end of the hawaiin shirts?!?

[KarenH]

We don't have a TV in our house, so when I was in the hospital for seven weeks, I was kind of overwhelmed with all the shows. I did watch What Not to Wear a few times--I thought the people were cruel (NO gracious professionalism), but I was fascinated to see how the two perpetrators molded their victims to their way of thinking.

Since I was in the hospital (and on some pretty powerful drugs) while watching this stuff, I got some weird thoughts. Like, "Wouldn't they just love my hospital wardrobe?" Hospitable gowns these days, while they still open in the back, have an offset and overlapping opening. This way, they tend to expose just one leg, rather than what's really embarrassing, so that should be fashionable, shouldn't it? My husband liked the effect, anyway.

Too bad my legs, after atrophying in hospital beds, looked like I'd been spending time in a concentration camp. Plus, I wound up with needle marks--those nurses just wouldn't relent. But all that sort of thing has been fashionable at some time or other (in the 1960s, anyway), so it should go over well with What Not to Wear people, right? I mean, why have something bright and happy like Hawaiian shirts when you can have such tragic looking effects? Call it Hospital Chic.

The other things the drugs did (or was it the unaccustomed amounts of TV?) was to get me thinking that, instead of sending their victims to New York to shop, they could send them to Beverly Hills. My brain waves may have been receiving vibes from all those boutiques, because I spent three weeks in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which is adjacent to Beverly Hills and is said to have one of the most upscale hospital gift shops in existence.

I did hate what happened to the victims' hair on the show: every one I saw, the hairdresser thinned the hair (which is supposed to be unhealthy for the hair), and colored it, and then styled it so the ends stuck out. I think ends sticking out looks like a bad hair day. When I got out of the hospital, I desperately needed a hair cut, so I went to my favorite salon. While Lisa snipped all those wayward inches, I asked her about the styles I saw on the show. She commented that that kind of style has been around seven years, and is on its way out.

So maybe I was watching reruns and didn't know it -- or maybe, the people who do the show need a makeover themselves! Wouldn't it be great to have Dave, and Dean Kamen, and some of our teams, dress those fashion geeks in FIRST gear! Shall we start with Hawaiian shirts, or with five years of T-shirts? And blue jeans, without regard to whether the style shows off their legs. Who needs to show off legs, when we've got robotic ARMS to show off, anyway?