I’ve start­ed tuck­ing in my shirt. The only two times that I remem­ber tuck­ing were both at wed­dings; Dr. Lea’s and Jono’s. I did­n’t even tuck for my cous­in’s wed­ding, even after (or should I say, espe­cial­ly after) a chid­ing from Priscilla’s unpleas­ant boyfriend. Admittedly, I have a very thin waist, and tuck­ing always makes me look extreme­ly skin­ny. I don’t always tuck now, just when I’m wear­ing a dress shirt with cer­tain new v‑neck sweaters. If I don’t tuck, the sweaters end up bunch­ing up odd­ly around my mid-sec­tion and make me look even skin­nier.

I don’t mind it so far, although it feels a lit­tle odd to have so much mate­r­i­al stuffed into my pants, like I have a skirt on under­neath (not that I have ANY idea what that feels like, or ever pre­tend­ed I was Candice Bergen from Attenborough’s Gandhi after find­ing a cache of my moth­ers old clothes as a con­fused ado­les­cent). I’ve always been most com­fort­able with the casu­al untucked-shirt with tie or blaz­er style. I’ve been against tuck­ing for so long that it feels like I’ve sold out, start­ed lay­ing down to the prover­bial “man”, but real­ly, I’ve only start­ed to tuck my shirt in on occa­sion.

I’ve also start­ed try­ing to sit up straight. I think that pos­ture is an impor­tant part of self-image, and real­ized that I’m con­fi­dent enough now to project it. My par­ents would always tell me to keep my shoul­ders back, because they’re gen­er­al­ly for­ward in a sleazy slouch. I’ve been try­ing to go cold turkey and not slouch at all, instead of only sit­ting straight when I feel rest­ed. The great­est chal­lenge is sit­ting up straight while eat­ing soup. The extra dis­tance the spoon has to trav­el to the mouth is scary, and after a while, I end up slouch­ing again to pre­vent stray drip­pings from mak­ing large splash­es.