Perfect 10's

I went shopping the other day. It was HORRIBLE. All I really wanted were a few tee shirts since my wardrobe is basically non-existent (trust me, if you've seen me for a week and a half straight, you've seen everything I've got).

So there I was in Old Navy, going through the Clearance racks and checking out the new tee shirts for Fall and getting excited about the possibility of a new collection... until I went to the dressing room. I had gathered size medium shirts and had about 7 shirts in the dressing room with me. Not. One. Fit. They were all glued on to me like a second skin and showed off every lump, squiggle and underwear line.

Hot and sweaty after trying on and ripping off a half dozen shirts, I emerged from the room with my hair sticking up every which way and my confidence shattered. To make matters worse, the employee back there manning the rooms asked if everything fit okay. I just handed her the pile and said "Nope, nothing fit." and kept walking.

I called Troy on my phone from the parking lot and told him that this was the reason I've always hated shopping. I don't feel overweight until I go to try on clothes and then every flaw seems magnified. When you're a size 6-8 on top and a 10-12 on the bottom, it can complicate your shopping experience drastically. Finally, after some tears of frustration, I reversed out of the parking lot and went about running my errands and tried to forget the whole experience.

Then last night, after watching all I could handle from the Presidential Debates, I flipped through to see what else was on. I ended up on the Lifetime Channel which for once didn't seem to have some show about someone trying to murder, sabotage or steal a spouse that wasn't theirs. A show I had never heard of called 'How to Look Good Naked' was on. The host was a guy named Carson who was formerly a part of the hit show 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'.

On the show were two sisters who desperately wanted to feel that they were beautiful again like they were in high school. They were both curvier and each had their own unique problem areas. Carson went through and showed them each what clothes would accentuate their good parts and what would hide or camouflage their problem areas.

Then my epiphany happened- Carson took the sisters to a department store that has one of those window displays that face the street. Behind the glass were about 10 ladies all in just their bras and panties, all with different body shapes. Some were taller, some shorter. Some were thicker, some thinner. In front of every girl outside the window was a stand with a flip pad. On the pad was a number starting at size 4 and going up to size 10.

Carson told the sisters to decide what size each girl was by flipping to the number on the stand in front of each girl. I started guessing mentally too- 'That girl looks like a size 4. Ooo! That one has to be a size 8." After they were all done, Carson revealed what size the girls were- and they were ALL a size 10. Every. Single. Last. One. Of. Them. Even the sisters were a size 10! I was completely flabbergasted. Here I am, a size 10, and there were girls that looked thinner than me in that window that were a size 10. There were also girls that were curvier than me that were also a size 10. It was fantastic!

That got me to thinking more about what happened on Monday- if you think about it, places like Old Navy make clothes to fit the general mass. They have to fit as many body shapes as possible and have to encompass teenage girls as well as middle age women and every age in between. Somewhere along the way, when you make clothes to fit as many people as you can as generically as you can across the board, someone is going to be left the odd person out. That's why I don't ever fit the clothes at Gap and Old Navy but nearly every thing I try at Ann Taylor Loft does- because those clothes are made specifically for women and not their teen aged daughters too.

It also made me think that we can't look at someone and label them as a certain size because a size 10 for me is different than a size 10 for you. I love the Dove ads, because they show real women with real curves and they don't airbrush them or cake them full of makeup to make them something they're not. Have you ever watched any of those wrinkle cream commercials? Troy and I always crack up because most of the time, it's some woman in her late 20's to early 30's trying to sell a wrinkle cream who's never had to worry about wrinkles a day in her life. I think we get bombarded by all of this ad campaigning about what is beautiful and what we should look like until we look at ourselves and think, "This is not beautiful."

I try to limit the amount of beauty magazines that come in my house for that very reason; currently all I have are Pottery Barn catalogues and a Martha Stewart Living magazine- pretty tame stuff. When I'm not surrounded by images of anorexic women and ideas of what I should be looking like, it becomes a little easier to get dressed in the morning. Some days are still harder than others and I will most likely always hate shopping, but now when something doesn't fit I can think about why it might not be fitting and try something different or go some place else.

I'm a size 10! It was so refreshing to learn that it's not a curse being in the double digits. There were tall and thin girls in that window who were my size and they were beautiful. There were curvier full bodied women who were my size in that window, and they were beautiful too. It's time to start loving ourselves and our bodies for what they are. Sure, we have problem areas, but the fact is we all have them- even the super models. Why do you think they have air brushing? Models get pimples like us, have bad hair days like us, and gain weight too. They have some clothes that fit well and some that don't which is why models are hand picked to walk the runways according to what they look best in.

And guess what? If we all looked the same, how boring would the world be? Having different people with different opinions and different body shapes makes life more interesting. Do you feel better yet? I do. We need to stop thinking of size as being a label that we are branded with. Like age, size is only a number. We are all beautiful in different ways, even me with my big bondunie.