Behind the Back Behavior

I feel betrayed. I’ve just learned for the first time about some truly “behind the back” behavior. I don’t mean anything from the 9th Circle of Hell, workplace bullying or even America’s President being a traitor – those are all sufficiently terrifying betrayals, but they are hardly newly discovered  – but rather something that has been quietly happening for years of which I’ve just become aware. Women, we’re all being badly betrayed…

By women’s clothing.

I’ve had to wear entirely too many dresses lately. Dresses are frustrating to begin with for spoonies, because they require things like making sure your legs are shaved every day, finding flat-toed shoes that look professional and cute (I do not have the ankle stability to wear heels), the ridiculousness and expense that is “dry cleaning,” inconsistent sizing between brands that make shopping take forever and fray the last ADHD nerve, having to buy special bras to wear with oddly shaped clothing styles, and sometimes wearing the modern-day torture device known as the “thong” under them.

They also all have zippers in the back. This has never phased me, but apparently only because I’m a mutant.

I finally pursued physical therapy for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome because it seems like, if I’m going to have to be on unpaid not-FMLA leave wearing traitorous dresses to traitorous meetings in the 9th Circle of Hell, I should also actually invest some energy into learning how not to dislocate my elbows or fall over because my ankle suddenly decides it needed to pop out orthogonally to my leg while I do so.

It took months to find a physical therapist who actually knows about EDS and who accepts my insurance. When I finally found one, the first thing he did was go through what “normal” range of motion is for most of my joints and to establish some limits beyond which I really shouldn’t be moving them to ensure my funny bone stays connected to the rest of my bones.  He will work with me throughout my not-FMLA, including designing a home program I can continue anywhere, including in the 9th Circle of Hell.

It took me until after the session to crystalize what was nagging at me about my “hyperextended” range of motion behind my back. If what I am capable of is “too much,” then how do non-mutant women ever zip up their dresses?!

I have never met a dress I couldn’t zip on my own, which is a good thing because my Partner is the first human I’ve been able to live with. I finagled my way into a single room in my sophomore year of college, and I never looked back. I am not good at having strangers in my personal living space. (Heck, it even took about four months to get used to living with my Partner.) In all that time, I have worn dresses to various functions. Now, suddenly, I’m told that the way I zip them is actually hyperextending most of my arm joints. What’s the alternative? For now, it’s asking my Partner to zip me up.

He is more than willing. (Though being a funny bonehead himself, he happily reminded me that he only has to own a handful of sports jackets, five pairs of similarly colored dress slacks, two colors of dress shoes and two suits to complete the male professional wardrobe as he agreed.) But, it made me wonder how single women without Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome handle zippers in the back of their dresses? If I’m understanding my physical therapist – and my Partner – correctly, most humans can’t zip up a zipper that extends the entire length of a dress from butt to neck on their own? I legitimately never knew this.

A brief internet search suggests this to be true. There are even devices made for single women to help them zip up their own dresses? Women, why do we stand for this? Women’s fashion is cruel and unusual punishment in so many ways, but it’s a special level of betrayal that a staple of women’s fashion for “coupley” events like weddings and first dates requires expensive contraptions for a single woman to put on. Or, that a woman could conceivably make the C-suite all by herself but still need to ask her significant other to help her get dressed for it in the morning?

There are other places that designers could put zippers. I’ve seen dresses with zippers up the side or no zippers at all. Yet, the vast majority of my dresses have had zippers straight up the back that require a range of motion that is “beyond normal” for humans. Why are women such masochists for “fashion”?  Can we all agree now that owning a twenty-piece professional wardrobe like my Partner makes much more financial and physical sense, especially for spoonie women? Can we agree to some women’s code wherein we all don’t purchase clothing that requires special equipment to put on?

I’ve been intrigued by the idea of a minimalist wardrobe for some time, but “minimalism” for women still requires being creative so that the same small number of clothing items are worn in continuously inventive ways that look like they are many more items. That takes creative commitment for which I don’t have the mental energy. Owning fewer clothing items additionally means more of that most feared task for anyone with ADHD: laundry. Laundry is the bane of the ADHD existence. I can’t quite embrace minimalism simply because of its laundry commitment. However, I am now seriously considering boycotting dresses with zippers up the back. I trust my Partner to always be there to give me a “hand up,” but I resent that some designer I’ve never met could force me into a situation wherein I have to either spend additional money or rely on others. I’m not scratching their backs with any more of my money unless they scratch my back and make their clothes fit within my new “pretending not to be a mutant” human lifestyle.

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