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The dress was cute. I
wasn’t in love with it, but when something’s on triple markdown my fashion
standards, which are already pretty low, drop through the floor. Throw
in a dressing room mirror that is designed to make you look and feel like a
supermodel, and you’ve got the perfect shopping storm.
Yeah, I bought the dress.
It was a terrible color, but it was a steal.
Women aren’t ninnies.
We know that stores use
‘skinny’ mirrors in dressing rooms - mirrors that take off 15 pounds and add 5
inches in height - but we don’t care. This kind of self-delusion is healthy. Some ultra-feminists might call this
collusion, but I, for one, appreciate the efforts of Retail America to improve
my self-esteem.
Corporate good intentions aside, my new dress made me look
like a Quaker farm hand. But I didn’t know
that until I got home and tried it on in front of a normal mirror under a 100
watt light bulb.
But that’s OK. Because
shopping is about wants, not needs. And
I still cling to the memory of how great I felt in that dressing room, on that
day…in a dress that will eventually be donated to Goodwill with the tags still
on.
I try my best not to buy ugly clothes, but it’s hard because
I’m a sucker for a sale. As a result, I
have to have a LOT of systems in place to protect myself.
It helps to shop with friends who are obnoxiously
opinionated. That pretty much describes
all my friends, and even my acquaintances.
My friends are blunt about dresses that cling in all the wrong places
and they aren’t afraid to tell me that I am way too old for baby doll blouses. I adore my friends.
But it’s hard to find a friend who’s willing to shop with me
when I only like to shop in places like Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, and Burlington. So I often rely on vindictive dressing room
ladies who’ve been on their feet all day for a second opinion.
“Do you think this dress makes me look like Audrey Hepburn?”
I venture timidly.
She fixes me with her expert, lazy eye. “I think it makes you look like you’ve been
shoppin’ in the junior department again.”
Oh SNAP. I didn’t buy the dress, but I still think
about it. The dressing room lady could
have been wrong, but I wasn’t about to defy her when she has the power to
arbitrarily to limit me to 6 items instead of 10.
Sometimes I find myself in the checkout line with a shopping
cart full of iffy clearance rack finds, and I have to get tough with myself. That’s when I institute the ‘three times’
rule. I can’t buy something until I’ve
tried it on three times to make sure that I am really truly committed.
My friends think this is the worse rule of all because it
means spending another four hours in the dressing room with me. (Did I
mention that I adore my friends?)
If all else fails, I initiate the ‘only buy two things’
rule. But what if I want four
things? Too bad, I can only choose
two. This takes an immense amount of
discipline. Some days I get really angry with myself for making up arbitrary
rules that force me to choose between an adorable pair of flats and an
embroidered peasant skirt.
If I really want to restrain myself, I shop with my teenage
daughters. I almost never buy anything when
I shop with them because I am too busy humiliating them. I try on lingerie in the three-way mirror. I make friends with the lady in the stall
next to me. I roam the store shouting their
names. I am the non plus ultra of embarrassing mothers.
To be honest, I do this stuff just to mess with them. A little bit of humiliation goes a long way
with teenage girls. It will either make
them run away, or toughen them up. On
the bright side, if they run away I can spend their clothes budget on myself.
If you don’t have teenagers, the next best shopping buzz-kill
is the three-way mirror. Avoid it at all costs.
God had the foresight to put my butt, bumps and bulges behind me, so I wouldn’t have to look at
them. (Even more proof that God is indeed,
a woman.) The butt has been in ‘the back’
for every species since the beginning of time. Darwin and God were on the same page in this
regard. But the three-way mirror has
changed all that.
The fact that humans can now see their own bodies from nine
different angles could have a serious impact on the evolution of our species.
People worry about meteorites and global warming…who knows
how women will respond to such a blow to their self-esteem?
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