The mall is a beautiful place. In one location, you can smell body splashes
that remind you of summer fruit and/or birthday cake, ride a tiny train, and
sample 5 to 7 different variations of the same Asian dish. It’s also air-conditioned entertainment for
my three-year-old, a feature which allows me to keep an eye on the sale prices
at the Disney Store (or what we mortals like to call normal prices).
But when it comes to shopping for clothes, the mall
is no longer a place of such joy. In fact, when I was shopping a few days ago,
I realized that because of my size, the mall’s roughly sixty women’s apparel
stores really break down into only six categories:
Stores where I shop.
Stores where I can only buy tops and dresses.
Stores where I can only buy tops.
Stores where I can only buy jewelry.
Stores where I don’t get acknowledged by the staff.
Stores that are too dark and smell like that pretty, popular boy from your old high school
I don’t have exact numbers for each of these stores,
but I know for sure that only two or three stores make it into the top
category. That means two or three stores
where I can walk in and pull any item in my size. I can use the other stores to piecemeal my
wardrobe, but if I really need to shop my options are limited.
This means that I could say that roughly 95% of the
mall’s women’s apparel stores are pretty much closed to me. That 95% contains stores where I use the
window dressing to see what the cool kids are wearing, and then try to copy the
color and style in “my stores.” I roam
the mall like a man without a country, or a girl without a place to find khakis. And I finally find a kindly innkeeper in the
plus size store I have started to call home.
Torrid.
Torrid used to be known as the store where plus size
girls could get their skull-covered tee shirts and comic book sweatshirts. But in
recent years it has changed from this niche audience to trendy, young plus size
store. And I am glad for it. (Not that
I’m not excited for comic book t-shirts.:))
I think the staff members know that most of their
clientele feel rejected, because they talk to you less like sales associates
and more like the leaders of a support group.
Recently, the sales girl told me, “If you need to see the next size,
don’t feel weird. It’s ok.”
In this haven for the robust, I feel very
comfortable describing why a pair of pants would hit a problem area for
me. Usually, before I get out my
complaint, the sales girl finishes my sentence and says “I totally get that;
let’s try these.”
And, in a stroke of ground-shaking genius, the
fitting rooms are equipped with a fan in the upper corner to combat the
“pulling up jeans” sweats.
Although I have found a little corner to call my own
in the mall, I still feel like an outsider in general. I feel like there is store after store
telling me that “This is how everyone else is, and then there’s you. You can have that one store, over there.” It feels like the high school cafeteria all
over again, and I am eating with the teacher.
If I look at the mannequins, magazines, and TV shows,
I can start to feel like there’s a particular look that I need if I want a
fulfilling life. A look I should acquire
if I want to have the life of the “pretty people” who are happy, carefree, and
without problems.
I was thinking about this “pretty people” lie, a few
days before, in the most unlikely of places, the tram at Busch Gardens. I was
looking around and taking stock of the people on the tram. This random collection of people all had one
thing in common: flaws. This one’s eye
twitched sometimes. That one couldn’t
quite grow in facial hair. Fat, slim,
small eyes, big nose, no hair, too much hair.
Everyone kind of had their thing.
There were a few of the “pretty people” peppered
through. But on a tram full of people, most
of them were “the normals.” There we were, a collection of oddly shaped lumps
of clay.
As I looked around that tram, I thought, all these
people can’t be leading a “lesser life,” can they? I bet they love their husbands,
their kids. I bet they’re good employees
or kind people. Some of them are probably
smart and others funny. Their appearance
did not give them any less capacity for love or for greatness.
It’s not the cool kids with the good life, and the
rest of us just taking the scraps. We are all just a bunch of people trying to
figure life out, each with our own flaws and/or successes.
To be honest, I thought I had outgrown the whole “worrying
about the cool kids” stage in my life. Or maybe, I just realized that the so
called “outsiders” outnumber the cool kids.
I just hang with my own kind and don’t really have to be bothered by the
thought of them anymore.
I guess, if I was more
honest, I should say that I "hoped" I had outgrown the whole “cool kids’
concept. I hoped that I have transcended that paradigm and have come
to think about life in more grown-up ways. (That was a pretty grown
up sentence just then. I use “transcended” and “paradigm” back to
back. Boom.)
But in the mall … well, there I stand looking at the
tiny-wasted, beautiful jacket in the window of The Limited, sighing and
thinking, “Ugh, will I never look that way?
Why can’t I have that life?” Not cool, Steph. Not cool.
The truth is, when I am at my lowest about my weight,
when I am being “rejected mall Steph,” I twiddle myself and everyone around me
to a number. I make the world around me small
and two-dimensional, and I craft rules for success that are simple and idiotic.
I have used this phrase before, but there is just “more”
to this whole situation. More to people than their looks, more to me than my
“number,” more to life than dressing like the cool kids. And at thirty something, gosh, I should know
better than that.
Several years ago, I posed a like minded question to
my bible study group. “What did the Proverbs 31 woman look like?” “What size do you think she was?” They thought she would be fit. I noted that the only part of her physique that
the passage mentions is that her arms are strong. And if anyone has cleaned a house, done
laundry, or lifted children, they can see how this happens. The thing is, she might have been fit, but in
the cannon of time, it didn’t matter.
Our “more,” the “everything else,” the capacity to love, or for
greatness – these things are what will go down in the history if we are
lucky. These things are what we will be
remembered for. They’re what matters.
So I go to my little corner of the mall. I listen to the kind words
of the sales staff and feel the gentle breeze in the fitting room. I am still reaching for better health
goals. But it is no longer the cool kids
and me. It is no longer us vs. them.
It’s just us.
