It was my birthday last Sunday, and the thing about birthdays – or rather, the thing about me – is that every birthday is my fifth birthday, meaning I see it as completely rational behavior to expect that everyone is in on the fact that I am the sun and they should be orbiting accordingly. I think this mentality stems from the fact that I was an only child until I was seven and that an alarming amount of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder reads like the back flap of my autobiography, but your guess is as good as mine.

In any case, of course my birthday didn’t turn out that way. Nobody orbited shit. But this isn’t about my birthday, or the fact that my own mother didn’t call me, or that I still have no comprehension of the term “too many shots,” or that my boyfriend’s stalker decided to show up at my favorite bar. Look, my birthday was basically like a twenty-four hour coke comedown.

Anyway.

Believe it or not, this is about maxi dresses and why we have to fight to keep them in style forever, just like a crush on George Clooney.

First of all, they’re flattering on everyone. If you’re tall, you look taller. If you’re average, you look taller. If you’re short, you look taller. And if you think you’re too tall or too short to pull off a maxi dress, nothing is really going to make you look like your genes didn’t get messed up somewhere along the way, so you might as well wear it anyway. Look, I’m sorry. My own mother, the one who didn’t call me on my birthday, is 4’11″ and she’s adorable and all, but something happened there. In any case, a maxi dress for her and a maxi dress for you too! Do it up!

Second of all, they’re comfortable. It’s like wearing a giant bed sheet all day and having it be totally okay, and when you get down to it, which I’m about to, isn’t that really the dream? To take your bed with you wherever you shall roam?

Thirdly, you don’t have to shave your legs. I’m especially sensitive to luxuries like leg shaving because when my boyfriend and I moved into our apartment, silly impulsive me was like, “Who needs a bathtub? I love this place!” And then I took a shower. And then I realized that in order to shave, I have to mirror Nastia Liukin’s stretching regimen to even begin to possess the ability to contort myself into anything resembling a profitable shaving position.

Lastly, when you put on a maxi dress, you’re done getting dressed. Gone are the days of trying to mismatch but not match too much or dress something down or incorporating the principals of color theory into your oddly layered attire! And it doesn’t even matter that you’re wearing your weird TOMS because no one can see them! And at the end of the day, you have less laundry. We haven’t seen options like these since the Paleolithic Era.

I guess this was also a little bit about my birthday.