Try It On Again
One sentence can change how a garment looks on you. The clothes don’t change. Your body doesn’t change. But somebody else’s gaze follows you to the mirror.
By Laura Vanessa Medina · 6 min read
I once had a pair of trousers I loved.
When I wore them I felt beautiful. I didn’t analyse my body or ask myself whether they suited me. I just liked how I looked.
Then someone commented that they weren’t appropriate for me.
It sounded like nothing. It changed everything. The next time I looked at those trousers I didn’t only see the garment that had made me feel good. I saw the opinion attached to it.
I started looking at myself differently — hunting for whatever that person had seen, doubting what I’d thought. The trousers were the same. My body was the same. But my gaze wasn’t entirely mine any more.
Eventually I stopped wearing them.
I don’t have them now.
When an opinion moves into the mirror
A comment about clothing can leave the speaker’s mind within the hour. For the person who received it, those words can come back every single time she gets dressed.
That shows too much. It doesn’t flatter you. That’s too revealing. You’re too old for that.
These sound like descriptions of a garment. They usually end up describing the woman inside it. What we hear isn’t I don’t like that dress — it’s disapproval of a body, a taste, a way of presenting oneself.
That’s why one sentence can do so much damage. Afterwards you start inspecting yourself from the speaker’s point of view. A part of your body you had never thought about becomes the first thing you look for in the mirror. Comfort turns into self-consciousness. Something you bought with excitement stays on the hanger.
The clothes didn’t stop suiting you. Your confidence just stopped going out with them.
The clothes didn’t stop suiting you. Your confidence just stopped going out with them.
Who decides what’s “appropriate”?
The word appropriate sounds objective. It almost never is.
Appropriate for what? For the occasion, for a specific rule, or for somebody’s personal taste?
Clothing does involve practical decisions. You don’t dress for the beach the way you dress for a job interview. Occasion, safety, and what you’re actually going to be doing are all part of choosing well. That’s completely different from letting another person decide what your body is allowed to wear.
And the rules move depending on who’s wearing the garment. What reads as elegant on one woman is called provocative on another, because their bodies are different. The same fitted trousers are not interpreted the same way on every figure, even when the design is identical.
So an opinion about clothing can quietly be an opinion about how much space a body is allowed to take up, and how much attention it’s permitted to attract.
There are age rules too. Too grown-up when you’re young; too young when you’re older. There seems to be a brief imaginary window in which a woman may dress freely — provided she also has the body other people have agreed to approve of.
You cannot satisfy all of it. Someone will always find something too short, too tight, unflattering, unsuitable. And if every opinion becomes an instruction, your wardrobe stops expressing who you are and starts representing other people’s limits.
Listening isn’t obeying
I don’t think every comment about clothes is harmful. An opinion can genuinely help when it’s offered with respect — that a fabric goes transparent in certain light, that a seam has come open, that something might not work for a particular occasion. Sometimes we ask, because we trust someone’s eye.
The difference is in how it’s said, and what authority we hand it.
A respectful observation gives you information without humiliation, and leaves the decision with you. It doesn’t turn one person’s taste into a fact about your body.
Listening isn’t obeying. You can hear something out and still reach a different conclusion.
The final questions belong to you: Am I comfortable? Do I like it? Can I move? Does it work for what I’m about to do? Would I wear this if nobody had said anything?
These days, when someone tells me a garment isn’t right for me, the first thing I check is how I feel in it. I’ll listen. I won’t stop wearing something on the strength of one sentence. I want to know whether there’s a practical reason I’ve missed, or whether I’m simply hearing somebody’s preference.
The power we hand over without noticing
What bothers me about those trousers isn’t only that I stopped wearing them.
It’s how quickly I accepted that another person could see me more accurately than I could see myself. I let one opinion overwrite an image that had made me feel beautiful.
I don’t say that to blame myself. We’re all susceptible, especially when the comment comes from someone who matters to us. Sometimes you’re trying to avoid future criticism. Sometimes you’re afraid everyone is thinking it and only one person was blunt enough to say it out loud.
But an opinion doesn’t become true because it lands on an insecurity. It may tell you about the speaker’s taste, their upbringing, their prejudices — and nothing definitive about you at all.
That’s why certain things stay at the back of a wardrobe for years. Not because we stopped liking them, but because they got attached to a sentence. Reach for them, and the voice comes too.
An opinion doesn’t become true because it lands on an insecurity.
Give it another chance
If you stopped wearing something you loved because of a comment, put it on again.
Not to force yourself to reclaim it — just to give yourself another chance to decide.
Maybe you’ll find you still love it. Maybe you’ll realise it isn’t your style any more. Both are fine. What matters is separating the garment from the opinion someone stapled to it.
Stand in front of the mirror and ask what you saw before anyone spoke. Did you feel beautiful? Comfortable? Pleased? That first look deserves a hearing too.
We can’t stop other people having opinions. We can decide how much room those opinions get in our wardrobes and in our heads.
I don’t have those trousers any more, so I can’t try them on again.
But I kept what I understood afterwards: the next time something makes me feel beautiful, I’m not giving up my own eyes just because somebody else chose to look differently.
Laura Vanessa Medina is a Colombian writer covering fashion, food and the women history forgot.
