New Series: Outfits My Husband Hates (But My Sensory System Loves)

New series: outfits my husband hates, but my sensory system loves, so I wear them anyway.

You can see the reel here @thecapacitystandard

This series is in honor of my shift from performing conventional beauty expectations to honoring my own desires. Previously, I treated my needs as if they only mattered until they collided with my husband's. This showed up in ways that felt tiny and insignificant at the time. He'd comment on my oversized, baggy, or masculine-leaning outfits. When I actually examined it, I realized his archetype for what a desirable woman looks like was built in the early 2000s and hasn't evolved since.

I checked in with my girlfriends and found this was a universal phenomenon in their millennial marriages. The responses ranged from "he knows better than to comment" to "oh yeah, he hates what I wear now," but both imply the same thing: a knowing of undesirability. I don't know what that knowing does to my girlfriends, but for me, it shut down creativity, comfort, and the ability to build a positive self image. And this isn't inherently my husband's fault, or even men's fault specifically.

Who I've Been Dressing For

When I was little, I dressed for my mom's approval. Then it was my mom's and my friends'. Then my mom's, my friends', and my classmates'. Then all of them plus my husband's. Then colleagues got added. Then the other moms at school. Somewhere in there, strangers got added in too, and there was a stretch where I was just dressing for whatever could fit me. None of it gave me better style or more comfort. I was just confused, and I dressed like it.

I'm not claiming to have found my style. But listening to my intuition is a lot easier now that I've actually examined why I kept choosing items that were uncomfortable, or just not me.

The Noise We're Taught to Absorb

The noise women get from the world about how we should act, what size we're allowed to be, what space we're allowed to take up, and most visibly, what counts as beautiful, is relentless. From a young age, some of us find it harder than others to drown out the messaging and feedback coming at us. We absorb it as we develop our identity and sense of belonging, and it happens unconsciously. If you don't get opportunities to experiment with your appearance AND receive positive feedback in a form you're willing and able to actually take in, you default to the opinions of the people you respect most.

This is exactly why learning new ways to receive feedback, ways that let you build your own desires, needs, and self image, is critical to breaking this cycle.

What My Three-Year-Old Taught Me

At age three, my daughter taught me a valuable lesson about treating discomfort as non-negotiable. She refused to wear certain things because they were uncomfortable, and she refused with the most basic, natural reasoning there is: "I'm not wearing it. It's uncomfortable."

Smallest human to ever mic drop.

Did it frustrate me when she wouldn't wear the mommy-and-me outfits I'd dreamed of? Yes. But I was also impressed that my displeasure didn't skew her opinion of the uncomfortable outfit one bit. It made me wonder: at what age do we start overriding our own discomfort? I imagine it's early, especially for girls.

It's challenged me to let my daughter pick out her own outfits. I've donated so many unworn clothes she flat-out refused to wear. And I've embraced her daily, self-imposed school uniform of a cotton skort, a t-shirt, and the same tennis shoes and socks every day. I can see now how unconsciously, and with the best intentions, parents teach their daughters they're expected to look a certain way and expected to wear what they're told.

A Sample Size of One (Okay, Two)

In my sample size of one man in the house, I've noticed my husband has a similar level of discernment about his own clothing. And my dad has discernment over his comfort to the point that he refuses to wear a wedding ring because he finds it uncomfortable, even to my mom's annoyance.

Nobody calls that vanity. Nobody questions his commitment. It's just comfort, respected as a valid enough reason on its own.

Women don't get that same default setting. Our comfort gets filed under vanity, or "letting ourselves go," or high-maintenance, depending on which way it swings. So we learn, early and unconsciously, to override what our own body is telling us long before we learn to trust it.

This series isn't really about the clothes my husband dislikes. It's about the outfits I used to talk myself out of, and don't anymore. Every piece in it is proof that my nervous system's vote counts too, even when it's the only one that says yes.