Asperger's on the Inside

Now, after so much seriousness, I wanted to veer onto a much more lighthearted topic. So prepare yourself for an Aspie discussion on fashion! And in particular, women’s fashion.

I’ll start by saying that I have a complaint to make! Who on Earth designed the layout of women’s clothes stores? And why, why, why are there so many types of items? Short-sleeve shirts, skirts, camisoles, miniskirts, blouses, shorts, three-quarter pants, T-shirts, Jeans, boob tubes ^[18], long-sleeve shirts, jackets, scarves, sunglasses, sleeveless tops, dresses, handbags, half-length shoulder tops, etc. all mixed together in a messy sort of chaos. I can’t make any sense of this layout system! How am I ever supposed to find the item that I’ve come in to buy when everything is so buried?

When I go out to the shops looking for a specific thing, I get so tired of having to dig through rack after rack to actually even find the light-grey, long-sleeved shirt with V-neck that I have written on my shopping list. I mean, the system is all good and well if you’re a creative type of dresser who likes to mix and match and is spontaneously inspired by the fashions around them, but I don’t even know what to do with some of these clothing pieces. I want to classify them as tops or bottoms, long sleeve or short sleeve, but how do I handle this three-quarter semi-see-through overshirt? Argh! I can’t catalogue my wardrobe. Help!

Then, just to make it even worse, if I venture into the dark depths of the shops, I often find the sale racks—assortments of items supposedly categorized by size, but argh. In reality, bits have been thrown here, there, and everywhere. I finally find a top that I like in the size M rack, and curses—this one is an extra large! Who would be so cruel as to do this to me? Then, to top it all off, like icing on the cake, the entire store is garnished with accessories thrown in willy-nilly among the actual clothes and on the mannequins to spice up the look. Not in the accessories section where they belong! It’s a nightmare! I give up.

Sometimes, when I look at these places, I think that these aren’t really clothes shops at all. No, they’re Venus flytraps designed to prey on women. The store lures their victims in with the sweet promise of sales and markdowns and an array of brand items assembled on the mannequins out the front. A woman may have only come looking for a shirt, but before she knows it, she’s surrounded by the sweet “scent” of skirts and necklaces and a cute pair of heels to match. She buzzes around happily for an hour and leaves the shop with six unplanned items. The clothing immersion gives her a high.

The only problem with this for me, of course, is that I don’t like shopping just for the sake of it, and I definitely don’t want to spend that long doing it! I dislike the noise and the crowds and having to filter through countless items only to find that the specific things I’m after aren’t available. If the internet only had change rooms, I wouldn’t even venture into these women’s stores, but alas, they don’t, so it’s an unfortunate necessity.

So when I do go into those dreaded shops, my aim is simple: get in, get the items I’m after, and get out as quickly as possible. And hopefully try to pick up as many things as I can at once so that I can minimize how often I have to do it again. I am a woman, true, but as an Aspie, I think I missed out on the “happy, joy, I love shopping” gene!

I’ve often thought before that if only I could lay out the clothes the way I wanted to, then this shopping process could be so much less painful, even possibly fun. I would throw out brands altogether and categorize everything by type and size.

The first store in a mall would contain only women’s long-sleeved shirts sorted accurately by size and then style. When I came into the mall looking for a long-sleeved shirt, I could visit that store and only that store to see every long-sleeved shirt in my size that the mall had to offer laid out in front of me. I would try a few on, choose between them, and leave without ever needing to visit another store. They wouldn’t even stock those silly items that don’t fit into any particular category. Who wears them anyway?

Of course, in doing things my way, the shops would make far less profit and deter women from overspending. So it’s not actually a viable option. But why let reality get in the way of my dream? I would be happy. I would take my new long-sleeved shirt home and place it in my long-sleeved-shirt pile in my similarly organized wardrobe right next to the short-sleeved-shirts pile and the full-length-trousers pile. Ah, the perfect wardrobe.

And odd as this may sound, it never occurred to me that my method of organizing clothes was unusual at all until I read an article one day referring to the way women like to lay things out. It seems these strange creatures (well, strange to me) organize by color or by brand, group matching outfits, or have no particular order at all in their wardrobes. They like it to feel a certain way or they want to have the flexibility to move things around to try out different mixes and matches. What an inefficient system. It no longer surprises me that some women take hours in the morning to get ready. I’m surprised such people can find anything at all!

So, as you may have guessed, I, like many Aspies, was not born with an interest in fashion and clothing, or at least it wasn’t there when I was young. In my childhood and early teen years, I remember being teased occasionally on free dress days for wearing the odd daggy ^[19] thing my mum bought me. No one told me that you don’t tuck your T-shirt into your jeans! What’s wrong with black shoes and white trousers? Or the fluorescent-pink parachute tracksuit that my mum got me for my birthday?

In primary school, I recall wearing my school uniform one day on a free dress day because we’d been asked to pay a dollar for the privilege. I didn’t care to dress up. The uniform was much easier, and I certainly didn’t want to give up my dollar! I was so mad when they asked me to pay anyway.

But somewhere in my late teens, I did learn to take an interest in how to dress myself smartly. It wasn’t because I suddenly fell in love with fashion so much as the sudden realization that the world treats you better when you present a smart and attractive image. It’s sort of amazing when you discover just how obsessed with image the typical world is. It’s like a powerful force.

It means having a much smoother time in both your personal life and the business world. It means being given what you want. It means interest from the opposite sex and getting away with things that you might otherwise not. It seems it’s worth doing, and so, understanding that, I would be silly not to make the effort.

Nowadays, I do take pride in having nice clothes and looking attractive. In fact, I usually dress so well that it makes me look mistakably neurotypical and can easily confuse the people around me.

However, should you see me in a shopping mall, don’t expect me to stop and make small talk with you. My smart, classy look may fool you, but I’m not there to socialize. I’m on an Aspie mission, scanning for items that meet the criteria I’m after. I probably won’t see you there, let alone acknowledge you! Don’t take it as rude. It’s just the way I shop, battling the epidemic of the ever-expanding chaotic women’s clothing stores! There’s no time to acknowledge the existence of passersby. This is war! I’m on the hunt!