Wobbly skin, weight and wardrobes

And botox and bottoms and bikinis...

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Today, in what is categorically a first for me, I got called sexy at work.

I was wearing a bodysuit and jeans. My hair was in a ponytail. There was nothing particularly outré about my get up, except perhaps a slightly racier than usual amount of shoulder. But as someone who until recently lived in sack dresses, it was enough to make two female colleagues hoot and holler across the office in a way that was hugely embarrassing and totally joyous.

“Where are you off to after work?”, one asked, wiggling an eyebrow suggestively. For a brief moment, I could imagine myself the sort of woman who keeps spare shoes under her desk and can somehow do a Hollywood makeover in two minutes flat with nothing but a mini dry shampoo and a cheek-n-lip stick. Sadly, I was only going home to speed cook fajitas before dodging horrid traffic to take the wee guy to football practice. But hey, tomayto tomato.

Truth is, despite all the time I spent studying desk-to-bar tips in 90s magazines as a teen, the knowledge has very rarely served me in adult life – the fashion equivalent of trigonometry revision? – and despite understanding the concept, I never quite mastered the required insouciance to go straight from work to a night out.

When I was younger, I preferred to schlep onto the train with a suit carrier full of options and a bulging bag of spare shoes, straighteners, 98 lipsticks and multiple alternative bra options, ready for a very unglamorous toilet transformation. By my mid-thirties, embarrassed by my hormonally-challenged and ever fluctuating body, I did the all-day dressing thing but only because tent dresses and trainers had blessedly started to pass as stylish and so I could live in those with impunity.

Now though, at 41 but officially post-menopause, it’s all change in my wardrobe – and more importantly, in my head too.

About five years ago, I mostly stopped buying fast fashion. I still have a drawer of high street T-shirts and I’m not sure I’ll ever shake my love of COS but for the most part, I bought quality dresses rarely and wore them often. Which was all fine until I dropped a substantial amount of weight and nothing fitted. 

By the time I’d thrifted and sold and donated, my wardrobe was sparse, but filling the gaps meant I could no longer hide from changing room mirrors as I’d been doing through 20 years of endometriosis battles – and to begin with, life behind the curtain was horrifying. Having lost nearly a third of my body weight, my skin was saggy, wrinkly, old looking. A friend with a greater weight loss than mine described her stomach as like a ziplock bag of porridge. Me? Above the C-section scar, my midriff had taken on a texture I could only describe as scrotum-like. 

Then there’s my post-hysterectomy scarring - three small marks from the endoscopic equipment, each like a small percentage symbol, plus a larger scar straight through the centre of my navel that, when combined with the aftermath of an unwise teenage piercing, has left my belly button looking like a sad cyclops.

The loose skin wasn’t confined to my stomach either. Suddenly, I had what I once heard described as dinner lady arms, and my butt? God, my butt. Once bounteous, post treatment the only honest comparison would be to an old walnut.

At first, I was horrified. I’d leave changing rooms before I’d tried anything on, unwilling to even look. I’d bring in entirely the wrong sizes, and feel too embarrassed to ask the shop assistants to fetch smaller, so convinced was I that they’d laugh in my face. In my head I was large but reasonably firm, curvaceous even. In the mirror, I looked as physically deflated as I felt.

So, I stopped shopping. I bought a sucky-in swimsuit and eased myself back into the pool. I went to pilates and found I enjoyed it, so I kept going. I started standing rather than sitting at work, then moved to a role where there’s a lot more running about. And as I started to use my body more, I began to respect it more too - the fact that it had grown an entire human. That it had survived 20 years of medical neglect, of being told to pop paracetamol for a chronic pain condition or to consider some unknown future husband’s wants when I started asking for more drastic surgical intervention.

Having avoided mirrors for so long, the long wall of them in the pilates studio couldn’t really be avoided. But as I started to watch my form return and my muscles get stronger, I gradually began to hate the wobbly bits just a little bit less, to accept them, even, and the battles they represented. And when I got really fed up of looking tired and cross from the neck up, I invested in different skincare, hurt myself with a roller, and eventually relented and got a little tiny touch of filler and botox at Dubai’s acclaimed Cornerstone Clinic, where everyone else looked expensive and chic and where I had a whitey and fainted at the sight of the needle. Because the more we change, the more we stay the same (albeit far less tired looking!)

And then, after all of that nonsense, eventually, a few months ago, I ventured back to the mall. But this time, instead of considering what I should wear according to my age or size or shape, I decided to shop for what I wanted to wear.

I bought a huge pair of parachute pants that my husband hates, because they remind me of my days doing hip hop dance classes as a teen and so make me want to leap around giddily. I like to wear them with a baseball cap so I look like a cross between a teenage hoodlum and 90s Posh Spice and my husband looks at me with the expression of a man trying to complete a cryptic crossword in his head.

A family day out in my ridiculous dancing pants…

More sensibly, I then bought good linen T-shirts in white and black, but also in orange and a beautiful shade of jade, because those hues make me smile. I bought brightly coloured pants and non-wired bras and a pair of Levis 501s because having never fitted in a pair, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I also bought a couple of jewel-toned dresses, and some very Dadcore trainers, and not a single pair of heels, because I’ve finally decided to stop pretending those make me as happy as being comfortable does. And a few months ago, I bought my first bikini in over a decade.

Not me…

It’s from Form & Fold, an Aussie brand specialising in D+ cup swimwear, and it has built-in support and high-waisted, very sucky-in bottoms and at first I felt totally exposed and then, finally, one blissful day as I got out of the pool to find my sarong had blown away, I found my final self-concious care had gone the same way.

This week, I bought the same bikini in white – WHITE! – ostensibly for our first ever foreign family holiday next month, but really because I want to be the sort of woman who buys herself white bikinis and then wears them without hiding.

Well, that and because, after all that hormonal hell, you’d best bet I’m going to make the most of never having to fear the arrival of another period…

What clothes make you happy? What have you always wanted to wear but haven’t yet? I’d love to know your thoughts…

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