Going through papers recently I came across an interview with Jane Birkin from 2017. (I love to tear out and save magazine pages. My 1980s-born habit cannot be stopped, nor will it!) Though she recently passed at age seventy six, Birkin is widely recognized as an indelible ‘It Girl’ of the 1960s, and the epitome of easy French chic, even today. She has long been the inspiration for a swath of brands. Exhibit A: Sezane. The sad irony of this article is that she – a seventy one year old fashion icon at the time of the printing – seems to have judged herself as harshly as the rest of us non-It People too often judge ourselves.
Yes, I know celebrities are Just Like Us, they too have insecurities and trickster inner voices. Six years on, I reread the article and am now stopped in my tracks by some of the ways she describes herself (a Brit living abroad) in comparison to the French women around her.
- (We) English girls put everything together so badly.
- If someone tried to put me in a cocktail dress, I’d look quite ropy.
- …I don’t have the figure for (tailored clothes).
It’s not all self-loathing. Birkin does say, ‘It is impossible to be stylish without confidence,’ but I wish I believed she embodied that confidence fully. If Jane Birkin can’t feel confidence in her style, who among us can? Who knows, maybe the day she was interviewed was a darker one. She certainly survived several tragedies, illness and dramatic heartbreaks all under public scrutiny. We can all identify with the ebbs and flows of confidence and positivity. And yet, I really just want her – and all of us – to give up this colossal waste of time being unsatisfied with our outer selves. Our feeling of style failure, hyper scrutiny of our figures, our aging faces, our constant feelings of not enoughness.
How about in Ms. Birkin’s honor, we all do away with giving a negative thought (as well as the second, third, fourth and fifth ones) to how we feel about our outward appearance every day? One possible way to begin to change this destructive, ingrained habit; pay someone a genuine compliment every day, whether friend, family or stranger. Realize how good that feels and how truly you mean to make them feel positivity. Then when someone inevitably next pays YOU a compliment, ACCEPT IT WITHOUT QUALIFICATION. It’s actually possible to simply say ‘thank you’ and leave it at that. I argue it even helps you hear the compliment and better accept it. Also, someone pointed out recently that it’s actually kinda rude to negate a compliment you receive. So do it for the other person if not for yourself. I hope it becomes a happy habit and contagious in the best way!
x Stephanie
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