Eighteen Thoughts on: Pearls, Real and Fake 1) Neither of my grandmothers was much of one for pearls. 2) They both wore them, of course--I think pearl-wearing was mandatory, in the '50s? 3) I think thatâs how that worked, anyway. 4) I might have to check on that. 5) Anyway. I inherited one of my grandmotherâs actual, real strands of actual, real pearls. And they are long and sleek and lovelyâvery much reminiscent of the flapper that my grandmother might not have been, herself, but whom the kinds of flappers that she certainly watched, as a movie-going girl in the 1920sâthose bright, shocking, vivid figures, laughing down at her from the silver screen. 6) Perhaps she twisted her pearl necklace around her finger and dreamed, as she watched them. 7) Perhaps she never wore her pearl necklace in public, at all, because her mom had bought it for her, and she thought that it was stuffy, and dull. 8) I never had the chance to meet her, or to ask. 9) I love the pearl necklace, that my grandmother once wore (or at leastâthat she owned.) I even wear it myself, sometimes. 10) But I cannot say that it feels quite natural or right, on me. I feel very much conscious and aware that I am playing dress-up, whenever I wear it. 11) That I am a woman not suited to pearls, uneasily seeking to become suited. 12) I am so much more comfortable wearing pearls that are fake. In college, I had a massive fake pearl ring. In grad school, I had a huge fake pearl choker. I loved them both, wore them until they both quite literally fell apart, and never once felt uncomfortable, or unnatural in them. 13) Delightful things in that way, fake pearls. 14) Small wonder, then, that I should have been drawn to this delightful shirt. The pearls on them are so darned cheap, and look so darned fake. 15) And heaven bless them, for that. 16) This shirt, altogether, is almost too much, in its approximation of 1950s fussy, proper femininity. The elaborate pearl color. The hyper-nipped-in waist. The exaggerated, feminine flare. So over-the-top girly and decorous that it almost feels like a parody of itself. 17) Maybe my grandmothers felt the same way, when they donned the prissy bright pinknesses which they, as women of the 1950s, were encouraged, by both fashion and custom, to wear. 18) Perhaps the unease which I feel with the hyperfeminine decorousness of pearls is inherited--is not just mine, but also theirs.