Saturday, March 24, 2012

Western clothing

Its getting hotter, and I've basically stopped wearing jeans. Instead I'm more often in a salwar and kurta, which has some other name I'd type wrong. Basically, baggy drawstring pants and a loose cotton dress with slits from hip to knee on the side. Despite being long sleeve, the looseness does a fine job of keeping you relatively cool, though I still would argue that shorts and a tank top would be more appropriate.

This outfit, or a sari, is classically Indian. In India, there are essentially two styles of dress, Indian or western. Indian comprises these two styles of outfits. Western comprises anything else.

When I say western, I emphasize that it means 'not Indian,' it does not mean, 'someone in the West would wear this.' Puffy ruffled sleeves have been all the hype this year, as have shirts that look vaguely similar to my pink and geometric minnie mouse bathing suit I wore when I was five. Only these shirts often have big plastic buttons that connect nothing as decoration. While some girls seem perfectly at ease with and capable of creating perfectly acceptable American youth outfits, some just seem unable to let go of ruffled dresses and clashing patterns that even I wouldn't put together (and ask my mom, matching is not my strong suit).

In addition, and can bring me great amusement some days, is that one-colored outfits are entirely acceptable. All white, yellow, orange, red, well, I've probably seen them all. I bought a red kurta and was looking for a pair of churridars (drawstring skinny pants that crumple at the ankles) to go with them, and the lady insisted I buy red to match, arguing against any beige or brown. I tried, but I just can't wear that much of one color, and went back for brown.

In other news, despite my evaporation of motivation to do any work whatsoever, I need to write about forty pages in the next week (no big deal), because all my work is due by about the fifth. Another nearing deadline which marks for me, not the amount of work I have to do, but the nearness of the end of this semester, the coming of my mother, and going home. 

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