Camping Chic - How to Look Better on Less

As I have explained in previous posts, I live in a small space, a 22 ft RV to be exact, and sometimes  I don’t have electricity.  My water usage has to be limited to what I can carry in my holding tank and by the proximity of potable water.  I sometimes go days without an available shower (I will explain later,) let alone a blow dryer!  But am I piggish about my person?  Nope, I am too smart and resourceful for piggishness!  You see, I and my husband, Lance, travel around the National Parks and Forests, and place a priority on FUN!   This lifestyle, unfortunately , is not conducive to preening and primping; but it can still happen with a little brains, ingenuity, and planning!  Of course, even the word pretty is an illusion, and subjective at best, and everyone has a different idea of what looking good really means. Being clean and neat has fewer definitions.   House dwellers, with all the comforts of home have differing standards; some are neat-nicks and some are, well…  slobs about their personal toilette!

Over the last few weeks I have learned a few things regarding looking good under adverse conditions, or should I say, staving off the inevitable ugliness as much as possible.  I am willing to share my regimen because, although I have many strikes against me from the my choice of lifestyle, and a dearth of beauty products, I can overcome many tough beauty challenges.  At the very least, with the following suggestions, anyone can minimize the pain of the ugliest of ducklings.

Starting from head to toe:

• Wash your hair when it is dirty!  If you don’t have much water, or if sometimes you have no water at all to shampoo your grease ball hair, minimize the difficulty by having less hair in the first place.

  

  You get the idea!  Short!

  Get your hair cut to a super short cut!  Simply get over the impractical idea that your hair has to look a certain way.  It doesn’t!  Also, nobody on earth gives a darn about your hair!  This is a sad truth, so admit it.  Do what is practical to be clean and neat.  The key is a good, super short hair cut.  Don't take me so literally as to buy clippers and give yourself a crew cut.  I don’t mean to be that practical, but get a cute woman’s haircut. I like a bit of sideburns.   This haircut works OK without a blow dryer, so don’t settle for a kind-a-short haircut because then you'll be tied to a blow-dryer, and if you have no blow dryer, a kind-a-short hair cut looks the shitz!  You know when a short haircut grows out just a little bit and gets flat on top?  You want to put off  this problem as long as possible, so just get a super short 'do in the first place.  Then get a little mousse or gel to shape it if you want to, but the priority is that it needs to look good au natural!  That is the first thing!  In short (pun) your hair cut needs to look good without the use of a blow dryer and it needs to be able to shampoo in ½ gallon of water! Period.

The benefits of this kind of haircut are legion.  You can wash it in a lake, sink, fish gut trough, or if  none of the above are available,  you can wear a cute hat, if you have a cute hat.

Here are my hats! 

Actually, it's a scarf tied around my head!

My favorite!

I don’t wear a regular baseball hat because that is what my husband does, and I can’t afford to like a man.  It is bad enough to have a super short haircut but a ball cap adds insult to injury and is not an asset to me.   I like the engineer style hat, like Che Guerra wore.

Another benefit is I can be fearless and wear a turban type thing.  The key to pulling this look off is to pretend it is the livin’ end and that you look fantastic.  And, by the way, that is The 
Secret to looking good anyway.  (You can get away with iffy fashion statements if you do it them with confidence.  This is a recurring theme, so take note.)

• I have olive skin and am of a certain age, so I have dry skin, tending toward wrinkles, and I tan super easily.  I just spent a month in Arizona and noticed that Arizona ladies look brown and wrinkled.  They also look happy and healthy.  For me, I like to be tanned but want to avoid the alligatoring of my skin.  I use a sun block if I know I will have an  my face exposed.  Everyday I wear a foundation with sunscreen, as a matter of course, and then I wear a hat for obvious shade, but also that my poor nose doesn’t turn into a brown fig!   I already have freckles and sun damage on my cheeks so I don’t want to make it worse.  As far as smile lines and crows feet go, who really cares? Nobody.
• 
  
• Wear earrings. (See first photo)  All too frequently, the best thing a girl has going is pretty ears, so if this is the case, go with it.  Allowing empty ear holes is a waste of a good opportunity to spruce up a little!  Cute, yet tasteful earrings are a must. Wear minimal ones, or even diamond studs.  They are a nice touch and always terrific!  Do not wear big, gobby, cheap and flashy earrings. (No shoulder dusters. They never look great, they just look cheap.)   The key is to be streamlined and tasteful, and with your short hairdo, stud earrings look great. 
•  
• Wear colors that look good on you.  It is great to have the camper chic style a la REI or Cabela’s, but if you don’t look good in beige, don’t do beige, or camouflage, or the like.  I am a Winter color girl,  WEBSITE and being such I look washed out and wan, like I am going to die, if I wear beige near my face.  So, when getting dirty and grimy is unavoidable, don’t make it worse by wearing something that you look crappy in in the first place.  Grime happens so the right color looks better grimy than the wrong color.  It  really is very easy to look good, even in your play clothes.  I personally think the  well-worn- out look is a good look,  as long as it is in good repair and is worn out from honest wear, from actually living the life!
• 
  
• Make sure your pants fit!  Buy the right size and wear a belt.  Belts with some stretch look good and they hold your pants up, which makes the butt fit and keeps the crotch from sagging.  Who says that you have to wear baggy play clothes?  Make sure your pants are long enough if they are supposed to be long!  Fit is so important! I am a too fat chick, and fat looks like fat no matter how slim (pun) you slice it, so I can admit it and get over it!  I make sure my clothes fit so that I am sure to look like a too-fat lady in nice fitting clothes.  I don’t want to look like a fat lady in wiener skins! Come on ladies!  By the right size!  And while we are toughing on touchy subjects, a quick aside: If you are a man with man-boobs, do everybody a favor and wear a shirt!
• 
  
• I love my red hiking boots!  Enough said! 

  

  I neglected to clean the dust off them before I took the photo!  These are Teva Rika Peak

• I almost always wear a necklace, and I make it a chunky one for outdoors.  It looks stupid to be seriously overdressed, but I like to have on a piece of jewelry simply because it is girlish. 
  
  And I  can’t afford not to look girlish since I am big and strong naturally, with course dark hair, have a square jaw and rather strong features.  And then when I get grungy, and sunburned on top of all of that I begin looking like the man next door…so I try to do the girlish things that don’t cramp my fun. ( I would never wear high heels camping  That is for bimbos.)
• I try to keep my hands looking nice.  Nails filed and trimmed, wear a ring or five, and light nail polish if I have the time.  Light looks better when it is chipped and showing some wear and so looks better far longer than a darker colored polish. 
  
  
  
  
  
  I always keep polish on my toes, because again, it is feminine and I have pretty toes. Tee-hee!  Go bright on toes because I think it is pretty to have red peeping out of your sandals.  Dirty feet scream  that I am dirty all over so I make sure to wash my feet in a bucket every night.  I grease my feet with heavy Eucerin cream before bed so that my feet are soft.  I hate cracked heels and they look like trailer trash.
• 
  
• Wet ones or baby wipes are good for washing everything when in a pinch.  Hot weather and tromping around outdoors, and pottying in less than perfect circumstances, call for wipes.  They are discreet and invaluable.  I am not a pottying snob and will never let a bodily function come between me and a fun time so, be prepared by stowing a few in a zip lock and throw them in the backpack.
• 
  
• Use lotion so that your skin stays nice.  Don’t get dry and flaky.  Wash in a bucket of warm water with a mild soap and get mostly clean.  I read a book called Glass Castles, and the protagonist says that one of the important things her mother taught her was that you can get mostly clean in a cup of water.  I agree, but I like at least a half gallon.  I will pack that much with me if I have to.  Um, underarm deodorant, chap stick and tooth brush too.  I never wear mascara in the boonies, because it is just too hard to get off without making black raccoon eyes.  I can’t afford to have black under my eyes, and it never looks good when it gets wet and runs down my cheeks.  I feel it is too much hassle and I pay too big a price for black eyelashes, when roaming outdoors in the sticks. 
• My guilty pleasure: I have a Mio rotary facial scrubber  under the sink in my RV.  I use it to keep my face clean and exfoliated and my elbows and knees soft... when I have electricity.

So, in a nutshell, this is my standard toilette and what can do to stave off the uglies.   I get a few compliments and quite a few favorable comments.   I still want my husband to think I look snappy if I can't  be gorgeous.  I am just vain enough to be tickled when someone says that I look good in my grubbies.  It is worth the few concessions it takes.