The Man Repeller in a nutshell

A little bit ago I mentioned a website called The Man Repeller. It's a cute girl who works in fashion, whose clothes choices, are all things that girls LOVE, and men hate. You have to go to the site to see what I'm talking about, but I experience this with Nipper Knapp all the time. 


The first "infraction", I incurred was wearing uggs with mini skirts when we were first married. "This makes no sense!" he would exclaim. "It's warm enough for a skirt, but then you're wearing big wooly muckalucks. You think this looks cute. It doesn't." He can pry my uggs from my cold dead feet. Motherhood has gone ahead and taken my mini skirts. They're still in the closet, because I can't bear to think I'm *gasp* too old for them, but, they haven't been touched in years. 

Then came the Luke Skywalker boots. I actually had these in two iterations. The first was a cheap pair from Target. They were sandy suede mid calf boots with a zipper, and had suede buckle straps all around them. I also wore these with mini skirts. For this infraction he'd greet me at the door with a "Hi honey, how was your trip to Tatooine today?" Stupid man. For my birthday three years ago Nipper's mother upgraded my Tatooine boots to a pair of Fiorentini and Baker boots from Barney's. (I love this woman) I don't get to wear these enough because I have kids, and you actually have to buckle the buckles (3 per boot) and who has time to do that, or the flexibility to bend over while holding Andre the Giant baby. 


I know there are other fashion things I do that make Nipper roll his eyes. There was a beautiful cream YA-YA trench coat I got at a sample sale at the house of the Billion Dollar Babes founder. It had a giant cowl neck, and all kind of complicated buttons and a belt. GORGEOUS. It made me feel like Diane Keaton in a Nancy Meyers movie. He hates it.

Ok, I blocked their faces to protect identities, but these two beauties are an example of the difference between men and women. One is a man repeller, and one is not. 

The other day we were waiting at an audition space in Santa Monica. This girl walked in, and as she passes in front of us, both staring I say "oh COME ON". To which he says "you see?!" She was gorgeous. She looked like Naomi Watts, all wind tousled, and wearing some drapey outfit with a short skirt, and layered tops, and suede knee boots, and a big boho bag. She was the effortless beauty every girl aspires too. That's what my "oh come on" meant, like, she's perfect, stop looking. But Nipper's "you see?!" meant something entirely different. He thought she looked RIDICULOUS. He was like why'd she have to ruin being cute, with that horrible outfit. And then he asked where she was hiding her light saber, and if she left the window cracked for the Jawas she left in the car. DUDES! 


About 5 minutes later another girl walked by. This time we both just stared. Her legs were 14 feet tall. She was the closest thing to a giraffe I've ever seen in person. She was wearing shorts, a simple blouse, and great shoes. On this we can agree, if you have legs like that, you can wear whatever you want. Sigh. 

The other day I saw these jackets at American Rag. The first one is amazing. Perfectly broken in, buttery soft. Ironic patches, nehru collar. I had one just like it in high school. I think it had a Misfits skull painted on the back. It's a terrible picture, and you can't really see, but the second one is navy blue. You also can't see that it's $2000. They were both $2000. I think this would be the perfect thing to remind me that I was once cool, and can still be, if only I had $2000 laying around to spend on a jacket, I'd be embarrassed to wear to pre-k drop off...with my mini skirt and skywalker boots. 

That's all I've got for today. Oh except this. I got these gold safety pin earrings made for me last year, by the a goldsmith, who is a friend of a stylist we work with a bunch. (brag drop dear greer) They are my homage to my punk rock youth, (I may or may not have pierced my nose in a London hotel room with a safety pin when I was 15) But they are solid gold, so it's ironic. God I hate when I have to explain things. I get tons of compliments on them. They are my diamond studs. I never take them off. I'm wearing them right now with khakis and a lavender cashmere cardigan. OH THE IRONY! Take that mom! Sorry, having my mom around may or may not be raising some inner teen rebellion. If you notice me hiding out in the prius sneaking cigarettes, and sexting with Nipper Knapp, don't be alarmed, I'm fine. Just fine...

I'm so glamorous, you might as well dip me in glitter

So recent events in the economy have gotten me thinking. Just how many marc jacobs bags can you have? How many pairs of shoes does it take to make one woman feel happy and secure in the fact that she will never be a bag lady? The answer is of course, that you can never have enough shoes and handbags, because they don't make you look fat,ever, period. BUT, I've still been feeling like a little economizing is in order. Nipper Knapp and I make our living primarily as actors, and really, in advertising. The recent contract negotiations, economic downturn, and the appearance of tiny little wrinkles that promise to swallow my face whole by next year, pretty much guarantee that things are changing. And so maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we had a little safety net, a back up plan, maybe a penny or two for a rainy day...

In the spirit of saving, NY Times article be damned, we let go of our cleaning lady. To save money, but also because she hated us, and did all sorts of strange things that made us feel sad when we came home. Nothing extreme, just little gestures to let us know that she thought we were assholes. SO, cleaning lady, banished! That saved us $160 a month. Ok so that's not going to be enough to retire on, but it's a start. 

Then I started demanding we eat at home more. In order to save a little money, but also so that Jack wouldn't think that food only came from Larchmont Pizza, Sharkey's, and In-Out Burger. I mean seriously, how did this happen? We used to eat sushi, and things that involved truffle butter. Since Jack was born it's been more like "me hungry, food, face, NOW!"  SO we planted the vegetable garden, got a few great cookbooks, and started eating at home more. I didn't think it was really doing much, and it was irritating to have to go to the store almost every day at first, because we had nothing in the kitchen at all. But the other day, I looked at our summary from the bank, and we've been saving $400 a month. That's 400 fast food dollars. Gross.

So that, combined with the the cleaning lady savings, and, hey diddle diddle ,we've saved enough for like 3 new Chloe bags a year!!!! I mean college savings for Jack. Berkeley baby! Not that I've thought about it...

Which leads me to my recession dress. About a month ago, Sadie and I got together for a girls day out. Which sounds very sex in the city-ish. But in reality, was two cranky moms, eating tacos at the Not Grove, and browsing at Anthropologie because one of us had a gift card (thanks sis!). 

So we wander into Barney's Co-op, and spot this dress. It's by A.P.C. Madras, and we've both been eyeing it for months. I mention that I love it, and she says she does too, but we both assumed it was a $500 dress, and was something our husbands would hate (the $500 part aside) and so never bothered to try it on. Well internet, that dress had a $170 price tag, which was enough to get us in the dressing room together. We tried it on. We fell in love. We started saying things like "I'll wear this dress forever!!!" And so we decided to SHARE the dress. I know. Idiots. We got all excited in that dressing room. We were swept up in the saving zeitgeist. FIRE the help! Plant your own vegetables! Share that dress from Barney's with your friend! Everyone's doing it!!! No. No one is doing that. You know why? Because it's stupid, and three minutes after Sadie said "Hey, can I have the dress this month, while it's still cold, so I can wear it with boots", I died a little on the inside, and started trying to figure out how to have her taken out mob style. Well, lucky for everyone involved, Sadie wore the dress one time, and decided it didn't fit right. And so I will be wearing my recession dress every day, in order to make it pay for itself. I'll be the one vacuuming, and picking peppers in a dress from Barney's. That's the story I'll tell my grandkids. "Why, I wore the same dress every day one year! The same dress!" Wow, grammy, that sounds TERRIBLE!