Spotted!

Some bloggers can frolic in photos and not look lame. Not me, but I try!

This sweet black and white polka dot scarf was a recent gift from a dear friend. (Hi, Carolyn!) I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with scarves. I admire them on bloggers and street-stylers from around the globe and on stylish ladies in the flesh, closer to home. Is it possible that there's another way to add as much panache to an otherwise ordinary outfit as with an artfully arranged scarf? I think not. They are relatively inexpensive, (for the most part- and yes, I do covet some of the exceptions,) often practical, fun, and present no pesky fit issues. And yet, I still have trouble wearing them.

Being the kind of person who thinks spending large amounts of time analyzing all things appearance related is time well spent, I dedicated myself to seeing if I couldn't isolate what my personal issues around scarf wearing are. This is what I came up with:
 
Scarves can fill up the space between my shoulders and my head too much. I have a fairly small head, a weak chin, and not a lot of hair. In spite of the weakness of my jawline my neck is actually reasonably long and slim looking. Too much scarf volume in this area can completely obscure this positive feature and make me look like a chinless, neckless wonder. Too large a scarf and I feel as if I look like a nervous turtle about to draw my tiny head in and hide.

The interaction between scarves and my chest can be problematic. I've got enough visual bulk in the chest area already. Heaping great swaths of scarf on top of it doesn't help. And I can not abide a longer scarf that falls over my chest leaving its fringed ends dangling in midair several inches from my body.

Perhaps still a little turtle-like from the side? Do you see it too?

So, I think what I've done here works pretty well. The scarf is nicely away from my neck and the fringed ends are at the back of my neck and not hanging off my boobs. The polka dots jazz up what would otherwise be a tepid jeans/T-shirt/cardigan combination. And I get the satisfaction of feeling that I conquered one of my fashion demons. Even if it took no less than a dozen tries to come up with this.

What happened to my new jeans, you may be wondering? (If you weren't you are now, ha!)  Well, they are too small, dammit!  I did try them on, but I was wearing tights at the time. They seemed like they would fit without the tights, and they were stretchy, so I bought them. I historically have a very hard time making the right pant size decision.
Case in point #1: I bought an ex-treme-ly tight pair of bright red jeans on the recommendation of a sales girl who warned me that- "premium denim stretches a lot; you have to buy the smallest size you can get into." I wore those ass hugging red jeans eight times without washing them and they did not stretch one bit.
Case in point #2: I did not listen to the sales girl who told me that my linen pants would grow with wearing because I thought- "young lady, you don't know what you're freakin' talking about. These pants are practically crawling up my backside already, a smaller size would be obscene." Yep, you guessed it- five minutes of sitting down and I practically had to hold up my pants when I stood up again. Turns out she knew exactly what she was freakin' talking about.
Now, when I wore the (in my opinion, too tight) jeans from the first example I got a ton of compliments, and not just from creeps either. So I thought- "maybe I need to start buying pants that fit a bit more snugly; maybe I'm like one of those people on What Not to Wear who think things are too tight when they actually fit." And now I'm the proud owner of more pants that are too small for me. I'm storing them and hoping that my recent re-commitment to healthy eating will mean I can wear them soon.