For years, I owned just two bras at a time. They were white or beige, and all I cared about was that they looked decent under clothing. Once they were a bit worse for wear, I'd find two more on clearance. And so on.
And one day it changed. Okay, maybe it wasn't a single day, or moment, but there was a pivot. A larger realization that wearing decent lingerie wasn't frivolous—it was a necessity that I deserved.
Learning to love lingerie was an exercise in learning to love myself. Let me explain.
I wasn't a cool kid. I grew up on a small, run-down farm in Oregon, and when I made my way to junior high school in Portland, I was bookish and goofy, a little pudgy. I didn't have the right clothes, I was completely out of touch with pop culture and I had a very unfortunate homemade haircut. If this were a John Hughes movie, I'd be the awkward-yet-lovable outcast who'd win the heart of the cutest boy in school. Since this was real life, I was bullied and never was asked out.
By high school, I'd lost the baby fat but was in full overcompensation mode, wearing wild thrift store outfits and sneaking into seedy nightclubs. It was the outward appearance of confidence, but whatever self-worth I possessed was derived from the admiration of others.
My insecurity manifested itself in odd ways. I almost always wore my hair down because a long-forgotten person casually commented that I looked better that way. I went years without wearing skirts or shorts because I was convinced that my legs were distastefully chubby. I refused to wear a bathing suit in public.
There was a silver lining to being both incredibly driven and terrified by failure—I put myself through college and went on to have a solid career in engineering. For the first time in my life, I had financial stability; I traveled and briefly lived abroad; I returned to school and earned a masters degree. All wonderful things, but I felt like I was living someone else's life.
One weekend a few years ago, I was at my local Victoria's Secret, waging my eternal struggle to find a t-shirt bra that didn't make me look lumpy. The sales associate popped into my changing room, plucked disapprovingly at the bra gore floating above my chest, and confided that they didn't carry my size because I was larger than a DD cup. I knew that DD-plus sizes existed, but they seemed exotic and inaccessible, something reserved for the fantastically proportioned. But I was also tired of looking lumpy.
So I dove into learning about bras, from sizing protocols, to how construction varied between brands and styles, to how the width of the wires or shape and depth of the cups could radically affect fit. I discovered that there were a handful of brands making chic, comfortable, beautifully made bras for full busts. Whenever I visited a new city, I'd browse the local bra shop and get a fitting. I learned what looked good on me, and what looked good on my friends. And I realized that a well-fitting bra wasn't an accessory or an indulgence, it was a necessity to feeling and looking your best.
Over a couple glasses of Cabernet one night, one of my girlfriends encouraged me to start a lingerie boutique. I'd always wanted to start a business, and this was a sweet spot of personal passion and commercial viability. But I was missing a critical component—fearlessness. And that's when I realized that I'd be stuck living someone else's life until I quit worrying about things that were fundamentally unimportant. Worrying about the size of my thighs, or how my eyes crinkle when I smile, or whether my clothes were cool enough.
I had a choice: to spend the rest of my life striving to be "good enough" while being crippled by inadequacy, or just quit giving a damn and seize the moment. So I chose to quit giving a damn, dug into my savings and launched my boutique, Dear Scarlett, in 2014. The work never stops, but it's been fun to learn from the ground up, from selecting pieces for the collection, to product photography, to designing the website, to modeling lingerie. But most importantly, it's deeply rewarding to create something that's a power for good—a celebration of beauty to help women feel and look amazing.
So without further ado, here are the five lessons that I've learned in my bumpy journey from awkward farm kid to launching my own business.
1. Life is neither fair nor easy. But if something is always difficult, then consider letting it go. This is particularly applicable to careers and relationships.
2. The world is incredibly complex and unpredictable. Don't try to control it, learn to harness it.
3. You'll never be perfect, but strive for excellence in everything. Embrace your weirdness, and show compassion for your shortfalls.
4. People must earn the right for you to care what they think of you. If they haven't won your trust and respect, then their opinion of you is likely irrelevant. Repeat this to yourself as necessary.
5. Your looks are not the most important or interesting thing about you. Don't let your best qualities be marginalized by whether or not someone thinks you're pretty. It really doesn't matter, and they likely don't matter either.
I hope you found these thought-provoking! Let me know what you think in the comments below, and what you'd like for me to write about next.
Cheers!
Adapted from the author's original content featured in The Lingeristas, a collective of lingerie lovers, bloggers, designers, models, photographers, and everyone in between. Photography by Zogecko.
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