It is winter.
(If you haven’t noticed already)
And while I adore winter for the boot-wearing-coat-donning-scarves-oh-the-wonderful-scarves-ness, there is something about winter that troubles me deeply.
Tights.
Stockings.
Whatever you want to call them, they are the bane of my existence when it comes to those cooler months.
Why is that? (I hear you ask via the internets)
Because I am unfortunately not one of those privileged individuals blessed with a skin tone that can even remotely be deemed a ‘shade.’
Nope, I am pale.
Translucent even.
Irish in heritage, meaning, I do not tan.
At all.
Instead, after basking in the sun I turn a brilliant red, then peel, then turn completely white… again (but with freckles and a telling off from my mum about the dangers of sunburn)
And before you suggest it, fake tan is a total joke for my skin tone and leaves me the colour of a banana.
Make up companies (bless their hearts) helpfully refer to complexions such as mine as ‘ivory’ or ‘porcelain’ which sort of makes me feel better about the whole thing but the reality is this.
Being super pale in winter is less than average.
This is because it makes finding tights virtually impossible.
The thing is, for work I like to wear dresses.
This is partly because I think dresses are fun and feminine but also because if I wear a dress it is an entire outfit in one single item. This means I literally have one item of clothing to wash for that entire day, and if I am a clever girl (which I usually am) I wear dresses made of fabrics that require little to no ironing so voila! Not spending my entire weekend washing my clothes for work.
Now dresses are completely fine in summer – it is warmer then!
But in winter, to wear a dress, you must also wear tights.
The issue is that I believe it is an absolute heresy to wear black tights with light coloured dresses or black tights with coloured shoes.
This might be because in the early 2000s everyone wore black pants with those bright coloured singlets with the lace at the bottom from Jay Jays and I have never fully recovered from how much they seem to make you look like a Power Puff Girl with that black colour black combo.
My problem is that my choice of dresses is hugely limited in winter because there are a number of my dresses that I cannot wear with black tights.
‘It’s okay.’ I tell myself, hopping into my car and driving to farmers, ‘I’ll just go get some flesh coloured tights.’
*Shopping montage of me, strolling through the hosiery department of Farmers looking at all natures of flesh coloured tights and realizing that in light of all I have seen, I am actually not flesh coloured at all*
The issue is that they don’t make flesh coloured tights for people as translucent as me.
Too yellow…
Too tanned…
…or worse! Too sheer so that when you stand in the light your whole legs light up in one kind of reflective shine and you have to tell people that, no, you’re not a member of Edward Cullen’s family and therefore not a vampire who glitters in the sunlight.
I remember one time I brought a pair of skin coloured tights for a particular dress I had – it was a lilac and amazing!
After donning my dress I scooted out the door to whatever party I was going to, only to catch sight of myself in a mirror later and feeling hugely self conscious because the lower half of my body was a completely different colour to the upper half.
Even though they probably didn’t, I still felt like people had been staring at my legs all night thinking, ‘in your dreams, pasty.’
Look, I’ll say this, when Napoleon Perdis discontinued my shade of China Doll I was heartbroken, but I managed to find refuge in another brand.
The thing about tights, however, is that there is literally nothing I can do about the lack of hosiery for super pale people like myself.
So I guess I’ll keep wearing my limited dresses with my black tights, until Summer comes around again…
… or just tell people I’m a sparkly vampire?
brighteyesbigworld 