Tiny pantsuits, what’s that about? Well. I would love to tell you.
My family is from Punjab, a glorious province in South Asia that was straight up slashed in half by the Brits in 1947. Really not great, Britain, but I digress.
Anyway, in the 90s, Pakistan had the brilliant and beautiful Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the first female head of state of a majority Muslim country. The Asian subcontinent was pretty thrilled about it. And as inevitably happens to any woman in the public eye, her fashion choices were always scrutinized. But again, she was gorgeous, so she could pull off anything. If Benazir wore a chartreuse kameez to a trade summit, within ten days, the bazaars would be flooded with all things chartreuse, how even dare you look for something else. It was the kind of trendsetting power you couldn’t ignore, couldn’t avoid. Like Taylor Swift right now.
Fast forward to our new life in America–we moved to Brooklyn, New York–where my mom naturally wanted her seven-year old daughter to blend in. Unfortunately, the head of state was a man and what did men know about style, right? (This is before society allowed men to care about their appearance, way before “metrosexual” was even a thing).
My mother then thought about Hillary Rodham Clinton, and it clicked: obviously the fashion cues would come from the nation’s First Lady. So, in a bid to keep me stylishly relevant, my talented seamstress mother crafted me an entire wardrobe of 10 tiny pantsuits.
Guys, I wore those pantsuits every single day for six months.
Six. Freaking. Months.
It wasn’t until a classmate’s birthday party at a local McDonald’s did my mother realize how out of place I was and thus my sartorial adventure came to an end.
But the memory of those months when I looked like I was cosplaying someone’s matronly aunt on her way to Easter Mass still makes me laugh.
It’s a reminder of how we’re all navigating uncharted territory (#unprecedentedtimes) and doing our best, whether you’re an immigrant mom anxious about her daughter fitting in or just a millennial trying to figure life out. Gotta find humor in the chaos.
And if there’s any theme to this blog, that’s probably it. Hopefully it makes you laugh and your day is a little brighter. You might even learn something, but that’s not my fault.
Thank you for stopping by, glad you could stay a while,
xo, Saana
Thank you for this belly laugh, Saana!