I bought a great fitted sweater the other day. Correction: I bought what I thought was a great fitted sweater the other day, until I wore it out in the world and made the mistake of shrugging my shoulders in it. You see, the stretch knit of which I speak, happens to be adorned with two large buttons that, when I'm at rest, sit flat and parallel to one another on my mid-section, just below my chest. However, when I lift my shoulders ever so slightly, voilà, the buttons shift upward in a flash and, suddenly, my breasts look like they have been bedazzled with shiny, black, industrial strength nipples.
I have never understood designers' fascination with buttons as fashion. I had a pair of cherry red corduroy pants as a kid that had three buttons (flower petals) on each back pocket. The designer might have thought these buttons served a great aesthetic purpose, but, honestly, the only purpose served was that of making my butt cheeks into musical instruments, as they tap tap tapped out a tune every time I sat down in my chair. Then, whenever I moved, it was like the remix. I cannot forget feeling those buttons pressing into my flesh during a mandatory assembly where I had to suffer through sitting "Indian-style" on the gymnasium floor until my rear end became a button punching bag, and my feet (for their having been sat upon for two hours) lost all sensation. At the end of that assembly, as I pulled myself along the waxed wood floors of the gymnasium with arm strength alone, I looked like a seal...in cherry red corduroy pants.
Buttons have a really undeserved sweet reputation in our culture. They seem quaint. With their perfect little holes, they look like little round faces. Of course, no one ever says that about bowling balls, and they, too, have those holey faces. Cute as a button? Yes. Cute as a bowling ball? Not so much. Buttons seem delicate. Button noses, not baton noses, are heralded as the beauty ideal. Just ask the plastic surgeons. Button your lip sounds so much daintier and so much more polite than shut your hole, or quit flapping your gums, or put a sock in it.
I can understand buttons as fasteners; that I get and mostly appreciate. It's the decorative buttons that cause me to pause and shake my head while shopping. Using buttons in place of eyes on children's clothing is just weird to me. I saw a yellow sweatshirt in the kids' department at Macy's not too long ago that proudly boasted an alligator with blue button eyes on its front. It was the ugliest thing. I felt so sorry for any child whose mother might buy it, thinking it was adorable because it happened to be in the children's department at Macy's. Why can't manufacturers just stitch on the damn eyes the same way they stitch on the rest of the damn alligator? That way when children's alligator sweatshirts lose buttons, their mothers won't have to send their children to school wearing crippled alligators across their chests. Quick, sew a toothpick onto that sucker! Your blind bastard of an alligator needs a walking stick. Using buttons as wheels on knitted trucks is equally strange to me. How is this clever? Don't kids have it tough enough nowadays? Must we also force them to wear lousy arts and crafts projects?
Listen to me closely, okay? Buttons are not as benign as they seem to be. Chip one or break one in half. Go on. I dare you. Why so reluctant? Aha! You, it seems, know what I know. Yes, you know that if you do chip a button or break one in half, you will suddenly have a rather ninja-like weapon in your possession. I don't care what you say. No broken plastic anything is as sharp and as deadly as the itsy bitsy cutesy wootsy broken button from hell. Just ask that other cute button you know and love...your belly button. Clearly the victim of button on button crime, mine still winces when I put on a pair of tight-ish pants. "No, Sandra, please," my belly button's muffled cries seem to say. "Elastic waistband! Elastic waistband!"
Anyway, this is where I press the POWER button OFF and leave you with my musings. My scissors, after all, have a date with the threads that bind my shiny, black button nipples to my otherwise great fitted sweater.
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