What Not to Wear... but you wear it anyway.

I am a faithful viewer of TLC's "What Not to Wear". There's something very Cinderella-like about the transformation each fashion victim goes through that keeps me watching. Like catepillar to butterfly, these people enter the dreaded 360 degree mirror room with Clinton Kelly and Stacy London, subject themselves to the host's sometimes crass comments about their clothes, then take their $5000 and shop for a whole new wardrobe and emerge at the end a whole new person. A casual viewer might see this as an indulgent shopping spree. I don't see it that way. I see it as a healthier alternative to plastic surgery or expensive visits to your psychiatrist. Who needs therapy when you can buy $200 slingbacks and a coordinating purse?

While watching the beginning of each new episode I beg the Hubby to nominate me for this show . I'm a perfect candidate: A New Mom with a stockpile of t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers and the fashion sense of a three year old. But once we get to the part when Stacy and Clinton start throwing away each hapless participant's hard-earned (though, poorly thought out) clothing choices I start to break out in a cold sweat. If WNTW's minions were to come to my home they would find my huge collection of Life Is Good t-shirts (which I only wear to work - Really!), my piles of jeans (most of which don't fit me anymore), and my stack of baseball caps that I wear on a far-too-regular basis. Sure I have a few gems in my closet, but I also have a handful of cashmere sweaters, a few pairs of really cute heels, and other well-chosen items that I don't get the opportunity to wear too often.

Why? Because I'm a Mom. And I wear clothes for style and for comfort.

*Gasp!*

Now, before I'm misunderstood, I'm not hiding behind my baby. I know I deserve to wear beautiful things and I do when the occasion warrants. Its just damn hard to run after a fast-moving crawler who is about to scale a bookcase while you're wearing kitten heels. Bangle bracelets would become toys to soothe the angry beast when a naptime is missed. Cashmere would immediately have strained peas flung across the chest. And dressing in fashionable layers becomes ridiculous when you have to nurse in a hurry. Not to mention the fact that when you have barely a half an hour to yourself to shower and get ready you don't want to spend it matching your belt to your shoes.

Just show me what's clean and what fits and there's a good chance I'll wear it. Even if it is so 2004.

Some of the outfits that Stacy and Clinton come up with for their fashionably challenged charges are just too impractical for the average mother with a young child. Sure it looks great, but how many of those women actually wear the crocodile pumps with the flow-y skirt, camisole and shrug to the supermarket? I'm thinking, um, not too many. But we want to believe, don't we? We want to think there are women out there that wear these outfits on a regular basis. We want to think that it is, in fact, that easy. And that belief is what puts pressure on women like me.

When Chicky Baby was around 5 months old I started attending a New Mothers Group and, starting then, at least once a week I put on the clothes in my closet that I was dying to wear but had no other reason to. For a few weeks I showed up in clean, somewhat pressed clothing, comfortable but stylish flats, and I actually took time to blow-dry my hair. At the time I had no idea who I was trying to impress. It didn't take me too long, however, to figure out that I wasn't trying to impress anyone with how hip and cool I was... I was trying to fool everyone into thinking that I had it all together. I wanted those other women to think that I could not only take care of an infant, but that I did it with ease. They didn't need to know that I was piling on the under-eye cream and the concealer to hide the dark circles and that, on most days, I never got out of my pajamas. I didn't want anyone to know how hard I was finding this new role as Mama. As time went on it became painfully apparent that we were all doing the same thing. The more we talked each week about our struggles with our babies, the less we dressed up for each other. There were those few women who held on to their designer duds, but most were happy enough to say to the world "Yeah, I might be wearing a hoodie with baby spit-up on it, but my diaper back is tres chic and my kid is in clean clothes and that's enough for me."

I'm not going to give up on looking good. I genuinely want to look beautiful for the Hubby and someday, when she's older, for Chicky Baby. Very little would make me happier about myself than my daughter describing me as a "cool Mom". But if I'm not hip all the time, we'll all have to get over it. I don't plan on ever becoming the mom in the applique sweatshirt, but I'm not going to be the mom who wears cute, summery dresses to the soccer field.

If you are one of those women who can go to Target and throw together an outfit that makes you look like you just stepped out of the pages of Vogue - I applaud you. I really, really do. I'm very jealous. For some women it is that easy. But for the other ones (and you know who you are) I'm not buying it for a second. I know you have some skeletons, or sweatpants, in you closet.