Feb 9, 2010

Seven Deadly Cross Dressing Sins – Buy One, Get 2 Free

Our litany of transgressions against the Seven Deadly Sins started here and here with your Cross Dressing Correspondent sloppily gorging on the low hanging forbidden fruits of Vanity and Envy. Easy stuff really. Very distinct, very universal, and very human failings. Not too too difficult for a writer to ponder, process, and pass such behavioral pits. The garden gets thornier the further one wades in though.

In fact, one begins to wonder about the whole original Seven Sins Project. You would think if something was truly deadly, that you could identify very clean lines and red flags, but I find it difficult to tease the knots out of Avarice, Gluttony and Lust. The original authors of this curious manifesto could just as easily gone for a Forsaken Four or, perhaps, a Fatal Five Sins. Somewhere in The Vatican Archives I am quite certain there is a memo from the Cardinal in charge of Marketing to his cross-functional project team along these lines:

Team: With agreement reached on the Key Performance Indicators for the Deadly Sins Program in our weekly Team Status Update and Planning Session, we are golden. Time now to drive the project over the finish line. To proceed, we need a final count of Deadly Sins. I am pulling rank and setting the bar for you here. We are going to launch with 7 “Deadly Sins”.

7 makes sense from a messaging and merchandising perspective. With 7 Sins, we can rotate new creative in daily, and really habituate the faithful to the idea of feeling poorly about themselves every day, and not just Sundays. This should support top line revenue objectives and help us maintain our admirable market share position (take that Buddha! LOL!).

I realize this will take some real creativity from all of you to drive from five to seven, but you are the best in the business, and I have no doubt that you can pull it off. I am so confident in fact that I promised 7 Sins, and brought the launch date forward by 2 weeks in a meeting with the other Big Hats here at HQ this morning. The pushy Spanish Cardinal with the bonfires and thumbscrews is taking too much damned air out of the room. This’ll shut him up for a while.

Get cranking on it team! The masses just can’t get too much of our brand of despair.

Warm regards, etc…

This memo of course caused shrieks of disbelief and snapped feather quills around the conference room table. A very quick solution was proposed by a junior Deacon, name lost to history, who scrambled up to the white board and sketched out a solution looking something like this: (click to expand). By splitting Greed into 3 subgroups, magico-presto, 7 Deadlies, done, out of here, and ready for Casual Friday!

Seriously, think about it a moment:

Avarice: Greed for material things. An inordinate, miserly desire to gain and hoard wealth.
Gluttony: Greed of the Appetite. Excessive eating and drinking.
Lust: Greed of the Flesh. A passionate or overmastering desire or craving for bodily fulfillment,

Do you see a common thread? Impulse control, really.

Now you know I like a quick fix as much as the next gal (yeah, yeah, yeah, I am getting around to Sloth, o I don’t know, next week … I suppose), and so today I am reconsolidating these sins back into their original and correct Greed uber-group.

Avarice I will claim. Guilty as charged. I do like a nice little trip to the shops. With me out of the closet, I have found more room in said closet for material things, cottons, wools and silks yes, and a pretty rich variety of lycra reinforced elastic materials too. And shoes. Did I mention shoes?

I am not crazed about the accumulation of things in general. My attitude about lucre is healthy: my creditors seem to be more greedy about my money than I am. Typically, I am disciplined about weighing the merits of purchases. Want vs. Need is a part of my daily marketplace calculus.

Having kept Petra pretty deep in the shadows for so long though, I have indulged material urges pretty well of late, making up for lost time. Great bargains along the way, but it is well past time to start posing the Want vs. Need question in Petra mode a little more habitually. I have a nice wardrobe, and I maintain clothes well. I should simply change up the accessories to keep things fresh.

I have only on one occasion repeated an outfit in a social setting. I have garments that I have not yet worn. I have a couple of things that I may never wear. This, to my thinking is not quite right. I am going take those things that I will not wear, and find them a new home for them with someone who will.

Gluttony. Not too much of an issue here. I eat 3 times daily, and my metabolism eats 4. Feelings of satiety come naturally to me, en femme and in drab. The feeling of being truly full pleaseth me not. Now and then I get a funny look for leaving food on the plate, and for years my response has been that Waste is not a deadly sin. Gluttony is. I would rather leave value out than try to cram it in. And beyond the health considerations, quite seriously, being relatively slender is a plus for the Cross Dresser.

On the other hand though, not having pockets available to me en femme, I sometimes lack certainty about what exactly to do with my hands. If there is a glass of wine nearby, it seems too easy, too natural to pick it up, take a sip, notice the curious stamp of lipstick, put the glass down, and repeat as required. I am a bundle of nerves and sensations when dressed, becalmed in part, but also really attenuated. A good amount of current runs through me in these happy hours. I should (will) work at being a little more "still", in the moment, and a little less herky-jerky about the beverage at my elbow.

Lust. I have confessed in prior posts to having a more fetishy approach to Cross Dressing in my youth. This season seems to have passed for me. The lions share of this change I believe goes to the welcome that I have provided to my desires to explore our phenomenom fully. With permission granted to myself to better understand this somewhat vexing aspect of my life, I am at peace. My old Furies leave me alone. And so do I.

A part of this change goes to time too. The chronological odometer takes a bite out of our potential for Lust, or at least for the impulse to act upon it. In this matter though, with the natural waning of Lust that is attendant upon time, a little extra care and cultivation of her better natured partner, Passion is required. Lust sinks her teeth in and drags one about. Passion is summoned from within. If we are not victims of Lust, we must be authors of Passion. I will work on being a better author.

Five down, two to go. Again, as in prior posts, I commend to you the wonderful artwork of Marta Dahlig. I am not sure that I would have pushed this theme quite so far without her imagery to better merchandise the odd firings of my brain. Clearly if you have read this far, you have her to thank in part, and are not guilty of Sloth. And now that you have come this far, I do hope to not have stirred up any Wrath..

I am saving all of that for future posts.

Happy sin-free dressing, and everything else….

4 comments:

Leah said...

I think I'm guilty of avarice too. But like you, I have a want list and a need list.

Gluttony... well, I tend to overeat chocolates. And I'm quite selfish when it comes to my chocolates. I keep them away from the public eye so that I can have them for me alone. Hahaha!

I have a story to share about the chocolate hoarding. I had some chocolate bars inside my bag (those big chunks) which I secretly nibble on every single time I get a chance. At the end of the day, the inside of my bag was filled with melted chocolates. Everything inside was coated with chocolates. And my bag is a Louis Vuitton. hahaha! The price I have to pay for being greedy. xoxo

Lynn Jones said...

I can't believe the church left bigotry, marketing and socks & sandals off the revised list of sins. :)

I'll confess to sloth. I am rather lazy, but we come back - again - to balance. If one does over indulge (gluttony) then the only cure is some exercise.

I think the whole need vs want thing is a great idea. The old line about "it's only a bargain if you need it" springs to mind.

Good post, BTW

Leslie Ann said...

Wasting perfectly good outfits, when there are naked children in China who would love to wear that chiffon number. Tut, tut. A sin indeed.

Couture Carrie said...

Very interesting parallels you draw amongst these 3 sins, darling Petra ~ astutely observed!

I definitely have a problem with want vs. need...

xoxox,
CC

 
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