Published in the July/August 2012 edition of Zaghareet Magazine, an international magazine for Belly Dance aficionados.
I slashed through the straps of my best fitting, most
expensive “go to” bra. You know the bra I am talking about? The one that makes
you five pounds lighter and gives you the perkiness of a twenty year old.
Ok, thirty year old. The one you wear to
a job interview or a first date. My shiny, new-fangled stainless steal sewing
scissors, razor-sharp, snipped through the straps as my heart-thudded in fear.
It’s only a bra, I repeated to myself, while our instructor assured us “it’s
only a costume” and it would be alright.
Belly dance takes “retail therapy” to a new level. Of course
perfected technique and top form are vital to the dance, but any performer
would agree there is nothing more confidence-boosting, mood-lifting or
splendor-enhancing than a sparkly,
fits-like-a-glove costume. It is the best therapy money can buy. Being a
well-endowed dancer, however, can sometimes make buying a custom-fitted, yet
reasonably priced outfit difficult. I knew it was time to start learning how to
sew.
My mother was an exceptional seamstress. She made my three
older sisters’ clothes when they were young. Purchasing a store-bought
Halloween costume was unheard of in my house growing up. But like many “modern
women,” sewing was not a skill passed on to me, nor was it even taught at any
of my schools. In the days of pre-big box stores sewing certainly, but
unfortunately, was not exposed to me as a pleasure or hobby but a necessity in
times of tight money for a single mother of four. Prior to belly dance, embarrassingly,
it just never occurred to me that I could make my own stuff! Why? I have a job!
I can just buy it, right? And besides, I could whipstitch a torn seam by hand
in a pinch. That was all I needed to know. As I advanced as a dancer my new
hobby suddenly seemed to come along with the same type of necessity to sew that
my mother probably felt.
Last spring, the oh-so-talented-in-more-ways-than-one
Michelle Morrison of Farfesha Studios in Albuquerque, NM held a costume-making workshop and I
decided to give it a try. The year prior had not been kind to me. Dance, both
practice and performance, became my escape. The support of the beautiful women
of the troupe and the ability to take my mind off the real world of divorce,
finances, and work made the studio my sanctuary. And now costume therapy would
begin to take on a whole new meaning.
With Michelle’s supply list in hand, I headed to the local
fabric store a few days before the workshop with the concept of matching my new
costume with a flowing chiffon lavender skirt I had purchased at a swamp meet
months prior. A satin in the most delicious eggplant caught my eye as the
foundation for the bra and belt set and I was instantaneously hooked. Before I
knew it, I was obsessing over rhinestones. 8 mm or 10 mm sequins? 8 inch or 10
inch Egyptian fringe? Bra padding? For me? The DD girl?
Sprawled on the wood dance floor with all my dancer friends,
surrounded by baskets of material, coins, shells, ribbon, batting, we spent
several Sunday afternoons cutting, fitting, sewing, bleeding. It looked as if a
sewing shop exploded on the dance floor. As music played, we drank our tea,
talked about men, and let the children run wild. Satins and baroque fluttered in
a rainbow of colors across the wood while we chattered over how it was possible
that Rachel Brice bends like that. I realized exactly how it must have felt for
women to congregate around the sewing table long ago. It was female bonding,
rich with self-confidence and self-worth. Sadly, this has become a rarity among
women outside the dance studio in American culture. We are catty and
competitive in the dog-eat-dog professional world. We sometimes fight for and cheat
over men. We dress for each other, always seeking approval to be accepted from
our own gender, the same humans who struggle, create and nurture alike. There
are just not enough bonding moments among women to celebrate our sameness and
accept our differences. We distinguish ourselves as mothers, a common
association among most of us, or we are objectified by the media, and sometimes
even devalued by both. If we are not mothers and we are not supermodels, what
are we? We are sometimes lost in our identity and don’t always have female role
models to help find us.
I have since completed the gorgeous purple costume and am
now tackling mermaid skirts and gauntlets. I have started to transform a teal
prom dress into a bra, belt and skirt set. My sewing talents have even
transferred to my regular wardrobe, altering skirts and embellishing blouses. I
find myself now surfing the web for design styles, rather than costumes to
purchase. Watching my instructor dance flawlessly in an outfit she created that
is just as flawless makes her performance all that much more inspirational for
me.
This is more than beadwork, I thought to myself. It was smiles and kind words from fabulous
women of all walks of life that makes you feel everything is going to be
alright even if you just destroyed your best bra. It is the delicate hands of
people I love and admire, constructing creations as one-of-a-kind as the
goddesses who wear them. It was seeing the finished products months later,
flaws and all, which had beauty deeper than what was on the outside, like the
women who wore them.
