Beat the Heat or, at Least, Wear a Smile

I have no fashion in the summertime. I have no words of advice for avoiding the heat and humility and looking your best despite the 100 plus degrees we’re all living in. I live at a summer camp where a tee-shirt, shorts, and a ponytail are the daily fashion choices of everyone. It’s not very pretty, to say the very least! On lower humidity days, there might be some hairstyle trying to keep its shape on my head, but on higher humidity days, it’s a ponytail from sunup to sundown with little scraggly pieces of hair popping out everywhere. 

After fifty years of choosing to live this way in the summer, my best advice for everyone is this—embrace it…whatever it is.  Embrace life where you are, not life where you wish you could be. Life is too short to bemoan the present. The present doesn’t stick around very long, so don’t push it aside because of bad hair day or you can’t find your lipstick or it’s hot or it’s raining or a million other little things that can set a tone of discontent. 

There’s a clothing store in our town and their advertising mantra is “A smile is the prettiest thing you can wear.” I’m going to be honest, I do not like the motto for a clothing store because I think it’s better suited for a dentist office, but that is beside the point. The words are accurate. When I don’t feel like I physically look my best, I feel like a smile is the best way to disguise it. I could be wrong, but in my experience, a messy hairdo and a wrinkled shirt look much better when the wearer is smiling at me. In fact, don’t even notice the mess, when the messenger is smiling. I see the smile and that makes me happy. 

So, fashion advice on this very, hot, humid, sticky, day—embrace it and face it with a smile.

Hugs, Chrys