I hate shopping. I hate schlepping from store to store. I hate carrying big bags. I hate having to repeatedly undress and redress myself, after episodes of wrestling my self loathing fat ass into clothes that don’t fit, aren’t flattering, or are just ugly when they’re actually on you.
So, I shop online which is harder in some very different kind of ways… I mean, you don’t have all of the standard pains of regular human shopping, but you’ve got other obstacles. The biggest one is that in order to make sure you’re going to be successful shopping online, you’ve got to buy two (sometimes THREE) of each size to make sure that you land your winning ass in a pair of winning jeans. Or in a superior dress. Or skirt. Whatever. You know what I’m saying.
I guess what I mean to say is that I don’t shop online… I’d just like to. I’ve only ever really shopped online once. I ordered $400 worth of jeans from the Gap and ONE PAIR REALLY FIT. I ordered six pairs of jeans, three different styles, two sizes of each, and three of them fit my ass, but two of those three dragged under my heels. The issue I have with Gap is the plight of every short, fat girl in the world — they don’t carry our sizes in the stores. So, even if I wanted to torture myself and redress myself eleven-teen times in an afternoon from within flourescent-lit, yet somehow still dark dressing rooms, I’d be shit out of luck at the Gap. See, if you’re only a tiny bit fat and short, they carry your size. But there’s a line… If you cross that line, you’re screwed. I suppose they think that if you’re THAT fat you MUST sit on your ass ALL DAY LONG and, therefore, shopping online would be something that would appeal to you more because you could shop AND eat at the SAME TIME!
Well, bless your heart, Gap executives! And also? Suck my asshole, jerks!
But I don’t have money to drop $400 on an exercise in how well I can put my clothes on and take my clothes off… So it’s just been that one time. Damn, it was fun. HUGE plastic bags came via UPS and inside those bags were MORE BAGS. And inside those bags were JEANS. Lots of them. And I was able to put them on, walk around the house a bit… Sit down and put my shoes on… Try to cross my legs (which… seriously, it’s hilarious. They’re so short that they just stick out and draw attention.)…
Today, in a moment of weakness, I went to Anthropologie’s website. This isn’t a store for me, mostly because I am not so fiscally wreckless that I’m willing to drop $150 on something that looks like my Mema’s old Mumus.
But more so, I can’t FIT into anything at a store like Anthropologie. First of all, nothing comes in petite sizes/lengths. That doesn’t just mean pants… That means that the cute over-the-knee dress is going to hit me mid-calf. And don’t scream, “You could get it tailored!” to me because tailoring something made for a tall person so that it fits a short person requires you to REMOVE ZIPPERS and completely disassemble the garment to reconstruct a bitty version. But more so than the length, it’s the tits and ass I’m carrying around that shop-block me from Anthropologie. HAVE YOU SEEN what passes for a Large in that store? I couldn’t pull a large down any length of my body, man… There’s just no way. Fuck you, Anthropologie.
I actually HAD these shoes, once upon a time...
But you know what I CAN shop for? You know what those emaciated models can’t take away from me?
SHOES. Beautiful, weird, strange shoes. I have more shoes than is reasonable for a woman and I don’t feel ashamed to admit it. It doesn’t make me any less of a feminist or make me a Carrie Bradshaw clone. The reason I like shoes is because so much of the rest of my wardrobe is limited by what is available to short, fat girls… The ordinary. But I can take a pair of dark jeans and a black tshirt and put a pair of ridiculously original shoes on with it and NOBODY EVEN SEES that the shirt I’m wearing is a freakin’ basic, $7 plain tshirt. The shoes make the outfit, my friends.
I found these on Anthropologie today and when I saw them, I gasped a little bit. Like, the way you gasp when your lover starts giving you head… Short breath, quickly drawn through your parted lips and then… hold it…. Hold it… Ok, you can exhale.
This was the shoe.
Oh my dear lord… I mean, YES, okay. I could make those with some regular heels and a glue gun and a trip to Michael’s in the silk flower aisle, I realize this. But LOOK! They’re just SO PRETTY! And $98 is a pretty damn reasonable price for a pair of shoes that you will certainly wear at least four times a year! (I’m shaking my own head at myself for that one, but LOOK HOW PRETTY!)
And then… I saw this. Classic case of what I call “Old Navy’ing It” — sometimes they nail it, sometimes they totally miss the mark.
“Cross-Continent Sneakers”? Are you kidding me? You know what I’m thinking? I think if you gave me an old recliner, some dull scissors, some twine and a needle, I COULD MAKE THOSE MYSELF. They look like the kind of shoes that a costume designer on a film production might put on the actor who was playing the dejected, homeless loser… They look like my grandpa’s shoes… In pre-war, rural North Carolina… Because HIS MOTHER MADE THEM. And Anthropologie wants ME to pay $98 for THIS?
Those glue-gun red blossom heels are looking better and better, right? I hate those Cross-Continent Sneakers so much that I almost want to PAY MORE for the red heels…. Just on principle.
But seriously… Who am I kidding? Like I have $98 to drop on shoes. Nobody is paying this bitch to write… Yet.
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Shoes are the best. As a short, busty, curvy girl, I empathize with your frustration over the dearth of cute clothes in sizes that work for us. If you have a hellacious rack, your choices are tight and slutty, or loose and maternity. And just forget anything with buttons. But shoes? Shoes are equal opportunity. I have more than any one woman should own, and I divide them up by “electric bill”, “car payment” and “mortgage payment”. Yes, that episode of SATC where Carrie tries to figure out how to buy her apartment, and Miranda points out that she has 100 pairs of $400 shoes? Hit home. Hard. But it’s so tempting to invest in something that, without fail, makes you feel so gooooood, so pretty. I’d rather have a fabulous pair of Louboutins than an equivalent shopping spree at Gap OR Anthropolgie. So rock on, Jami.
Your shoe rant makes me think of the book (and movie, but of course the book is better) In Her Shoes. The book opens up with a similar rant about how clothes never fit the main character (Toni Collette in the movie) but shoes always fit.
As for the “you could get it tailored” response from those of us who are tall…we only say that because we get tired of other people claiming that tall people have no problem finding clothes. We envy the people who at least have fabric to work with. It’s a lot harder to tailor something that is just too short…fabric has to be added and when it comes to pants or a pair of jeans, adding fabric to the legs is just going to look ridiculous.
Basically, what I’m saying is, the only people who can go shopping without being utterly frustrated are the average height, skinny (or at the most, “average”) people. All the rest of us have to traipse from store to store carrying too many bags and trying on different sizes and styles and lengths in the hopes that something will work.