The Ageless Style Link Up- The first Monday of every month a group of over forty fashion bloggers pick a monthly theme and show different ways of styling it.
Happy Labor Day! How fun that this month's Ageless Style Link Up falls on a holiday. As you read this post, I'm off enjoying time with my grand babies, so I had to pre-schedule this post. If you don't see the link up at the bottom of the post, it's because I was unable to load the code before I left, but no worries, just click on one of the other ladie's blogs and you will be able to link up there.
This month's theme was picked by Jeannie. She said she had a reader's request for how to dress for your body type. I must admit I wasn't thrilled with this challenge, because as over-40 women I would rather focus on everything that is RIGHT about our bodies, rather than what is wrong with them. However, I do agree that body type, not age, should guide how we dress.
So before we begin discussing what's wrong with my body type, I want to share a few positive things about my body.
- 1. I'm HEALTHY! Yes, can I get an Amen! First and foremost having a strong, healthy body is something to be grateful for. I have been chronically ill in my lifetime, so I know from experience that if "you have your health, you have everything". Nothing influences your life more than bad health. It's hard to get out, it's hard to work, it's hard to just have a normal day free without pain. At 57 years of age, I surprise all my doctors when I say I am taking no prescribed medications. They always tell me how rare that is.
- 2. I'm somewhat NATURALLY THIN. I emphasize the word "somewhat". I can't eat whatever I want without gaining weight. My weight constantly fluctuates between the same 20-30 pounds. I have to really work at being my lowest weight, the weight where I feel I look my best. Yet, even if I ate all I wanted to and never exercised, I still have never been considered clinically overweight in my life. So I'm thankful I haven't had a lot of the really painful struggles over my weight a lot of people have to endure. I know it's so hard to constantly watch everything you eat, to deny, deny, deny, exercise for hours, and then get on the scale only to have gained two pounds. It's very frustrating.
- 3. I have LONG, LEAN LEGS.
- 4. I have GREAT SKIN
- 5. Because my nail bed is long, no matter how short my fingernails are cut, when I paint my nails it always looks like I have nice, LONG NAILS.
So now that I've described the positive things about my body to keep things in their proper perspective, I can now focus on how to accentuate those positive aspects and play down the more negative ones. The first thing I had to do was determine my body shape. Although I see myself having aspects of several different body types, I think I mostly have the Apple Shaped Body: Bigger on top, smaller on the bottom. My legs and forearms are very thin. All my weight wants to congregate in the bust, chest, neck, and stomach.
Here's an example of an apple shape body type. I feel the pictures closely represent me, although my shoulders, forearms, and thighs are thinner than pictures. The mid-section is quite accurate to my body type.
There are so many different body shapes for women, all are beautiful and all come with their own unique assets and challenges. I'm not going to go into addressing all of them because you can google them for yourselves, or you can check out the other Ageless Style Bloggers because we all have very different body types. I will therefore spend the rest of this post explaining how I dress for my Apple Shape body.
Other aspects of the top that flatter my figure are the off-the-shoulder style and the elastic sleeve. The off-the-shoulder style shows the thinnest part of my upper body, my shoulders, and covers up my heaviest part: the upper arm and bust. The sleeves emphasize the smallest part of arms, the forearms, while covering up the larger upper arms.
Now be sure to check out the other Ageless Style Bloggers to see how they dress for their body type. Maybe you will find someone who's body type is very similar to your own.
