Dressing rooms are claustrophobic stalls of despair and self-loathing. They're places where you gasp "Holy shit!" after catching a glimpse of your ass in the fluorescent-lit three-way funhouse mirror. Given that environment, it's amazing that we're ever fortunate enough to find one article of clothing that doesn't make us feel lumpy, dumpy, and frumpy.
Dressing rooms are places where size-2 teenage girls complain to their friends that every pair of jeans makes them look fat. They're places where women yank the dreaded light-washed, high-waisted mom jeans over the child-bearing hips that once gave birth to those teenage girls.
Even those of us who love shopping for clothes don't always love trying them on. When the saleswoman asks me over the latched door, "Do you need a different size?", sometimes the only thing I hear is, "Do you need different thighs?"
Why yes, yes I do, thank you. And while you're checking the racks, can you also see if your store carries any self-confidence? It seems I'm running a little low.
We do have moments of hope in dressing rooms though. We hope that we'll fit into the clothes that hot girls fit into. We hope that black is indeed slimming. We hope that we'll look pretty. Or we just hope that the shapeless sweater will make us disappear into the background.
How many of us have heard a woman in a dressing room evaluate her reflection and then proclaim that she looks damn good? How many of us have uttered these elusive words? Not enough -- and that's a damn shame. What's worse is that we'll often leave those dressing rooms deflated and defeated, hoping that our new leather handbags will distract us from feeling like the cows they were made of. It's depressing how much power we give to a mirror or a jean size.
Unflattering mirrors and lighting draw our already critical eyes to our "trouble areas," but consider for a moment that maybe our true trouble area is not found in the mirror at all.
Maybe it's in not feeling beautiful within.
