during the climax of "Cats." That would be the pathetic slut-cat in "Cats," wearing the bedraggled coat, whilst singing the song we all wished we really hated, but when played--on Muzak at Safeway or on music boxes in giant malls--causes small, involuntary, emotive spasms. "Memory," originally sung on Broadway by Betty Buckley, who, for the uninitiated, played the second mom on "Eight is Enough" after the first mom, John Travolta's ladylove, died of cancer. I was really young in the '70's, just a little precocious.

But perhaps Retro Slut's piece de resistance is a suede "vintage" skirt, that is made up of buckskin colored swaths of suede, sewn together in decorative bias cuts. The only problem is, suede takes on the oil of its many fingered wearers, resulting in a look that is like buckskin a squaw wore in 1843. However, this skirt looks more like flesh, like the flesh the serial killer in "Silence of the Lambs" peeled off his victims, tanned and sewed into macabre homage vestments. So, when Retro Slut wears the psycho-killer, oily-pawed suede skirt and the black leather pimp cap, on top of the blond tresses so cruelly flattened with shoe polish black dye, I get a little frightened of her and all the things that are causing her to make these errant fashion judgments.

In addition, Retro Slut drives a shitkicker, white, low slung Toyota with two bumper stickers: "Beaver Power" and "Lick Bush." Those kinds of "feminist" statements, that are meant to demystify our, I don't know, enigmatic vaginas, and make us seem more powerful, make me embarrassed to be a woman. They make me want to hide, because what man, in exercising his dominance over the entire world would say, "Dicks Rule!" or "Lick my...."? No man. Because men just know, inherently, that penis enhancement is achieved through needlessly exercising power over oil-rich countries in the name of freedom. On second thought, maybe a girl's dumb emancipating bumper sticker is not so bad. Or maybe it is.