This year has been one of doing whatever needs to be done to feel mentally and physically well, and for many of us, has featured more pairs of leggings than the average year. Whilst this article will not attempt to dissuade you from leggings (I am, in fact, decidedly pro-legging), I want to make a case for why getting dressed each day can be a miracle for your overall well being.
I have come to realise over the past ten months, through both conversations with friends and personal experience, that the things we do every day during Covid-19 restrictions, whether that is cooking meals, going for walks, or getting dressed, are simple acts which can make a monumental difference to our mental health. They are the best weapons in our arsenal against the painful effects of this pandemic and are the foundations of us forging a routine.
Clothing is, in some respects, a performance of ourselves for the outside world. In her seminal text on gender, Judith Butler argues that whilst gender runs far deeper than clothing, it can be an important way to assert and affirm our identity. This assertion is done, according to Butler, via ‘repetition’ of the self; what we do every day makes up who we are, and how we feel about ourselves.
This affirmation from clothing extends beyond gender, too – to our interests, to how we wish to be seen and to who we wish to see ourselves as. There is no getting away from the fact that being seen is a part of getting dressed – but it need not be the only part. Reclaiming this act, something we do each day, as something we do for ourselves, can be liberating.
Various influencers and social media accounts have preached the benefits of getting dressed in lockdown. Whilst these are sometimes luring ad campaigns to keep the monolith of fast fashion alive, others are speaking up about how getting dressed makes them feel more secure in their gender identity, in themselves as people, and can make them feel more motivated to do work and self-care.
Book blogger Leena Norms committed herself to getting dressed and ‘doing the most’ every day for a week in an evocatively (and relatably) entitled YouTube video: ‘I dressed fancy every day to awaken my dead soul’. In the video Leena fights the urge to dress entirely for comfort and instead asserts her identity in colourful, textured clothing with bright makeup and styled hair, wearing what felt right for her mood every day for a week.
What Leena’s video gave me was a sense of solidarity. Clothes do not make a person who they are, but the act of getting dressed, even if the outfit feels totally indulgent for our stay at home lives, can make us feel so much more present within our body.
This article is not poised to force skinny-jean-wearing on anyone, as that is a step beyond sensible behaviour, in my opinion. It is, though, suggesting that there may be more to what we wear than simply the ritualistic avoidance of nudity. Clothes can be fun, they can be comforting, they can make us feel more present in our bodies and in our identities.
The experience of getting up every morning, making yourself breakfast, and thinking about who you want to be that day, is something we all subconsciously do. Selves and identities are formed by ‘repetition’; the self is not static and can change at any time.
With many of us experiencing changes within our bodies due to lockdown, it can be wonderfully liberating to put on an outfit which feels comfortable. It asserts our own sense of who we are, regardless of any changes within our body.
I realised early in 2020 that whilst I spent many weeks of the lockdown living alone, it was an incredible opportunity to observe my sense of style and self-expression, without anyone to influence my decisions. Whilst we are so much more than the clothing we wear, it can affirm to ourselves who we are, how we wish to express our creativity, our gender, our self.
So, whilst we may still be in lockdown for a while to come, this need not mean that we do not get to feel like ourselves, to feel present in our body and identity. Rather, each morning we can get up and dress in whatever feels right. Whether that is in full glam or joggers, we get to decide actively what we want to wear that day. Living in a reality which seems all but real can leave us feeling all but real too. Selecting an outfit, deciding what self we wish to present as today, is an indispensable daily opportunity to drastically improve how present and real we feel.
