THE CONDITIONING

I’m attending a wedding next month where the dress code is ‘cocktail attire’. My closet is void of fancy dresses. I don’t think I’ve dressed up since that time I was the Bearded Lady for the AIDS Walk Open four years ago. So I have been on a grueling hunt to find something fancy to put on this current version of my body. I pulled ten dressed from a sales rack in Nordstroms and finally when I got to the last one, I thought “Oh…I like this.” The material felt nice. The style was versatile in that I could dress it up or down. I was sure that it was the one. Then I took it off and saw the price tag that read $445.00 and it wasn’t on sale.

So the hunt continued.

While I was skimming through dresses at Nordstroms Rack, I overheard a young woman say “Oh! I really like this one!” I looked over to see her holding a formal up to her body and I remembered that it is homecoming season. Young women were out looking for dresses for the first high school dance of the season, which feels very Jane Austen. Then I heard her mother respond to her daughter “It looks way too small for you.” and I cringed for the girl. I saw the girl look at the tag and say “It says it’s my size.”, her voice wavering slightly. This did not soften her mother who then said “Well it looks too small.” And there I was, swirling in a pool of comments centered around my own weight, every hand slap as I reached for a second dinner roll, and the reasons why I’ve consistently worn oversized clothing all through life. I wanted to tell that girl not to listen to her mother, try the dress on, make your own choices about your own body. Tag sizes are meaningless. I’d just spent weeks trying on dresses “in my size” and each one was too tight here and too big there.

So, fuck corporate fashion sizing and their non-standards.

If I was braver, I would have told that girl to not cultivate that seed of doubt her mother had just planted. I would have said to her to not even let it take root. Spit it out now or end up with an overgrown garden of poisonous plants. You will waste so much time and money trying to remove the poisonous plants so that you can cultivate a beautiful garden of wild flowers and sundrops where you can feel good about how your body looks. You will forever be pulling weeds. Then I thought about that mother and how she’d been conditioned to plant seeds of doubt and how each woman in that family was probably nothing but poison gardens. Shedding those seeds onto other woman is the only way of life they know.

Is this the reason I chose not to have children? Did I think I would be like these women and be unable to see my child without criticism? When asked about my choice to be childless, I’ve always said that I didn’t think I had it in me to raise a good human being. Now I know better. The answer is that I didn’t/don’t want the responsibility of raising a good human being because what if I was the one with the critical eyes, shedding poisonous seeds of self loathing. Though I know that’s not true because of the visceral reaction to this mother/daughter interaction and my desire to protect that daughter. I have spent a lot of mental space, reimagining that scene and how I should have just blurted out “size guides are stupid. Let the girl try it on before you make her feel like a poopsicle.”

I did manage to finally get a dress, though I went about it in an unconventional way. I found a shimmery shear kaftan on the Anthropologie sale’s rack and a slip dress with lace trimming in a matching color at Nordstroms Rack to go under the kaftan. I plan to match it all with strappy heals and subtle jewelry. I purchased new mascara and lipstick. The outfit is appropriately uncomfortable and fancy. I’m sure I will look appropriately uncomfortable and fancy as well. But while I’m all dressed up, I will be thinking of that young woman wondering if she was able to shut out her mother’s voice in order to find a dress that makes her feel beautiful and good about herself.

MISADVENTURES IN MEARSURMENT

Small avocado, big seed.

"Small avocado, big seed."

Hey, remember when I said that I had two nice dresses in my closet that were a little too small, but I was going to try to lose an inch or two to get into one of them? I remember that too. It was such a lofty idea until I got sick and there were those two weeks where I did nothing followed by a gradual return to the treadmill. I am now back to my old self except I still have this cough and wake up with a sore throat every other day. I have also become a MuscinexD junky. Any way, the flu threw a wrench into the cogs of my weight loss plan. I figured that the last thing I needed was to stress about wiggling my fat ass into a dress because that tends to make one's ass fatter. 

My friend Heather introduced me to an online dress place called eShakti. For $7.50 more they will custom size your dress to your measurements. This sounded like a brilliant idea because even when I buy a dress in my size it's either a bit snug there and bit loose here. So I created an account with them, they sent me a new account coupon, and I picked out a dress. Then I had to get my measurements. I know that somewhere in my tiny house there is a cloth measuring tape, but that evening I couldn't find it any where. Michael said "that's OK. We can just use this tape measure." I look over and he's holding the kind of tape measure you use to build things. Here's the thing. I grew up in a home where my mother made a lot of my clothes. I spent so much time standing in the sewing room with bits of fabric and patterns pinned to me. I know that body measurements are done with a cloth tape measure. I know this, but I let him talk me into being measured with a carpenter's tape measure any way. Because I'm stupid and impatient and wanted a new dress. 

The new dress arrived and I excitedly opened the box and pulled out my custom dress. My first thought was "hmmmm...that looks a little big." Then I slipped it over my head and said "this is ridiculously too big!" And it was. It was like I was wearing a sack. Michael came in and said "what happened?!" and I started wondering if I could alter it myself ( I can not alter it myself). Michael grabbed a hold of a good two inches of fabric in the back trying to make the dress fit me properly and said "How could we be so far off?" Luckily, eShakti had included a cloth tape measure with my order. So I pulled off the dress and grabbed the tape measure to see how it was possible that we could have been so far off. I opened my account page with my measurements and we started at the top of the list. Shoulders: originally I had 20. Michael checked this with the new tape measure. 16. This explained the off the shoulder look of the dress. We originally had 41 inches down for my waist. My real waist size? 25 inches. As Heather put it, "Holy Mismeasurement!" And because I really have no concept of size and numbers associated to size, I never questioned the 41 inch waist number. We went through that evening and fixed every single measurement. I sent the too big dress back and picked out another dress in case the returned one didn't come back in time.

Well, it looks like neither of these dresses are going to get here in time to wear to Misti's wedding this weekend. Last night, resigned to the fact that I would have to wear one of those two dresses in the closet, I tried on the one that was a little more forgiving. I couldn't get the zipper up on the side. I pinched and twisted and lowered the zipper and then tried zipping it up really fast. I got a cramp in my shoulder while trying to turn sideways, hold fabric and zip the dress all at the same time. Every time the zipper would hit this one section it would come to a screeching halt. Then Michael tried zipping it while I held fabric together and he couldn't get it. Finally he said "Take it off." I pulled the dress off and he took it and zipped up the side. Then he handed me the dress and said "pull it on over your head." I looked at him like he was crazy. "There's no way that dress is going on over my head with the zipper up." He threw the dress over my head and tugged it down. The dress does go on over my head with the zipper up! So, the dress was on. It's a little snug and I probably won't really be able to eat, but it's on. The question comes to how I get out of it at the end of the evening. Michael said "get a friend." He then amended that to "not a male friend." I said "fine. I'll just have one of the Jens do it." I'm not sure he thought that was much better. 

So the moral of the story is DO NOT USE A CARPENTER'S TAPE MEASURE TO MEASURE YOUR BODY! Unless it's just your height you're measuring. Then you're probably OK.