Dress to impress?

My nice little groove of writing and sharing my blog posts on the weekend was interrupted by a most unwelcome guest. Sleeping soundly in my bed Friday night, I had no clue that I would soon be struck down for 36 hours by.....dun dun dun... the "Which End?" flu.

Do you know that flu? At the risk of grossing you out, I'll present a brief description: You're suddenly overcome with nausea/upset stomach and you race to the bathroom because stomach disaster is imminent. Once you get to the toilet; however, you have approximately 3 seconds to assess the situation: will you be sitting or will you be kneeling? It's like the Russian roulette of stomach viruses. It's horrible. It's gross. No one wants to be your friend. I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy (well, maybe one of those Kardashians - they're so flippin smug). Anyways, that was my weekend. My entire fricken weekend! I'm pretty sure that I lost at least 5 lbs (from my boobs and butt, of course) and given that my "last meal" before it hit was sushi, I'd say it's safe to say that I will never eat Sushi again. Ugh.

Prior to that, I was having an exceptional week. The knee was performing at it's highest level in over a year and I was feeling like I had officially turned a corner with all this knee business. On Wednesday, I decided to showcase the knee in a pair of sweet tall leather boots that were given the shaft last winter due to the pink knee brace. As I strutted around the hospital in my tall leather boots, my confidence high with every non-limping step, I felt like "me" again. Just happy Kirstie, headed to rounds, wearing a sweet pair of leather boots. When I got upstairs to level 5, I ran into Lawyer's hubby, Darren, a Nurse on the unit. Darren is notorious for commenting on my wardrobe - good or bad, he'll tell you exactly what he thinks.

 "Oh my god, KL! Where is your horse?" he exclaimed.

"Darren, these are totally trendy right now. You're an idiot," I fired back.

About an hour later I was confidently strutting back to my office when I ran into Dr. M in the hallway. I smiled, sure that he was completely impressed with my fabulous gait.

"Wow. Nice boots. Where's your horse?" he commented sarcastically. 

OK. that's 2 encounters with 2 men (there's like 5 men in our whole hospital) and 2 negative man reviews of the boots (Although, I must say, I received numerous compliments from women).

This lead to a great discussion with some girlfriends after work, over a glass of wine (of course): What kind of clothes do men prefer to see women wearing? Do guys "get" trends?  and Who do you dress for? Yourself? Other women? or do you dress to impress men/a special man in your life?

The consensus at the table was that although we would like men to find our attire attractive, we typically dress for ourselves or to impress our female peers with our style sense. In addition, we decided that the average dude doesn't really appreciate the trendy/fashionable items that women may find stylish. Given our small sample size, we can't verify that this is the norm, but it certainly seemed to be the case with the men that we knew. We came up with a few examples of styles that our men poo-poohed, despite Pinterest informing us that they were super cool:

1) Ruffles/lace: Lawyer has a few beautiful ruffly blouses (I think they're fabulous) Hubby thinks she looks like a "clown." Boo hubby!

Oh, are you doing a children's party today, dear?

2) Flowers (both the floral pattern and the "brooch" flower that people sometimes wear): Colleen donned a flower brooch one day and boyfriend pointed and exclaimed, "What the hell is that?" I wore a flower-patterned top once, to which Darren commented, "That looks like my grandma's couch."

Now don't panic, but there's something attached to your shirt!

3) Stylish hats/touques" - I sported the slouchy touque that sits on the back of your head. It was cute. Ev immediately pulled it  forward on my head, "It's not a touque if it's not even covering your ears!"

Your touque's falling off. Let me fix it for you.

4) Anything outside of the norm: Examples include: a) a new hairstyle ("What's going on with this curly stuff? Is that a wig?") b) Glam makeup ("I don't know what a "smoky eye" is. All I know is it looks like someone beat you up.") and c) funky jewellery ("Why are you wearing anal beads?") and yes, Lawyer's hubby actually said that to me once while donning a cool chunky wooden necklace!

call 911! Who did this to you?

So what do men prefer? My buddy and co-worker Heidi summed it up perfectly, "I think all guys like women in ponytails and high heels." Hmmmm....interesting. And incredibly boring. I think I'll continue to dress to impress myself and my female peers. Horse or no horse, those high leather boots made me feel invincible.