Embracing the Midlife Crisis Crop Top
The Style Questionnaire with Virginia Sole-Smith
I am so excited to share with you ’s style questionnaire!
You probably already know Virginia from The Burnt Toast Podcast and (subscribe here for 20% off). Virginia, 43, is also the author of Fat Talk and The Eating Instinct. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her two kids, two kittens, two geckos, one dog, and aspirational gardens. In addition to writing and podcasting, Virginia has a great sense of style. I admire her bold glasses and the bright colors and patterns she wears.
Below you’ll find Virginia answering the usual Big Undies Style Questionnaire questions, telling us all about the coat she left on Metro North, how motherhood changed her sense of style, and why she wears big sunglasses.
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What are you wearing right now?
These linen pull-on pants from Anthropologie (up to 3x), though in a khaki color not pictured because I rented them from Nuuly; a black tank top from Target, and the gold necklace I wear every day. All of which is VERY NEUTRAL and you know I love my pops of color, so if I go out, I’ll add either green Birks or hot pink Tevas, plus the Baggu crescent bag you influenced me to buy and I now cannot live without (and might need in more colors?!)
Oh and I’m also wearing this Evelyn & Bobbie bra and I finally sized up enough (2X) that the band is not rolling up anymore!! It’s the only wire-free bra that truly gives you underwire-level shape.
What was the last item of clothing you bought?
The Charlotte Stone Conway sneakers in Nassau which is a pink/blue/purple rainbow situation. I’m on a forever hunt for a sneaker that is cute AND comfy and these truly might be it??? Size up if you’re a half size and I might upgrade the insoles with something more orthotic because see above re: I am 43. But even right out of the box, these were great.
If you had to wear a uniform (same thing every day) what would it be?
At the moment, the outfit I just described IS my summer uniform. I have a bunch of linen shorts and pants, several light button-downs and I just mix and match them all over our favorite sports bra or basic white or black tank tops. I’ve realized that it tremendously reduces my anxiety and mental load to hit on a formula like this every season, especially since most days I don’t do much beyond work from home and drive kids places. I do also crave novelty though, so I like reinventing the uniform every season. And having a few dresses and jumpsuits on hand lets me mix it up when I leave the house for an actual reason.
I am especially proud that this season’s uniform involves that Target sports bra we can’t stop talking about. Both because it’s so comfy and cute (and now comes in red, ack!) and because it is, in fact, almost a crop top?! I mean, it basically becomes a full crop top when I sit down. A few years ago me would have never, even when I wore straight sizes—I spent years dressing to disguise my belly. But I finally realized that all the standard thin-centric fashion advice for this (baggy tops, flowy dresses, layers) just results in my being mistaken for pregnant. Which is not an insult, but I’m not pregnant, I’m fat! More to the point, I don’t want to discuss my reproductive status with strangers. But if that’s my lot in life, why the fuck have I been so diligently hiding a part of my body that everybody seems committed to noticing anyway?
So I’ve been revealing a few inches of midsection this summer, much to the mortification of my tween who calls the Target tops my “midlife crisis crop tops.” Yes, I have promised to wear crop tops every day to middle school pickup; if her greatest trauma is a fat mom who isn’t hiding her body, I love that for her. You don’t owe the world your body but deciding it’s okay to show the parts you learned to hide feels good AF.
Where did you get clothes as a kid? Describe a favorite childhood outfit.
Oh I was a MALL CHILD for sure. My mom and I would go to the Crystal Mall in Waterford, Connecticut allll the time. We also loved outlet shopping once that became a thing. As a tween and teen I lived for The Gap, Limited Too and J. Crew (which felt like the fanciest store then?) plus the TJ Maxx racks. Followed by a Mrs Fields cookie. Heavy early style influences were Claudia Kishi from The Baby Sitters Club and Punky Brewster. I was deeply into accessorizing, so there are a lot of stories of me sneaking tons of extra necklaces (and one year a pumpkin sticker?) to school on Picture Day to spice up whatever dress my mom had picked out for me to wear.
I also adored color coordinating; I remember having this teal t-shirt and pants set when I was in 4th grade that was honestly my whole personality. The pants were a little baggy but tapered at the ankle (think early Eileen Fisher lantern pants) and I would tuck in the top and tie a very colorful scarf around my waist, plus earrings and a chunky necklace. I looked like a 9-year-old Designing Women cast member. The whole outfit is definitely a prototype of how I dress today, and mostly what I think about is how fully I dressed FOR MYSELF back then. I lost touch with that during my teens and 20s and really didn’t start to rediscover the absolute joy of dressing just for yourself until pretty recently.
Tell me about an item of clothing that you wear only to do a specific activity.
I do sometimes wear my denim shortalls (similar here to 22 and here to 4x) out and about in the world, but they are MOSTLY for gardening at this point. I wear them with my Bogs boots even in summer because my garden is often very very muddy and always hilly and you need decent ankle support and my gardening apron. I love having a lot of pockets for my tools and phone when I’m out in the garden—which is not the same as saying I no longer lose my tools and phone in the garden, because I absolutely do. But it’s nice to feel like there is a possibility of another way. I feel like a charming garden gnome in this outfit and I’m absolutely at my happiest when I’m losing hours out there, weeding and puttering and trying not to throw out my lower back again. (Make no mistake, middle-aged gardening is a death sport; this bench/kneeler combo is saving me this summer.)
What did you wear to the last party or event you attended?
For a friend’s birthday dinner earlier this summer, I wore a neon coral Wray dress I got on SellTradePlus, plus my Nisolo flatform sandals and I felt like the epitome of frump fashion. The dress is giant and so bright you could see me from space. It’s the kind of thing I don’t wear if I’m thinking about attracting the male gaze because it doesn’t show off my body, does make me look bigger, etc, etc. And for so much of my life that meant I didn’t wear things like that. Now post-divorce, I very often do, and it’s so fun and freeing to dress for myself (and also for my friends who will always appreciate a giant dress moment). We went out for tacos in my Subaru and it was such a great night.
This also means when I do decide to dress for the male gaze, I’m both much more conscious of that decision and much more relaxed about it. Looking “sexy” feels like a costume I can put on; it’s a recipe I can execute, but it’s no longer a standard I’m trying to achieve 24/7. And it definitely does not require me to manipulate my body or overly sacrifice comfort to achieve. To paraphrase voice of our generation Meredith Brooks, I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a garden gnome, I’m your fun mom friend in a giant dress.
What do you wish you had in your wardrobe that you don’t?
Ugh, we’re getting to fall which means I’ll have to evaluate what I’m feeling about jeans this year. It’s an annual torture. As you know, I’ve done a lot of personal growth about skinny jeans and am embracing wide-leg pants now but… SOCKS AND SHOES! CORINNE, WHAT WILL WE DO ABOUT THE SOCKS AND SHOES?????? I need to go study your sock newsletter again and figure out what to order.
I’m also on the hunt for very good cozy lounge-y clothes. I have this vision of a cashmere wrap or robe (maybe this or this). I think I want to imagine my homebody self is much more glam than she actually is? I similarly consider buying these cashmere joggers every fall and haven’t yet but… maybe this is my year!
Tell me about an experience that changed your relationship to clothing or getting dressed.
For me, motherhood coincided with a lot of body changes. I had two babies in four years and transitioned from straight to plus sizes. So the upshot was—I spent about 6-8 years feeling pretty stuck around clothes. I hadn’t figured out plus size shopping (who among us has), I hadn’t gotten comfortable wearing the bright colors and silhouettes that really feel like ME in my bigger body. I was definitely dressing to obfuscate and disguise, rather than just letting myself take up space. So I just sort of lived in t-shirts from the Gap and felt like I’d lost touch with style.
Working with
was the first piece of my breaking through a lot of that. She helped me start to articulate my personal style, to realize just how much I do love and crave color, and reconnect to the fun of clothes. Changing up where I look for fashion inspiration also helped so much. I was, without even realizing it, pretty exclusively taking shopping recs from thin, white, straight influencers who were all steering us towards a minimalist, neutral aesthetic that isn’t actually me. You’ve introduced me to so many fat/queer/POC folks with incredible style and it’s been low-key very radical for me.I still get a lot of anxiety making wardrobe decisions—this is THE place my body stuff still shows up—but more firmly rejecting a lot of norms and expectations around trying to be a hot mom or a mom who got her body back (vomit) and embracing different aesthetics has helped so much.
Describe a favorite article of clothing from a work of fiction.
IMO, the greatest fashion movie of forever is Two For The Road starring Audrey Hepburn and about 46 pairs of giant sunglasses. I am sure Albert Finney’s character did not age well; I have complicated feelings about Audrey as a celebrity who upheld and reinforced the thin ideal AND YET! I would wear every outfit in this movie. The whole aesthetic is so 60s and mod/preppy and fun. But the sunglasses were a key formative text. I first watched it in high school and have never worn normal-sized sunglasses since.
Tell me about an accessory or piece of clothing that you lost or ruined but still think about.
Oh my God, in 2007 I bought the most amazing hot pink wool coat from an alpaca farm in Peru. A 100 percent irreplaceable item. And then I left it on Metro-North. The really depressing part of the story is this was like the 3rd coat I lost on Metro-North? I went through this weird phase in my 20s of putting them up on the overhead rack and then walking off the train without them. So I’m very familiar with the Lost & Found room at Grand Central and SOMETIMES the coats came back, but this one was too gorgeous. It wouldn’t fit on even half my body now but I still get a craving for it every winter.
Who do you think has good style?
You!! And
ofc. Also: (leading frump fashion scholar), , Marielle Elizabeth, Joanna Hardcastle, my artist friend Kelly Carambula, Angela Garbes, and always, always .
Anything else you want to tell us about getting dressed?
It took me way too long to realize this but: If it’s not comfortable, don’t keep it. This applies especially to shoes; I’m still recovering from the trauma I inflicted on my feet as a women’s magazine editor in the early 2000s. But this rule also applies to every slightly too tight waistband, too rigid sleeve, button-down shirt that gaps if you forget to stand perfectly… there are about a thousand ways we’ve been conditioned to think we should sacrifice our body’s comfort to make clothes work and all of them are lies.
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I’d love to know what you thought about this style questionnaire in the comments!
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Virginia I love your style and you have influenced me to buy the linen short sets at Target AND my friend is wearing them in Hawaii right now while on her birthday week trip! We are going to the beach for LDW and I bought my first bikini since having my oldest 7 years ago and my 7 yo just said, “Oh I like it, I can see your belly!” I have been buying a lot more bright colors this year too, I really like neon. I’m reading Emma Straub right now and I didn’t know she had a substack so thanks for that recommendation too, I love the style of every person mentioned here. Thank both of you for recommending Housemates, it is one of my favorite books!
This was really really fun to read on a bright, clear Wednesday morning!! I’m intrigued by that bra; it looks lovely. And the Charlotte Stone shoes are so cute. And all hail Claudia Kishi!!! And that Wray dress is the epitome of marvelous.
I have a question about deciding to spend money and time on fashion, or about how to understand my resistance to it. This may actually be a journal entry; apologies and thank you in advance. I was thinking about my kid-era clothes. Growing up in rural Maine with not much extra money, and with a hippie mom who hated stores (who among us loved Zayres?), but who was a skilled and striving maven of values- and budget- and pleasure- and anxiety-driven thrifting, it’s like I developed both an allergy to retail shopping and a lifelong exhaustion w thrifting. I also feel uncomfortable with receiving attention outside of clearly boundaried performance circumstances, and fashion equals attention from oneself and others of some quantity and nature. So now, at 48, comfortably who I am, I see you, Corinne, open all these doors of amazing, creative, many-bodied fashion, and it’s so joyful and beautiful, I kind of want in. Yet the LABOR of fashion scares me. All the meanings of labor. The choosing, the ordering, the sending back, the fitting, the pairing, the maintenance, the hours of thrifting online or off to find things that work. All the money, so much money, for quality things made in safer conditions for decent(er) wages, or the money to pay for help. All the feelings, the constant falling short because things get dirty and the shoes aren’t right or the dog tears the coat jumping up in excitement for a walk or one’s eye beholding beauty turns fickle and cruel or a hundred other practical and creative things need the money and then oh lord I can’t even talk about accessories. All that said, in June I got a beautiful summer dress from SellTradePlus, and I love it. I love wearing it and I love being seen as the glorious elegant rough-around-the-edges frump queen I am in it. So… I may never give fashion (or home design, let’s be honest) the attention and effort and lightness that make it shine. It might not be my thing to figure out just yet. But maybe these joyful moments—the summer dress, the Big Undies newsletter, seeing other people like flowers in bloom, my mom’s exquisitely personal style—are enough labor and time for now. A fine place to be. Maybe I’ll make a little pocket of savings for one wonderful thing this fall. Maybe those Charlotte Stone shoes.