Fat Shopping Was Easier

Yesterday I had to stop by the Mall to drop off our Nespresso recycling at the Sur La Table store. In the inefficient European way that is my only option to recycle the coffee pods we use. Since I rarely go to the Mall because I hate shopping while lots of people are also shopping I took advantage of the Tuesday morning lack of crowds to try and find some new smaller clothes.

To most women I know they see loosing weight as an opportunity to buy new clothes. To me I see it as a pain. I used to have to buy clothes in the “women’s Department” which is code for fat people’s clothes. It was not so bad because I knew exactly who sold those clothes and the “Big” departments were not that big. I also knew what size I wore and how the clothes would fit. The other bonus in the larger sizes is they tended to be age appropriate for me.

Now I wear regular size people’s clothes. I find this definition interesting since according to fashion retail experts more people are a size 14 or greater yet most of the clothes in stores are under size 14. There are so many things that made this shopping trip bad.

I don’t really know what size I am so I had to gather multiple sizes of the same item to try on. And it is not so simple as just 10, 12, or 14. In the pants department of one store there were seven different kinds of fit, all with names that mean nothing to me, like “Heritage” or “Signature”. Are “heritage” for people who have ancestors who have been wearing pants for many generations? Come on, I was looking for the name that meant, “Smaller waist than hips and a sagging middle aged belly to hide.” You might think “Curvy was the right name, but no, my butt is not big enough for curvy.

One problem about shopping when the crowds are low is that the stores don’t bother having anyone work then or they have the clerks who are only capable of folding sweaters and not actually helping customers.

I went into Banana Republic and picked up one dress, one blazer and one blouse and headed back to the dressing rooms without ever encountering an employee. The only problem is that I needed someone with a key to let me into the locked dressing room.

Eventually Jason came along and he insisted on knowing my first name and let me into a dressing room. I tried the dress on -too small in one part too big in another. Blazer – not a flattering fabric. Blouse – like the dress, too big in the shoulders, small in the bust. I decided this was not a store worth exploring further. As I walked the length of the store to get out Jason screamed across the room, “Dana, what was wrong with those clothes?”

“Too Young for me,” I said as I breezed out to Anne Taylor next door. As I walked in the door a light pink shirtwaist dress caught my eye. Not that I want a light pink dress that looked so much like one of my boarding school uniforms, but I wanted to see what size I might be in that dress and then explore the possibility of it coming in another color. I took two dresses to a room and tried them on –too big and too much material at the skirt. I repeated this exercise in five more stores. Not once did I ever have a clerk who offered to find me the right size or something that was a cut that fit my body.

All that shopping and I did not buy one thing when there are basic things I need. One problem with loosing weight is that I have become much more picky about the way things fit and you would think it would be easier to find things that fit, but it isn’t. I know the answer is the tailor, but I would love to find one pair of pants right off the rack without having to find a “pant’s translator.”