Giant Dwarf vs. The Mall

I hate shopping for clothes. And this is not just because, after I turned 40, my metabolism came to a screeching halt and I gained more weight than I did during my freshman year of college (and that was A LOT of pizza). No, I’ve disliked clothes shopping since I was a kid.

Let’s start with my stature. Not my community stature; my physical height. I am short. Not 5’3” or 5’4” short......and stop your bitching, those of you who are that tall.....5’4” was my ideal height. That’s how short I am. And, as noted in my previous post, I am well-endowed in certain areas. This makes me completely unsuitable for “off-the-rack” (please note that I first heard this term from a very heterosexual man while shopping for a wetsuit at a surf shop).

Shopping for clothing is an excruciating process for me. First, I have to decide if I am going to go alone or with a friend. If I go with a friend, I feel like I am torturing them and coercing them into a day of pain; I also feel I have limited time to adequately hate myself in the dressing room. If I go by myself, I have no one’s opinion to help me make decisions and I have no one’s shoulder to cry on while in the dressing room. It’s my own personal Catch-22.

Which makes clothes shopping an extremely rare occasion for me. Believe it or not, and despite the weight gain (thank you, Lycra), I've had two of the pairs of pants that I wear for work for over 8 years. Seriously. They’re two colors of the same classic design, unlined pants I bought at Old Navy ON SALE. When I need a new pair of work pants (I can’t wear the same two pairs every day, of course), I practically have a nervous breakdown at the thought of having to go to a store, try on several pairs of pants, and make a decision which will be permanent after I take the pants to the tailor (I’m short, remember?).

As a mental health professional, I suppose it would be appropriate to study my family of origin and explore my early experiences with shopping and consumerism. This is easy. My mother is one of the best shoppers in the world, but, unfortunately, has a completely different taste and fashion sense than I do. I can’t tell you how many hours my brothers and I spent in discount clothing stores with my mother and her friends and her friends’ kids (to this day, when I see Daniel or Shira or Iris or Penny, we all reminisce about playing games under the racks at House of Bargains). We lived the guilded-ghetto shopping life but not all of us received 'the gift."

Despite my brother’s devastating experience of having all of his Matchbox Cars (stored in the Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkin box) stolen while he was waiting for my mother at a department store, he has also become an excellent bargain hunter. (Though, he rarely does shop at department stores, and now I see the connection.) I once sat with a group of the Golden Child’s friends who were joking about what he could buy for a dollar: a pair of jeans, a jacket, underwear, shoes.......the list went on and on, until someone yelled out, and almost completely seriously, “and a house.”

The Golden Child is an expert at comparison shopping and finding deals. Now, not everything he purchases is top-quality, and there was the famous incident where he talked me into buying a stereo from a roadside flea market: the seller told me to come back the following week if the console didn’t work and he would give me my money back. Oh, I came back the following week alright. But the seller wasn’t there. I was furious, called my brother to yell at him, to which he calmly responded: “so I was wrong. I’ll give you the 30 bucks.” That was only a partial consolation, though, because now I was stuck with a piece of dead stero equipment. So, a few weeks later, I threw it in the trunk of my car, drove 500 miles and left the console on my brother’s doorstep.

Let it also be duly noted that my brother, a physician, wears jeans to work. And not fancy, dark designer jeans. No, I ‘ve seen him wear frayed, faded jeans, that he did indeed buy for a dollar, to work, along with one of his many cheeky t-shirts. Am I jealous? Fuck yeah. Not only can he wear jeans to work, he can find jeans, for a DOLLAR, that fit him perfectly.