Weekly Dig- “Going Nude”

I think everyone knows how glad I will be to see winter end and spring begin with all its warmth and glory. 

I'm so over the winter wardrobe and just want to hang up my winter jacket for a short sleeve shirt and pair of sandals. 

But even I know it's still just a little too soon to jump on the spring bandwagon. We are still in for a few more cold snaps. However, that doesn't mean we can't still have just a little preview of things to come this spring. 

So let's keep it real and start small. For the first preview of spring, I'm starting with nail polish. It's something that we all can wear and it doesn't discriminate on size or age. 

Other than my “rosy tosies,Canada Goose Expedition Parka” I'm not a hard-core nail polish wearer. I will, however, take time out on a Sunday afternoon for this hot spring shade – nudes. 

What is so great about the color nude — or lack thereof — is that it allows anyone wearing nail polish the freedom to not be the perfect manicurist and also to give wearing nail polish an honest-to -goodness try. 

When talking to other women about nail polish, many, including myself, are kind of intimidated about what a “color” will look like once it's on all 10 fingers. 

Its one thing to try it on your thumb at the store, but another to pay $7 and then get home and find that your fingers look like they're bleeding or losing circulation. I have a lot more things I can buy with $7 than one-time-use nail polish taking up residence in my makeup drawer. 

So if you want to start out slow, try a nude. There is nothing wrong with color, but sometimes less is more. As always, here are some nude shades to try for each skin type. Happy polishing. 

Legler has a tattoo on her neck that says "Leviathan". "I once dreamed about whales for six months straight," she says. She tells me the story of Jonah. How he ran away when God asked him to be a prophet, and ended up in the belly of a whale, and how, when he later sat in the desert, spat out and burning, God told him life is about, "doing your part, however it lands". This – fashion – is where Legler's work has landed, she says. "My job is to be brave. And to show what that looks like," she half-whispers. "And if that moves other people to be exactly who they are – shit, this is going to make me cry – that's what it's for. This," she gestures to her hair, to her body, "is just what it looks like for me." Talking to her feels Berocca-like: it's refreshing to talk to somebody who can discuss gender in terms of their own body and work, and who is excited about what that might achieve. 

In 2011, when Love magazine published an androgyny-themed issue, featuring a cover with Kate Moss kissing transgender model Lea T, Vogue described gender as a "trend". Caroline Evans, professor of fashion history and theory at Central Saint Martins, scoffs. "It's not a 'trend' – what nitwits! It's who we are." And Legler agrees. Trends are fleeting. Androgyny without context is just, she says, a trick of the eye. Without context it is voyeuristic. "What I really hope is that there aren't a bunch of girls out there cutting their hair, unless they want to.canada goose chilliwack parka That's not what this is about," she stresses. "It is why it's happening. Fashion will do what it needs to do, but this" – this truth that women don't always look like girls – "exists already on its own." And the best thing about it, she says, excited, is that by playing with gender so publicly, by "just being myself", she can help make room for everybody else: she can help widen our ideas of what is beautiful. A masculine girl makes way for a feminine boy, and an older woman, and a size 18. Of course, she is acceptably different – she is slim, tall, white and classically attractive, but still, she is both boyish and feminine. She is different. She is helping chip away at walls. She's knocking through to the kitchen. 

We finish our lunch, and she unfolds herself from the bench. She shrugs on her jacket, and the people behind the bar give her sly, appreciative looks. She pulls back the table, she pushes in my chair, she makes space.