I am a clothes horse. Clothes whore? Clothes horse? You say tomato, I say tomahto. My friend, Debbie, jokes that I’m going to have to add a 3rd story (of just closets) to the house. She is not wrong. Truth is, I ran out of hangers sometime ago, and I’ve been steadily piling hangerless clothing on the bed in the guest bedroom for a good bit. This at least keeps my mother-in-law from spending the night, but I’ve become increasingly paranoid that a band of carnies is living under said pile of clothing, so off I went this morning to purchase hangers from The Dollar General Market. I purchased 82 hangers. It remains to be seen if that will actually be enough.
I feel sorta like Hugh Grant…except I’m the woman who went up a hill (of clothes) and came down a mountain (of clothes). Life lessons have been learned in my journey today. Questions have also swum to the surface, flopping about & gasping for air. The main question being: am I a size 4 or a size 22? My dresses range in sizes from 4-22 (we’ll touch on the size 22 in a moment), dri-fit running shirts range from sizes small-xlarge, and pants range from sizes 7-12 (I have a fluffy hiney). Keep in mind, all of these clothes actually FIT me. So, my plea to fashion designers is this (yes, I’m talking to YOU, Marc Jacobs): standardize a size for we gal-beasts. I don’t care if I’m a size 4 or 22. I will embrace whatever size you deem me to be. I’m just tired and sore from hauling 5 different sizes of the same piece of clothing into the dressing room.
I have a cello shape. It is a subset of the hour glass figure. I have a long neck and waist, my calves are long and thin with super thin ankles, I have a small waist, my shoulders and chesticles are only slightly smaller than my hips, and I have plenty of extra jiggly bits and overages in the chest & hiney area. It doesn’t matter what my weight or size is, no one will ever look at me and describe me as thin (rewind to extra jiggly bits & overages). But, on a positive note, my body was made for 50’s fashion. (Thank you “Mad Men” for bringing this fashion era back en vogue). Momma keeps patterns from the ice age, so she’s been making retro 50’s dresses for me lately. I went over the other day for her to get my measurements. She started chuckling. “This says you’re a size 22.” “What?!? That dress you’re replacing the zipper on is a size 4.”
Momma is a beautiful seamstress. She is also a great student of fashion. She can tell you names of fabrics from bombazine to piqué to seersucker and which fabrics work best with which designs. She can tell you the difference between a bolero and a caraco jacket without even blinking an eye. “Well,” she explained, “as women have gotten bigger over the years, the fashion industry has resized clothing to make women feel better about their bodies. They sell more clothes that way. Marilyn Monroe was a size 14 in the 50’s, but she’d actually be more like a size 6 now…a curvy size 6. Think Scarlett Johansson.”
All these years, as I’ve looked in the mirror at my overages & jiggly bits, I’ve always thought, well, at least I’m built a little like Marilyn Monroe. Turns out I’m not. In my 50’s halter dress pattern, I’m a size 22 to her size 14…I’m Marilyn’s rounder, possibly smarter, definitely goofier cousin Maude. Maude Monroe. No autographs, please.
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