Punishment

Sep 12, 2004

I feel punished. It’s Sunday, and the rest of the world seems to be having fun. I’m working. I love my work, but I’d rather goof off. Part of the problem is that I left the book yesterday in the middle of a sex scene. I should know better by now. Once you’ve got the heat worked up and the mood right, you don’t stop. But we had an appointment to keep. We had to go shopping for tour. I’d done ten pages, I was tired, I was sort of ready to stop. But stopping for an hour for lunch is different than stopping for the day.
Let me just say how much I hate to shop for clothes. Shopping for Jon is so much easier than shopping for me. At a nice clothing store, the men’s clothing actually is measured and fits within those measurements. But even at a really nice clothing store, women’s clothing does not. No woman can actually say she’s a size ten, or a size twelve, and have that be true across the board no matter who is making the clothes. A size ten in dress pants that are almost identical in every way except color, are two different sizes if they are not from the same designer. It’s just the truth. How can any woman judge themself on a dress size, or pants size, when it depends on the whim of some faceless designer?
And don’t even get me started on styles this year. I’m very happy for all of you with a belly button piercing, that you now have pants low enough to show them off, or at least not rub them and make them get infected. But for the rest of us who would like a pair of pants that actually hit at the natural waistline, or maybe gasp, a little above the natural waistline, we are just crap out of luck. The low rise jeans are not a flattering line on eighty percent of the people I see wearing them. But wear them they do, because they’re in style and it’s hard to get jeans that aren’t cut that way most places. The jeans I was okay with, but now the dress pants have gone that route, too, and that is simply too much. I thought the jeans looked odd low cut, but the dress pants cut that way or weirder. They just don’t hit the body right if you have curves. I have an ass. I very nice ass, thank you very much. I like my ass. My husband likes my ass. But none of the pants I tried on in the women’s suits fit both my ass, and my thighs.
Yes, I have thighs, and calves, curving the way most of us really look unless we’re willing to starve ourselves. And why the hell should we starve ourselves? For what? To be a smaller dress size? To fit into clothing that we wouldn’t want to wear if it wasn’t in style? I say, no. Don’t change your body because some emaciated model on some distant runway looked good in this, or some singer or movie star that exercises four or more hours aday, or eats only protein shakes and lettuce, says you should look a certain way. Strike a blow for female liberation, and male liberation for that matter. Women don’t diet for men. We diet for other women to say, “Oh, how nice you look. Did you loose weight?” Most men like curves!
My theory on the extreme low rise that was so low it showed your thong underwear was that the women who it actually looked good in were so thin they had no breast cleavage anymore, so they went for butt cleavage.
To cap it off we did an errand at the mall briefly, something we’d promised Trinity we’d do with her. We popped into Hot Topic. First, Jon and I remembered quickly why we usually visit the store without Trinity in tow. She was giggled over the purple glittery lingerie. The dress on the wall that looked like a catholic school girl uniform had had an illegitimate child with a punk rocker, made her say, “Mommy, that’s just wrong.” Jon and I agreed.
But the kicker for me came when I held up an extra large baby doll shirt. Extra large, mind you. It would have fit Trinity, but not me. I remember when I liked most of what I saw in Hot Topic. Now, I still like some of the stuff, but they must be targeting an ever younger audience, or are the girl’s in this country really that tiny? Maybe the baby doll shirts are actually meant for dolls and I just misunderstood. (Yes, I know that Torrid, their larger size sister store exists, but you can’t just take clothes made for one body type and just up the size and have it be flattering. Sometimes, but just making it bigger is not a fix on some of these styles. How about clothes that only look good with curves underneath them, instead of the other way around.)
The average size woman age 15 and up, is still a size fourteen. A fourteen, not a three, not a zero. What the hell is a size zero anyway? Jon says it’s a placemaker for a real person. I have to agree. If anyone reading this is naturally that tiny, great, if you’re happy with it, great. But if you are trying to starve yourself down to some impossibly small size. Stop.
Remember, when you look into the mirror, don’t ask what size jeans am I wearing. Ask am I good person. If the answer is yes, then the size pants you’re wearing will take care of itself.
Be healthy, folks, not thin. Remember that thin and diet are both four letter words. I don’t think that’s an accident.
Maybe this blog should have gone in the soap box side, but Jon’s off at the store running an errand, so no one here to support my technical lack. I’ll leave the blog here, my apologies to anyone who didn’t want to read it. I’m going to go make pages.