A Pity Goes for Generations
The other day when I was lingering in a newly opened clothing shop, I got fascinated. Actually, I fell in love with a beautiful skirt on the first sight. One look at the skirt I knew it would suit me best. Another look at the price tag I knew it would bankrupt me if I bought it. First-sight loves are rather rare nowadays, so you could tell how frustrated I became when I had to leave my love at last, with reluctant looking-backs and countless sighs.
It’s rather superficial to be so infatuated with a skirt, I know, but then, I’m rather superficial at times. The love for beautiful clothes has been planted in my gene the day when I was doomed to be a woman. It is not a story I cooked up. Ask Chi Li, the famous female novelist if you have any doubt. Years ago when I was much younger, I had read her essay named A Pity Goes for Generations. Young as I was, I knew she was talking about something true and relentless. That is, when a woman is at her best time, she usually is poor or tasteless, so that she could not get the right clothes; when she gets old enoughto buy any clothes she wants, she often finds them not suit her any more.
So that’s why it is called a pity that goes for generations.
Of course, there are mavericks like Miss Ni, another female writer, who agreed to simple clothing like denim trousers and white shirts only. Those mavericks are of the opinion that such clothing is the most natural and unrestrained, and after all, it flatters a girl’s figure to its best. However, the simple trousers and shirts as they say are not easy to reach. “They should be of the highest quality, though simple,” the mavericks would say. In other words, this kind of clothing is aristocratically simple, and is not reachable for common people like you and me.
On the way home, I was quite occupied by such thoughts. It is not unfair, however. It is just a pity, like many other pities. I thought to myself this way.But then, when I was about to enter the building where I was living, I saw the big mirror placed in the entrance. In it came near a girl, slightly sweating, incheap but cleanly washed sweater and jeans. She was rather young, tall, healthy and fit. For quite a while I was overwhelmed by something the image exuded.
Why, I almost forgot the old tale: A person without shoes wept a lot until he saw a man without feet. Being young without good clothes is like the person without shoes. I should have felt grateful that I haven’t yet lost my feet.
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Enough is as good as a feast.
