Measure Twice, Order Once
For the past couple weeks, I have been stalking some dresses at a site I found out about from someone I follow on twitter of all places. I checked out all the styles, I read all the reviews; I contacted a mathematician at the local university to calculate the shipping and duty. I called a friend and enticed her into ordering with me to split the shipping.
Oh, yes. It was all happening.
Now this wasn’t the first time I had ordered online, but the clothes we were ordering were all fitted so out came the measuring tape followed by the internal dialog. “Hmmm...I’m kind of between sizes. So close to that smaller size... Maybe I’ll order it? No, that’s stupid. Who cares what the tag says? But I’m planning on losing a few pounds and the reviews say it fits big. Oh, and if I wear Spanx...”
Holy mindfuck, Batman!
It turns out, you can lie to yourself but you can't lie to the gods of online shopping.
As women, we really only want two things about us to be big: eyes and boobs – and maybe butt if it looks like JLo’s. Ordering clothes online may be the final frontier of body acceptance because you have to measure yourself and be honest. It’s not easy or cheap to return, so the only one who benefits from delusions of smaller waists and trimmer tummies is FedEx, and they seem to be doing fine without my vanity money.
Why even consider ordering the smaller size? In talking to one friend about the online experience, she admitted to me she ordered something she knew would be too small just because she couldn’t bear to order the larger and correct size. Another plus sized friend ordered a suit from a company that doesn’t make plus sizes because she knows one day, she will wear that suit.
I’ve been thinking about all of this since placing the order and here’s what I’ve come to. The measurement of my hips is concrete(ish) and unlikely to change in the week it will take for the dress to arrive, but the way I think about myself is more abstract.
There’s an element of dreaming we all take shopping with us. Dreaming where you’re going to wear that dress, how you’ll look and feel in it, how you might accessorize it. The compliments you’ll get when you glide in looking effortlessly chic in something you can’t get at the mall. Ordering the right size forces you to admit what is real RIGHT NOW and sometimes that clashes with the dream.
When we go into a bricks and mortar store, we can take several sizes into a dressing room, and while we may still not like the number on the tag, we don’t have to face our exact measurements. Even though none of this should matter and even though we should all love and accept ourselves, etc.
Holy mindfuck, Batman.
I’m working at accepting myself and at the end of the day, I ordered two dresses, both in the right size according to the size chart. One was great and the other went back, but not because it was too small.