Flamboyant Gamine | Style Syntax

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April 20, 2020

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 11 Comments

Kibbe Style Icon: Audrey Hepburn, the Misunderstood Flamboyant Gamine

We all know that Audrey Hepburn is one of the major style icons of the 20th century, and she also happens to be a Flamboyant Gamine. Her style is often talked about as if it is exceptional for FG, but really, it’s only exceptional in that she was so exceptional–it fits perfectly within an FG context.

I think this is due to the fact that Audrey dressed so well for her Image ID that she was able to make items with a lot of design elements, or adding these herself, look classic, chic, and sophisticated. I will often see guides to “dressing like Audrey,” but they generally miss the mark. They tend to feature very plain clothes, the kind of things relegated to the “basics” category, and claim that this is how you achieve an Audrey look.

If you actually look at how she dressed, however, it’s clear that even when she wore similar items to those on the lists, she did something to them to add more interest, what we might call “breaking the line” in Gamineland. Yes, she wore a plain white shirt, but she added a knot. She always added flourishes that provided what we need for our yin.

Source

I think this is a mistake that a lot of people who have more of a classic sensibility make when they come to FG. They figure that can follow Audrey’s example, and that she is kind of an exception, but she really isn’t. She embodied what it means to be a Flamboyant Gamine because she always knew what an outfit needed to take it from something anyone would wear to the level of design a Flamboyant Gamine requires.

So don’t think of Audrey as some kind of model for the way to do FG that “isn’t like the rest.” By studying Audrey, any FG can learn how to create that special quality unique to us.

November 4, 2019

Flamboyant Gamine, My Kibbe Journey | 13 Comments

“Curvy” Flamboyant Gamine: 2019

Five years ago, I wrote a post about the conclusions I had come to about how I was a Flamboyant Gamine.

Of course, this being so long ago, I didn’t really understand a lot of David’s system. I somehow understood intrinsically that I was a Flamboyant Gamine, but I didn’t really understand what my body was showing me. Reading that post, I have no idea why I didn’t think I was a Soft Gamine except for pure instinct, and that I knew that attempting to dress taking into account what I saw as my “curves” was a disaster.

I’m always learning new things from David, and one of the things he has said recently is that Women start with a baseline of curves. Men have a baseline of length and width. Having measurements that indicate a bust, waist, and hips are not enough to add yin. The most yang women can have a body shape that would be considered “hourglass” if you put it into a calculator.

What matters it how clothing falls around the body. On a Dramatic woman, they have their long vertical:
.

(And no, I am not suggesting people try clothing on to see! David has an exercise to figure this out on Strictly Kibbe.)

For me, as an FG, it is a mixture of long and short:

For an R, their curves need to be accommodated:

Having a bust, waist, and hips does not mean that you have to accommodate curves. It may sound funny, but I dress to accommodate my lack of curves, width, and balance. I am not a unicorn among FGs, because what I have is a baseline of curves, and not curves that need to be considered. I simply have a juxtaposed mix of yin and yang, and yang wins out.

October 22, 2019

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, Soft Gamine | 83 Comments

Why Taylor Swift is NOT a Gamine

Of course, I think most readers of this blog wouldn’t even consider the possibility.

She is 5’10”, and we know that this height rules out either Gamine. Per my recent post, however, this is something that Merriam Style teachers in her Taylor Swift video, where she tries to make the case the 5’10” Taylor is a Gamine—and you can read my Kibbe FAQ to find out why this is nonsensical. Someone who is that tall is yang-dominant, not juxtaposition of yin and yang. (When I look at Taylor, I see length all over. Even if I didn’t know she was 5’10”, I don’t think my mind would go to Gamine anyway.)

Now, David doesn’t make a ton of very clear statements. But this is one thing he has been extremely clear about. Soft Gamine will not be over 5’5″, and Flamboyant Gamine can be a little taller, but not Taylor Swift tall, and if you understand his system of yin and yang, this makes total sense.

Unfortunately, every Kibbe Image ID seems to be subject to certain incorrect ideas about it. As a Flamboyant Gamine myself, the ones for Gamines are the ones that I feel most acutely. For us Gamines, one of these ideas that seems to pop up frequently in various ways is the idea that Gamines are somehow not distinct Image IDs that stand on their own with their own very particular yin/yang balances.

Traditionally, this has taken the form of the idea of Flamboyant Gamine being a “small D” or a “small FN,” which I have addressed before. But as I watched some Merriam Style videos after writing my last post, however, I realized that she has come up with an entirely new way of turning Gamines into Image IDs that are somehow lesser and not distinct yin/yang balances like the rest.

In this video (starts at around 1:55), she says that Gamines are basically “everything else”–a mixture that doesn’t fall into any category. If you feel like you don’t fit anywhere else, she explains, you may be a Gamine. She says they are very common (not true) and misunderstood (true, but not in the way she thinks, because she has misunderstood them).

In her answer in this video at around 9:08, however, it becomes clear why she believes that someone who is tall can be Gamine: she says she is a 5’7” Soft Gamine herself and her own confusion is partially why she made her channel in the first place. Yet as I mentioned above, David has been very clear about height for Soft Gamine. SG is nearly half yang, and if they are taller than 5’5”, that is too much yang for the “recipe” to be Soft Gamine. Of course someone who very strongly identified with a certain Image ID that is not available to them would want to make the system into one that allowed them into the Image ID they wanted to be. It happens all the time. (This is also why the idea of very yang TRs persists.) Resistance is incredibly powerful. If you want to be a taller SG very badly, it would make sense that you would try to find a way to justify it and say that 5’10” Taylor or a 6′ woman could be Gamine.

But really, my motivation here is to stop these incorrect ideas about Gamines in Kibbe’s work. Gamines are not:

the Image ID of “leftovers”

tall enough to be automatically yang-dominant, for FG

over 5’5”, for SG.

I felt I had said what I needed to say on the subject of this YouTube channel in my last post, but the ideas being spread are so contradictory to what Gamines actually are. And as Gamines, we should be given the space to revel in what makes our Image IDs special, and given the chance to understand our special star quality. The constant undermining of the validity of FG and SG as Image IDs makes that hard for Gamines who do not know any better, and leads people who aren’t Gamines to think that they are and thus miss out on their own special qualities.

For months, I have been thinking about how to express the way I actually use Kibbe’s work in my life, because I say a lot about how it’s used incorrectly, but it is hard to explain how to actually use it correctly, since it is can be fairly abstract. I definitely understand that it can be hard to wrap your head around and it isn’t for everyone (which is why I have a post on which system is right for you), but I want people to understand when the system is being misrepresented to this extent. A 5’10” or 6′ woman would absolutely not be served by being told that she was any kind of Gamine. She would be served by an Image ID that celebrates what she is, and doesn’t put her into something that celebrates being shorter, among many other qualities.

And with that, I hope that my commentary/criticism is done. I realize that my past several posts have focused on this subject, and I hope to get back to more interesting content. But this blog has always been about what’s on my mind, and this is just what has been at the forefront of my style thoughts lately.

Edit: an earlier version of this post said that she thought Taylor was a Soft Gamine. She actually says she is a Gamine, which we know that David no longer uses. Style Syntax regrets the error, but the points made here still stand.

February 24, 2015

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, Soft Gamine | 17 Comments

Flamboyant Gamine “Curves”

This is basically more or less on the same subject as my last post, but I thought it was important to give it a separate post because of my other posts on the subject.

To recap, before, I thought that, if you were curvy, the difference between Flamboyant Gamine and Soft Gamine was in the face. I think you’ll still see a difference in the face, but there’s a difference in the body, too.

The SGs and the FGs have a much more similar shape than we usually think of them as having. The main difference seems to be that FG will have angles and an SG will have a curve.

Let’s look at Brigitte Bardot (SG) and Audrey Hepburn (FG). Brigitte’s measurements at one point in her career, according to this website, were 36-20-35. Audrey’s were 34-20-34. So relatively similar–Audrey is technically an hourglass, and Brigitte was a slightly top-heavy hourglass and just a little bit curvier by the numbers.

(Source)

Their shapes are incredibly similar… yet it’s clearly evident that the extra Romantic in SG has given a little bit of a curvy shape, and the extra Dramatic in FG has resulted in a shape composed entirely of angles.

SG’s curve is not as dramatically curved as a Romantic’s, such as Elizabeth Taylor (36-21-36, so not too far off from our G women above). But you can still see the curve vs. angularity in FG.

(Source)

So what makes a “curvy” FG instead of a Soft Gamine? Angles instead of curves. I think you’d still be able to tell from the face, but it may be easier to see in body shape.

February 23, 2015

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, My Kibbe Journey, Personal, Soft Natural | 8 Comments

Why I’m Not a Soft Natural

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I don’t like body-type recommendations very much. I much prefer Kibbe’s emphasis on creating harmony within yourself, and not trying to conform to classical rules of beauty and symmetry. That being said, there is obviously a body-type component to Kibbe. You wouldn’t have an apple-shaped Theatrical Romantic, for instance. But recommendations for my type (hourglass–my shoulders and hips are even, and I have a small waist) conflict with FG, and FG works, so that was enough for me to dismiss body-type recommendations as nonsense meant to achieve something that isn’t possible.

While I’m still not their biggest fan, I am now realizing that there is a way they could work for me. Yesterday, one of the members of our Facebook style community began a project mapping Kibbe Image Identities to Imogen Lamport’s body types. Now, of course I went in with my usual suspicion of body-type dressing, especially since I know that my body doesn’t fit the Flamboyant Gamine recommendations very well. I consider myself to have X with a secondary H. The more weight I gain, the squarer my shape gets, my hips especially. This person sees X-H as a Soft Natural shape. I do, too. I see similar shapes to my own when I see Soft Naturals, and I’ve never understood why Soft Natural is just so awful on me. If you read the description of a Soft Natural body, it sounds like me, weight gain patterns and all.

But I think there are words in Kibbe that are loaded. These words are loaded because he seems to use them in a different way than people who aren’t Kibbe. One of these is “curvy.” I think that in Kibbe, “curvy” means a curved line, not just 36-24-36. He describes Soft Naturals as, “slightly curvy, tends to an hourglass shape, but not extremely so.” We tend to think of how curvy someone is in measurements. But I think Kibbe is talking about the line we see. An SN can be mathematically curvier than a TR, especially when you consider that Naturals are often curvier from the side than the front. But the TR will have a curvier line to their bust, waists, and hips.

And this is exactly why Soft Natural doesn’t work for me. I don’t have a slight curve. I have what I described in this post: a very tapered ribcage on top of squarish hips the same width as my shoulders. My torso shape is composed entirely of angles and straight lines, no curve in sight.

Who else had this non-curvy hourglass body shape?

(Source)

Audrey. Hepburn.

This shows that even a wasp waist is possible in FG, provided that everything is composed out of angles and straight lines, no curves. While an I or a plain V might be more common in FG, I think that if you combine I or H with V, you get the FG version of “curves.” We can only highlight our waists in something that follows our shape exactly, whether it’s from structure or bodycon. We cannot softly emphasize, the way SNs do. A softly flowing curve makes no sense over dramatic angles. I also don’t like to cinch, but your mileage may vary. So this is why both Soft Natural and recommendations for X shapes did absolutely nothing for me. I am an inverted triangle and a rectangle masquerading as an hourglass.

I think that if you are searching for your Kibbe type, read what Kibbe says about bodies very carefully, since he often means something a little bit different than other people. If you have no curvy lines, you can’t be a curvy Kibbe type. You want to match what you’ve got. So even if you have something that may seem to kick you out of a type, like a wasp waist for FG, really look at what is creating these particular details. You may end up with something totally different from the obvious answer.

January 31, 2015

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 4 Comments

Shopping for Your Kibbe Type: Line or Vibe?

(Source

This is an issue that came up recently in the Flamboyant Gamine Facebook group. Flamboyant Gamine is often associated with the 60s Mod fashion, with generally features a lot of short shift dresses with A-line skirts. If you read the recommendations for Flamboyant Gamine and even Gamine, however, A-line skirts are seen as “too symmetrical” and get a “No” from Kibbe for both types.

Now, these do often work on FlamGam bodies, especially if the FlamGam in question is narrow-hipped, like Twiggy. This look is, in fact, so closely associated with FG that I think that people who would look good in actual FG recommendations might question themselves if they don’t look all that great in what Twiggy was wearing in the 60s. I would consider myself among this group of people–I looked great in it in high school, when I was very thin, not so much now.

This all comes back to the question of “vibe,” and how important it is. It also raises the idea of people making something a certain type, not the clothes themselves being a certain Image Identity, something that has gained a lot of traction in Kibbe circles recently.

I think this idea, more or less what Kibbe himself says now, but something that we can’t take to an extreme, comes from the fact that clothes now are constructed differently than they were in the 80s, when Kibbe wrote the book. Most things now come with stretch. If you take a bodycon-type dress and put it on a Romantic, you see sexy curves. If you put it on a Flamboyant Natural, you see their strength and power. If you put it on a Flamboyant Gamine, it looks fun. And so on. On the other hand, if you take something that is very specifically Soft Natural, like a jersey wrap dress (my clothing nemesis!), and put it on an FG, the dress won’t magically become or look FG. It will just look bad. So you have to be careful, I think, when you go outside the guidelines. It may work. It may not. If absolutely everything were simply to be shared across types and your body would just alter it, there would be no reason for Kibbe types at all, because we’d all just look fabulous in everything.

Some would say that a wrap dress has the wrong vibe, and that’s why it doesn’t work. It probably doesn’t. It is my opinion, however, that if we spend too much time looking for vibe, we end up with something akin to Dressing Your Truth: everyone in a type more or less dressing the same. Sometimes, people are shocked when they see the photos of outfits that are Kibbe-selected, especially for types like Soft Natural and Soft Gamine, which happen to be types that have their stereotypes (“boho” and “cute, in a Zooey-Deschanel way,” respectively) firmly entrenched on Pinterest, Polyvore, etc. When this happens, I think we have to ask ourselves whether Kibbe is stretching the boundaries of what a certain Image Identity can wear, or if he is actually following the rules he set out, and it is the outfits that people found looking for an SN or SG “vibe” that actually were the ones that broke the rules. As I’ve written before, I doubt that people in the Facebook groups would recognize the outfit worn by the SG in the book as Soft Gamine if someone posted it as a try on.

As for what the role of “vibe” is in clothing selection done using your Kibbe Image Identity, well, Kibbe basically contradicts himself on this one, even in the book. He says that our inner self is infinite, yet our physical self is finite, and we should express our inner self through our outer appearance. Which is great. It is a shame that his section on how to dress Shirley MacLaine is her New Age phase has never made it online, because I think it would be helpful for people who feel at odds with their Kibbe, personality-wise. The Fantasy Quiz is also not online, sadly. But the long-winded personality descriptions for each of the types ARE readily available, and I think this can lead some astray, both in finding their Kibbe type and how to dress in it once they have found it.

Among people with certain Kibbe types, you’ll find as wide a range of personalities as you would with any random group of people. You will likely have had some common experiences due to your physical similarities (e.g., for FGs, feeling like your appearance is kind of “weird”), but you will have different tastes and interests and values. You will not be a homogeneous group.

So what should Flamboyant Gamines do with A-line Mod shift dresses? Try them on. If they look good on you and you like them, great! I think they have enough crispness to fudge the rules. I think they can successfully convey an FG look. But if you are considering a type, I think it’s important to look carefully at the recommendations, and examine things with a critical eye using these recommendations before deciding whether something is a certain type or not. Don’t blow off a type because things seen as having this type’s vibe don’t work for you. The actual recommendations may suit you perfectly.

November 4, 2014

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, Theatrical Romantic | 6 Comments

Do You Really Need a Style Analysis?

***Update, 5/21/15: Gwen is a tough one! After examining pictures of her body, I have decided that she is actually FN. Her shoulders are very broad, and her rib cage is wider than her hips. The celebrity I found with the most similar body shape to Gwen’s is Cameron Diaz, who is pretty much universally regarded as FN.***

Note: I have discussed Gwen Stefani with some real-life TRs, who feel that her body is far too yang. So I have settled on her being a Soft Dramatic, with a yin face and a yang body. I still definitely do not think she is FG!

Do I need a style analysis? This is a question I’ve been turning over lately in my mind. While I can’t afford Kibbe, there are two other people that I know of who offer a Kibbe-based service and have generally good reviews: Rachel of Best Dressed and Sarah of Guiding Lines both offer reasonably priced services.

I have, however, yet to get myself analyzed. Truth be told, I’m scared. I don’t want to be told what I don’t want to hear. I don’t feel like I fit the typical body type we see in FG, and I score in C/G range on the test. I find, however, that Kibbe’s recommendations work really well for me, I feel good in FG clothes, and I ruled out other possibilities like SN because I need structure. I have blathered on about how I landed on FG in depth.

So I guess what I’m wondering is, if you feel good in the type you’ve selected, do you really need to get an official analysis? Maybe someone would put me in SG because of my body shape. Maybe someone else would make me a small SD. But at the end of the day, FG is where I feel the best and where I feel myself. I think of Gwen Stefani, who you’ll sometimes find on Flamboyant Gamine Pinterest boards. Gwen, though, has always seemed like an outlier to me in FG. Her face is not FG at all. Then I remembered that she played Jean Harlow in The Aviator.

Sorry, nothing found.

(Sources: 1, 2)

She looks fine in FG. She is STUNNING in TR, with a face that would absolutely not be out of face in glamorous 1930s Hollywood. I think she’s always known this, because even when she was wearing Dickies, she still did a very glam makeup look. Now, I do think that Gwen’s beauty is truly revealed in in her TR/Jean Harlow look. But she has made an image for herself as a cool dresser, not a glam one. So I’m divided on whether a TR Metamorphosis would be the best thing for her. But looking at her in the Jean Harlow pictures, I see her, not the clothes.

As for myself, what if I went to see Kibbe and he made me an SC, my nightmare type? (No offense to any SCs out there; it’s great on you, but not for me.) The ladylike image of SC is so far removed from everything I am. Would I stop dressing FG if an analyst told me I wasn’t? To be honest, probably not.

Have you ever been analyzed? Were you pleased by the results? Do you think Gwen should dress in bias cut silk gowns all the time?

September 30, 2014

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis | 3 Comments

Curvy Flamboyant Gamine: Physical Guidelines

Update, 6/24/15: Please read this post. I no longer believe in the idea of “curvy FG” as described here.
—

I expanded my last post for some Kibbe groups on Facebook, and I figured I should put what I added here as well.

So what does a curvy Flamboyant Gamine look like?

(Source)

In Metamorphosis, Kibbe says we can deviate from the guidelines, as long as these deviations don’t upset our yin/yang balance. We know that Kibbe has typed voluptuous hourglasses as Flamboyant Naturals when that is listed on the “NO” list for FNs, so why can’t it be the same for FGs? It all comes down to The Most Important Thing, or TMIT. For Gamines of either type, I think that TMIT is the face—not height, because there are Kibbe-confirmed FGs like Audrey Hepburn and Twiggy, who are above-average height, and not body type, because your eye is supposed to move around on a G and not focus on any one aspect of their physicality. Obviously if you’re six feet tall, etc., it may disrupt your yin/yang balance enough to move you out of gamine, but you get the picture.

So if your face is a mix of D and R, but D dominates, it may push you out of SG and into FG, even if your body is more SG. For me, I would say my face is 1/3 R and 2/3 D, which makes SG’s rounded shapes not work and made me want to add bold geometrics to any type I was trying on. I have noticed that FGs who are closer to 50/50 in terms of their facial D/R balance tend to have the brick-shaped, coltish, very yang body we think of as being classic FG. They also can go more toward classic G in their clothes, and wear things like cigarette pants with Breton striped tee. They don’t need as much opposition/drama in their clothes.

In a way, this is not much different from how SD works—SDs are either yang faces with yin flesh or vice versa. Kibbe doesn’t have a type for yang face/yin size/yin flesh. I think SD works in this case if your curves dominate and you project an SD type of sexiness. And I think FG works if the D in your face with some opposition of R dominates.

To sum it all up, you can be a curvy/soft Flamboyant Gamine IF the opposition of Dramatic and Romantic in your face leans heavily to the Dramatic side, AND if the curviness and softness of your body doesn’t dominate over your facial features.

August 22, 2014

Flamboyant Gamine, Kibbe's Metamorphosis, My Kibbe Journey, Personal, Soft Dramatic | 5 Comments

My Kibbe Journey: Part 3.5

This is a follow up to my most recent post, because I feel like some interesting things were going on in the comments that I felt deserved post of their own.

I feel like I’m having a new Kibbe realization once every 48 hours. This is, I suppose, working with my own interpretation of Kibbe, because he is very right-brained/intuitive about it, and I want to plot everything on a graph. But that’s okay, because this is my blog and this is helping me to work stuff out. You don’t have to look at Kibbe the way I do if it’s not helpful for you.

Yesterday, I was reading about Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn, and how Twiggy is an FG with D influence and Audrey was an FG with Classic influence. Now, this does not mean that you don’t still fit into FG. You are still just the one category. But it can be helpful for those of us who are not Liza Minelli or Vivien Leigh or anyone else who is the prototypical celebrity for any given type.

Now, it’s pretty obvious I have some extra yin–I have yin flesh and I’m not boyishly straight, like you’d think of an FG as being. The only type in Kibbe where you have yin flesh and a yang face is actually SD.

Put me next to an SD, and it’s obvious that it’s not me. But if you look at a picture of Sophia Loren, I have what is basically a compact version of her body: very tapered ribcage and square hips matched by relatively broad shoulders:

(Source)

If you look at the chart of the logical progression of Kibbe types from yang to yin, contrast to blend, FG and SD are actually right next to each other. So instead of my extra yin coming from Soft Gamine, perhaps my extra yin is coming from a Soft Dramatic influence. Soft Dramatic is way too big on me, but perhaps I can add touches here and there. I would place myself where the red dot is:

I’ve long loved this Polyvore set by papillonnoir1:

The FG outfit is very much my style, and the skirt is drapey and asymmetrical in a way that seems to border on SD to me. Of course, I think SG peplums are also an option for me, but they seem to have disappeared from stores. So I think that keeping to FG’s rule of the first layer being narrow and cut close to the body, I am going to experiment with a little touches of SD draping as a way to highlight curves as an alternative to SG ways of highlighting curves.

August 19, 2014

Flamboyant Gamine, My Kibbe Journey, Personal, Soft Natural, Theatrical Romantic | 13 Comments

My Kibbe Journey: Part 3

***5/1/2015: I now see Kibbe in a totally different way than I write about here. Please see this post for my current views.***

Sometimes I feel like it may seem like I have no idea what I’m talking about, because pretty much every time I come to write a blog entry, I feel like I have decided on a new Kibbe type for myself, or a different season. But I think that most of us who set off to determine our Kibbe type find that it’s a pretty convoluted and confusing process, and many live in what turns out to be the wrong type for years–and the only way to actually confirm is to spend around $2000, plus hotel, airfare, etc., to see David Kibbe in person.

So. With that in mind, I’ve come to yet another major conclusion about the whole process. I recently joined a Kibbe group on Facebook, and there is a wealth of information there, including how Kibbe feels about the book, and how he wanted people to use it (look at the types presented, try stuff on it and see if it works, no quizzes necessary). It turns out that my approach to Kibbe–look at lines only, and then use your personality/essence to make it your own–is totally wrong. You should start with your essence, and then make adjustments to fit your body as needed.

This all became clear to me a couple of days ago, when it was pointed out to be that Charlize Theron is an official Kibbe Theatrical Romantic. One of the key features of a TR, according to the book, is a wasp waist (which I have, which will become important later). Charlize Theron has a straight figure, one that’d probably be called an inverted V. Looking just at her body, I’d probably be inclined to put her in Flamboyant Natural. But her face is so beautiful and full of S-curves. She looks the most herself when she is glammed up and dripping with jewels. If you compare her Dior ad to her sweatshirt look from Young Adult, which is truer to the person? I think it is jarring to see her look so dishevelled. You can tell she doesn’t have any natural in her at all.

Sorry, nothing found.

(Sources: 1, 2, 3)

Charlize’s glamorous face supersedes the fact that her body lacks these key physical feature of a TR. The TR clothes follow the lines of her face. The more reading I do, the more I realize that it’s about figuring out what is key about you, how you look the most yourself, what people notice first. Like Zyla, Kibbe was inspired to do what he does from the acting world, where he saw some people get cast and some who did not.

So maybe what we should do is typecast ourselves. I wrote about this idea in my first post in this series, and then I said I was wrong. But now I realize that I may have been right. I’m not a Soft Natural, a “Fresh and Sensual Lady.” I am much more aggressive and dynamic and funny. The energy I put into the world is that of a Flamboyant Gamine. My TR-style wasp waist that was tripping me up before? That’s not the first thing people notice about me. My task now is to find the FG clothes that work with my body, instead of hiding it. But I feel like it will be a relief to go to stores and be able to try on the clothes that appeal to me naturally, and not have to feel like I have to fit myself into styles that should work for me, taken as a sum of body parts.