Rice, Beans, Relish, and Entrée: A Guide to Women’s Wardrobe Decisions

In the wake of the popular clamor over my decision guide to hair, I offer companion advice about dressing in the modern world. . .

The food pyramid is a healthy, back-to-basics, and inexpensive model for eating. Briefly put: eat a lot of carbohydrates, then a good amount of vegetables, and fewer fats and proteins. In effect the USDA food pyramid is an endorsement of the staple diet the world over: a lot of rice, a good amount of beans and vegetables, then a relish. The regular consumption of a separate entrée of meat, poultry or fish is a phenomenon of privilege that has become common in the industrialized north and among post-colonial elites. Recommended USDA practice is to keep it small (sometimes stated as the size of the palm of your hand). Rich people hear this: make meat a niche at the top of your food pyramid.

I think about the pyramid when I dress. The bottom of the pyramid is the most important item. Comparable to a smothering of rice are pants. Pants are critical and simple -- a staple. There’s not much reason to get excited about pants, however. Next, appearing as the beans, is the shirt. A shirt is more interesting than pants, a bit more of an opportunity to show flair, to play with color, cut and texture. Shirts carry seasoning the way a good stew does. Together, pants and a shirt can be a hearty, satisfying, simple, yet spicy combination. Attention must be paid to the appropriateness of the pants-shirt combination just as with rice and beans. Would you eat black beans with sticky rice? Nor would you wear a broadcloth shirt with knit pants.

All around the world, people complement their rice and beans with a relish, salsa in Mexico, lasary in Madagascar, a sambal in South Asia. The condiment is the scarf. It lends additional flavor to a plate of rice and beans. A scarf, like mango pickle, punches above its weight to make a simple combination distinctive.

The entrée: a jacket. It brings the peasant rice-and-beans, working mom pants-and-blouse combination to a higher bourgeois level. This is the top of the pyramid. You spend more on jackets, but you need fewer of them and you can exercise restraint about wearing them. Once again, texture matters. No structured wool blazers with those comfy knit pants. Felt is a great choice for a jacket to justify comfortable pants!

Shoes, on the other hand, are as water to the food pyramid. Don’t get any more sentimental about your shoes than you are about your tires. They hit the road, they get you where you need to go. Ankles turn and fortunes are squandered on inappropriate footwear. Don’t buy the European imported fancy stuff. A simple choice keeps you alive and active. . .

Time is short, money is scarce, the world is crazy. In eating and dressing, think Rigoberta Menchú before Martha Stewart. Both were persecuted, but only one of them deserved it.