Dear Bossy

Can you give me advice on how to clean out my wardrobe?

– Paring Down
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Dear Paring,

Bossy saw this really smart and pretty closet-organizer person on Oprah – you know, someone who organizes closets? Not to be confused with a closet organizer who arranges and rearranges their stuff in tortured secrecy (that was a different show).

So anyway, this really smart and pretty closet-organizer person who somehow managed to transform her bossiness into a beefy book deal and appearance on Oprah – she said you have to love the way you look in everything you wear.

She said everything you wear should make you feel like Gwyneth Paltrow on the set of Great Expectations. She didn’t say except for the Tuesday morning you’re going to the Laundromat and you don’t mind wearing those sweat pants that look as though your body is still in them even when they’re draped on the chair. And she didn’t say except for the plaid pencil skirt you occasionally wear out to dinner that doesn’t so much resemble a pencil as it does an eraser in the shape of a gi-normous ass.

She says we can’t spare even an hour of not feeling terrific about ourselves. So toss that dashiki you bought when you wanted to bring a little ethnicity to the suburbs – it makes you feel like a West African tent. And see those green corduroys hiding behind the Hawaiian shirt you keep in case you go to a luau? Those green corduroys are only passable when combined with a shirt the color of dried sage – a shirt that must hang below the belly button but not exceed the top of the zipper – and when worn with a belt, although NOT a belt thread through the narrow belt loops but a belt worn over the belt loops – those green corduroys? Decide there’s not enough patience in the world to keep a pair of pants so fucking finicky.

And toss the Hawaiian shirt while you’re at it – never keep the thing that waits for the solitary occasion that never happens anyway. And don’t keep clothes that don’t fit. The Ralph Lauren slacks that will fit, just as soon as you fast for eleven weeks, or the jeans that became too roomy after you began working out on the Elliptical Trainer. Embrace the size you are now. And speaking of now, get going – haul those ill-fitting clothes to Goodwill. And don’t buy anything while you’re there unless it makes you feel like Gwyneth. Or at least Ethan Hawke.