Crossing to the Other Side

Something wasn’t quite right about the top I was trying on at Dress Barn Woman.  I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly.  It was a 14/16, my “new” size.  Maybe it was just the way it was made. 

I tried on the second shirt I brought into the dressing room. It was nice, and it fit, but it was, I don’t know, maybe just a little…loose?  I stared at myself in the mirror for a full minute or two letting that sink in. Yes, it was true – the blouse wasn’t TOO loose, but definitely a LITTLE loose. 

Now I was confused.   What was I going to do about buying tops?  A 14/16 or a 1X was the smallest size that Dress Barn Woman carried.  Then I remembered that Dress Barn had Another Side.

The Other Side is called “Dress Barn Misses” and carries clothes of some alternative size for female people unlike me.  According to Dress Barn, I have always been a “Woman” (aka a plus size gal).  I had never really been on that Other Side of the store before, although I knew it existed. 

I walked out of the dressing room and looked in the direction of the Other Side.  Should I just take a look over there?  I debated with myself.  Oh, what would be the point, I thought.  After all, that blouse was only a LITTLE loose; surely an Extra Large would still be too small.  Well, I told myself, that red winterish jacket I bought and love so much is just an Extra Large.  Yes, but I found that on the 85% off rack, and it had arms long enough to fit an orangutan.   It was clearly mislabeled.

I finally talked some sense into myself.  For heaven’s sake, the Other Side of the store was just a few feet away, and it wouldn’t hurt just to look.  Slowly I walked in the direction of that side of the store, past the cash register, through the jewelry and scarves and belts that separate the two sides, to the edge of the Other Side.

I stopped for a moment, and just looked into the sea of clothes made for “regular” people.  Finally, I took a breath, closed my eyes, and stepped in.

Hey, the clothes over there were just like the clothes on the “Woman” side, only smaller!  It was gratifying to know that Dress Barn made the same clothes for all sizes of women, and did not presume that all plus-sized women only wanted shapeless muu-muus or drop waist dresses.  Hmm, they were also less expensive than their plus size counterparts, as much as $4.00 cheaper for a casual top, in clear discrimination against larger people.  But don’t get me started.

I saw the same top I had first tried on that didn’t seem quite right.  For the first time it dawned on me that maybe it might just have been too big.  No, that couldn’t be it, could it?  It seems that I couldn’t stop arguing with myself that day.  I decided to try it on, and…it fit perfectly!  In an Extra Large, everything sat right where it needed to be.

So that’s the story of the day I bought an Extra Large top at Dress Barn Misses (not Woman).  Of course, I will not be able to buy all my clothes on the “regular” side of the store, because of my very irregular body-  my top half has begun to flirt with regularity, but my bottom half is still very much a “womanly” plus size. 

Once a pear shape always a pear shape, but it is a much smaller pear these days.