How To Be Fabulous: Soap

Like many skills and attributes, Being Fabulous seems mysterious and inaccessible from the outside or like some sort of magical inborn ability.  But, although such abilities are certainly aided by natural aptitude, Being Fabulous (like most of them) is much more a learned skill than people realize.  

Because, in case you have never met one, babies are not fabulous.
Amazing, perhaps, but not fabulous.  Some people say they SUCK, but I won't believe such a calumny until I see it in person.

The world is not made of "wizards/gay people" and "muggles/straight people". It is made of people.  It's made of people who make choices designed to improve the aesthetics (and therefore the quality) of their immediate environment and experiences and those who do not. Your romantic and sexual preferences do not matter.

So, this is the first of future posts that will simply EXPLAIN how to be fabulous.  And, mostly, it's a matter of how you approach things; it's about HOW things are done, not what is done. It's about realizing that opportunities to be fabulous are EVERYWHERE, if you choose to see them and take advantage of them.

For example: SOAP.

Everyone has soap.  What could be more mundanely utilitarian?

Pliers wrenches, I suppose...

"Cuál es mas fabuloso: barra de jabón o alicates llave?"

"Um, I'll say... soap is more fabulous than pliers wrench."

"SI, correcto! Soap ES mas fabuloso que pliers wrench. Gracias, and we'll be back in un momento..."

 But... soap! What an opportunity to be fabulous!

Non-Fabulous:

Buying a bunch of bars of Irish Spring, or Dove, or, god forbid, Ivory Effing Soap, just because that's the closest thing on the shelf at the grocery store. I mean, do you buy Lucky Charms because it's the first cereal you see?

No. If you do buy Lucky Charms, it must be because, frankly, they look fabulous.

Being Fabulous 101: Buy "handmade" soaps.

Oh, I hear you: "It's needlessly expensive!"  Uh-huh. Unlike that Starbucks coffee you guzzle.  Besides, people who say that have obviously never HAD one of these soaps, which last about 10,000 times longer than a bar of Ivory Soap, because they are so g-d DENSE you could use them as a weapon in an alt-universe version of Clue.

But then you'd have to have a bathroom in the game and that way madness lies.

Instead of being lazy by buying the closest soap at hand, be lazy by buying soap that gets shipped to your door and which you only have to replace once every hundred years.  Being lazy, ahem, I mean "efficient" is a great goal, but you can still choose to be efficient in a way that's fabulous.

You have to look at soap EVERY DAY (I hope).
Don't you deserve it to be nice to look at?
Or are you a Lifer at the State Pen, or
a mashochist, or
an Australian?
Just a joke! What would an Australian do with soap?!

Being Fabulous 201: Buy them in variety.

Fabulous is those tea samplers that Hickory Farms used to sell, with a few of each tea.

Sure, it's not high-level fabulous, but, I mean, it's Hickory Farms what do you expect?  In MY day, these had OOLONG.

Not-fabulous is anything bought in large identical quantities.

Food should not be bought in the same manner as one buys construction materials.

So, when you buy (handmade) soaps, don't buy a pack of all the same kind, no matter how nice that kind seems.  Variety is the spice of life and being fabulous should make life spicy.  

My most recent soap order.  They didn't have Oolong.

Being Fabulous 301: Buy them TO MATCH THE DECOR.

Who cares what they SMELL like?  Anyone who gets THAT close to you is already committed.  What matters is how they LOOK.

I forget who taught me that.

All such soaps are some color or combinations of colors.  The places they GO have colors. All you have to do is pick ones that coordinate (that's decorator talk for "kinda matching but not identical")

Powder Room; Master Bath; Study Bath; Kitchen.
Oh, my gods, I think I live on a Clue board.

It's not that hard and with a few seconds of eye-using (which you have to do even to pick non-fabulous stuff), you can go just from non-fabulous soap to the most fabulous soap possible immediately.

And the secret to being fabulous on the whole in life is: being fabulous in as many small parts of life as possible.