Because Dubious Hodgepodge Would be a Great Name for a Rock Band

BUT FIRST, LET ME GET ALL META ON YOUR ASS
With a question from…me! Whoa.

Dear Amalah,
Do you have any words of advice for future question submitters about how they can help YOU help THEM? Also, why do all your pop culture references date from before 1999, you big fat lame-o?
Amalah
Yes! I do have advice for them! And also, I like big butts! And I cannot lie about it!
1) Before submitting a question, please use the Search bar up yonder, over the masthead, to make sure I haven’t already covered your particular quandary. Follow-ups to previous questions and requests for clarifications are accepted and encouraged, but I’m trying not to beat the ever-loving hell out of the same topics week after week. (Coming soon to a sidebar near you: categories and sub-categories! Whee!)
2) Please include as much detail as possible in your question. Photos are extremely helpful and will not be published, unless you explicitly tell me to publish it. (You little vixens, you.) If you aren’t sure whether a specific detail is relevant, include it anyway. Let me slog through it all and edit it down if needed, but seriously: the more info you give, the better my advice will be.
2b) Which is still probably not saying much.
3) Please use a descriptive subject line in your email, like “oily hair problem,” or “foundation question” or “my boyfriend is a lazy unemployed slob who I want to kick to the curb but omg, I still love him.”
4) Please please please be patient. I answer three to five questions a week, depending on the Small Chunkin One’s nap schedule. But I receive waaay more than that every week and the backlog, she grows. So at this point I cannot promise I’ll be able to answer them all.
Each week I try to pick a diverse group of questions and topics — usually starting with the oldest questions first, although I may mix in a newer question if the subject catches my eye or it seems like a good fit for the week. (I also have this little thing about only answering questions that I…you know…can answer. If it’s over my head, I may hand it off to a guest writer, or I may just glare at it in frustration week after week.)
4b) On that note, please don’t resubmit questions. If you received the auto-reply email with the scary-sounding legal disclaimer, I received your question.
And now, on with this week’s hodgepodge of dubiousness!

His Royal Yet Dubious Chunkiness.
Amy,
Love the Smackdown, your round-up, and your regular posts!
Here’s my question – I am not in the best of health, and require a wheelchair in order to leave the house. As you can imagine, it is not the ultimate fashion accessory. As a matter of fact, it is a fashion killer. Things that look good when you are standing — hitting all the right curves & accentuating none of the wrong ones — look not so good in the wheelchair. Long legs may look good if you were able to stand on them, but if you’re sitting down the whole time, you may now look as if you have knees the size of dessert plates, which poke out at odd angles. The often advised monochromatic look? Makes you look like a blob of whatever color this may be. Drawing attention to the waist – not so much an option anymore, unless I decided to turn my “accent” into a “seatbelt.”
Fashion magazines aren’t exactly wheelchair friendly, so I honestly have no ideas as to how to look semi-attractive when leaving the house — I may not be a social butterfly, but my college friends insist on getting married, and “I look like a blob” is not really an acceptable reason to decline.
Now before you continue your whole “I-am-not-qualified-to-answer-these-questions” rant, let me just point this out: A wheelchair? Is sitting down (just all the time). You, yourself, probably sit down quite a bit. Perhaps even at the occasional wedding. Therefore, I consider that you have some qualifications & can advise me. Please?
With Many Many thanks!
Lil
Oh my hell, I am so not qualified to answer these questions. Although you make a very good point. I do sit down quite a bit. In fact, I am a big fan of sitting.
There are two main issues with clothing and sitting, two issues I’m sure you’re well aware of: waistband tummy bulge and high-water pant legs. The pant-leg problem is solved easily enough by wearing pants with a longer inseam. (Gap, J.Crew, Ann Taylor and Banana Republic all have pants with longer legs, just to name a few places.) Or go in the opposite direction with a purposely cropped pant.
But what about that damn bulge around the middle?
You don’t mention your overall body type or size, so I’ll keep this verrrrry general. Two-piece outfits will look the best, preferably with the top and bottom in contrasting colors. (I hear you on the monochromatic look. Break up the blob, I say!)
The bottom should be at least knee-length, for both um, modesty and to hide the upper-thigh squash spread. I think a full and gathered skirt would be PERFECT, as all that material cascading around you will make your torso seem elegant and slim. And the top should be fitted around your boobs, kind of longish and never tucked in. Use it to cover any waist-funkiness.
And then, of course, you draw even more attention away from any real or imagined blobness with a great pair of shoes and a bold beaded necklace.
Luckily, I have just described an outfit that is so very, terribly in right now. Mini-skirts are out! Tops are hitting our hips! The peasant blouses are so billowy they’re bordering on maternity wear! Three cheers for jewel tones!
Even SHORTS are knee-length right now, which warms my tarry heart.
I’ve borrowed some photos of outfits from Banana, the actual pieces are less important than the overall idea of the outfits. They’re all pretty simple: long untucked tops, cropped pants and/or knee-length full skirts. They’re all versions of outfits I own that are 100% sitting-down-approved.


Hi Amy,
I have a problem that I have no idea how to fix. No matter what type of mascara I wear, I always get dark smudge marks under my eyes within a few hours of application. I only put mascara on my top lashes, have tried several types of normal and waterproof (I know, waterproof is the devil but I’m clutching at straws here) but no matter what I end up with the smudges.
The smudge marks occur right under my bottom lashes and are worse towards the outer edges of my eyes. Even if I only apply a light coat it still happens. My skin does lean towards oily, but not to the extent that I would think it would cause this problem.
I’m currently using moderately priced mascara but would be willing to try more expensive brands.
I’m sick of looking trashy and tired early into a night out, and await your wisdom.
Thank you in advance,
Emma
Mascara is one of those things that I still refuse to spend a lot of money on. I’ve tried some very nice ones, but the end result is the same: it’s dried-out toast in about three to six months, with nothing to be done except buy a new tube and toss the old one, no matter how much mascara may be left. If I’m going to spend the big bucks on a top-shelf brand, I am going to use it until I get down to the very last dregs no.matter.what. (I unscrew my foundation’s pump top once the bottle seems empty, and then I scrape the inside tube to make sure I get every usable drop.)
I’m guessing your mascara problems are stemming more from the shape of your eyes and lashes than from the product you use. And then your oily skin is exacerbating the problem. So I’d recommend you try some priming products and see if that doesn’t help.
Some of the best eye bases and primers out there right now are made by Urban Decay (probably because the line is big on bold, wild eye shadows, and colors like “Oil Slick” and “Asphyxia” are pretty much going to made everybody look like heroin addicts without a good priming product).

For your actual lashes, try Lingerie and Galoshes for Lashes, which is a combination primer/waterproofer thingie. First you apply the primer (“Lingerie”), then your own mascara, and then the waterproofer (“Galoshes”) (do you get it? GEDDIT? ha!). To combat the oiliness/smudginess of your whole general eye area, try the Primer Potion.
(Also, have you tried curling your lashes first? And then combing them after applying your mascara? I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA if that would do any good at all, but it at least sounds like it might, right?)
(The Wednesday Advice Smackdown: Holy God, She’s Totally Just Making Stuff Up Now.)
Dear Gracious Amalah the Wise,
I have very large, very arched feet. Someone should build a structure in their honor and place it on a St. Louis riverbank…
So I’ve got these high arches and in the last few months or so it’s become clear that I’m becoming my mother because I can no longer tolerate shoes without support–that goes for flip-flops, sandals, heels, loafers, basically everything. Any day that I wear footwear other than my supportive and cushy tennis shoes, I spend the evening nursing horrible foot cramps that wreck my toes into gnarled claws of fiery pain.
Luckily, tennis shoes go pretty well with my generally slobtastic wardrobe, but every once in a while I need to put on a skirt or some slacks or otherwise feign attention to style. Also, the tennis shoes are the same ones I wear to the gym, which GROSS.
So what’s a girl to do? I’ve tried insoles, but they either don’t stay put, are so bulky my heel won’t stay in my shoe, or they just plain don’t fix the cramping problem. Plus, insoles and flip-flops don’t get along so well. I’ve tried trendier tennis shoes, but the styles these days are usually just as flat and flimsy as a regular loafer. Even my beloved Chuck Taylors are giving me foot cramps, and it might as well be the end of the world.
Confession: I buy really cheap shoes. I mean really really cheap. (My favorite pair of kitten-heeled sandals were $3.19 on the sale rack at Mervyns four years ago. (Size 10s are usually on deep discount.) But guess what? They are the only shoes besides my tennies that I can wear comfortably.) Could the shoes’ cheapness be the problem? Will better-made shoes come with more arch support? And how will I know that the expensive shoes are crampless until I’ve spent a fortune on them and worn them around for a day or two? Maybe the problem is just my feet and nothing else? Know anywhere I can get new feet at a good price.
Ever grateful,
Leah
p.s. I had no idea it was pronounced AIM-ah-lah, and now my whole world is turned inside out.
(You know, there was a time when all the questions I got were about shampoo. And I used to complain about all the questions about shampoo. “I am bored of talking about shampoo!” I would say. But at least I KNEW THE ANSWERS to questions about shampoo. These days? Y’all are just trying to stump me.)
(And it’s working.)
Anyway, this is a question I really hesitate to answer. Foot pain should never be ignored or shrugged off. And the words “fiery pain” raise those good old “she should really be asking a doctor” alarm bells.
There are a lot of conditions that cause foot pain, and your high arches put you at particular risk for developing some of them. Of course, foot cramps can also be caused by relatively innocuous things, like a potassium deficiency. And sometimes? Stuff just starts acting up as we get (gulp) older.
But only a doctor can tell you for sure. He might recommend custom or medical-grade insoles or an anti-inflammatory medicine. Or he might just tell you to head over to Easy Spirit and learn to live with it.
In the meantime, do NOT wear heels or shoes without good arch support. Try a potassium supplement and wear a good pair of supportive slippers (I know, I KNOW) around the house at night instead of going barefoot. And demand a LOT of foot rubs.