Reinvention

Damien Hirst once said, you have to reinvent yourself every day. I must say I've been doing a fair bit of reinventing of late.

Making the leap from full-time mum to full-time student has been an exciting and liberating challenge if for no other reason than I've been able to redirect some of my attention away from the kids and onto more intellectual, selfish pursuits. But starting uni in middle-age with a class full of bright, young twenty-somethings is not without its drawbacks.

One of my main problems is that I've opted to attend an art school and art students are so effortlessly goddam hip. I, on the other hand, have spent the past two and half years operating in the role of frumpy house-frau; covered to a large degree in varying amounts of baby food, vomit and other bodily outputs, wearing shapeless, oversized clothing and struggling to maintain any semblance of a decent hairstyle. Now I've suddenly found myself out in the world again, amongst functioning adults and I need to get it together or at the very least remember to look in the mirror before I leave the house in the morning.

As a result of my desire to fit in I've been recently trying to marry the sartorial styles of both mother and student into a whole new look. An updated me.

My latest attempt at art student chic has been to invest in my very first pair of SKINNY jeans. This statement should be accompanied by some kind of elaborate, theatrical sound effect such is the enormity of the occasion. The reason being I've always felt a certain disconnect between myself and anything with the name skinny in it, predominantly due to the size, or perceived size of my midsection. My brothers once helpfully told me as an impressionable teen that I had 'monster truck' thighs (reference to 1990s sumo superstar Sally The Dumptruck) and the image has kind of stuck since.

Anyway I've got to the age where I'm slightly less concerned about how I look. My body image has reached a state of equilibrium with actuality, aided in part by the fact I've now had two kids so couldn't possibly be expected to look as I might have done in my twenties. I'm OK with being a little soft around the edges given what my body has been through over the past couple of years and being able to not only wear skinny jeans but feel pretty good about it is a huge step forward.

As to the new look, am I going to impress anyone with my hip-ness? Probably not. But I'm quietly confident I won't be totally ostracised as an over-the-hill wannabe by my university peers and come home time when I have to line up at the metaphorical school gates I should be able to hold my own with the other mums. That's not to say the odd bit baby vomit won't still make its way onto my clothes every now and then but I guess that's still part of who I am. For now.

To reinvent yourself every day? Nah, too much effort. But every once in a while is fine by me.