DRESS YOU UP

Like most people, my body image affects the way I dress. I have an eating disorder so I’ve been plagued by seeing fat on me that may not actually be there. It’s like I have my own set of funhouse mirrors that reflect the cruelest images. 

 

Because of this, I hide under my clothes. The eighties were great years because the fashion of the day rebelled against the skin-tight jeans of the previous decade—Brooke Shields: “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins”—and welcomed pleated pants, shoulder pads, baggy jeans, loose-fitting Guess sweatshirts and parachute pants. The bigger the better, including the hair. 

 

Where is the eighties revival?

 

In truth, I’ve long since stepped away from clothes that could comfortably fit me and three other people. Loose clothing had its own triggering risks. I panicked whenever I viewed the ripples from excess fabric as my own layers of flab. Logically, I knew this was not the case, but I still felt I projected the image of a fat man. 

 

Nowadays, I wear more appropriate-sized clothing. Things fit me well enough. Still, whenever I’m in a relationship, my partner wants to see me in new clothes. It’s never been a reenactment of “Pretty Woman” with a Richard Gere doppelgänger loading me down with shopping bags full of the latest designs in Beverly Hills. I have a modest income as do the guys I date. But every guy I’ve been with has wanted to tweak my wardrobe. It’s not so much about fashion choices. I have a decent eye and I splurge on nicer items rather than sifting through sale racks at outlet stores. It’s the sizing that my boyfriends think I get wrong. 

 

I buy clothes that fit me, but my boyfriends want clothes that flatter me. Daniel, a guy I dated at the beginning of COVID, wasn’t so nuanced with words but he meant it as a compliment when he repeatedly said, “You look much better with your clothes off.” What he was trying to say was that I was in really good shape and no one could see how much so based on the clothes I wore. 

 

Every single boyfriend has steered me away from size Large. It makes me uneasy. I’m 6’1”. I don’t want to walk down Davie Street with people eying me for all the wrong reasons. Did he buy that ensemble at Baby Gap? (Matching bib and booties in the backpack.) 

 

My Portland boyfriend got me down to Medium in some brands. It always takes a lot of coaxing to get me to step out of the fitting room and stand in front of a full-length mirror while a salesperson says, “It looks terrific!” I’d take her word for it more if I knew she weren’t on commission. Sure, she could cross her fingers, thinking I’d still buy the shirt if I retreated behind the curtain to try on one size larger, but she must know of studies that show that, the more thinking time a patron puts into an apparel purchase, the less likely it is going to happen.[1] Don’t we all have a shelf in our closet with impulse buys we’ve never worn?

 

I will admit that it feels sexy going into clothing shops with a boyfriend and trying on clothes for one another’s appraisal. I hope that never goes away. I don’t want to try on items, tentatively step out of the fitting room and have my guy gaze up momentarily from his phone, only to shrug and say, “Yeah. Get it if you want,” before looking back down at his screen and pretending he understands what TikTok is all about.[2]

 

Evan has taken the whole clothes shopping event to an entirely new level. He’s been setting aside the Large hoodies I reach for and handing me the Small version instead. 

 

Small?! 

 

It’s part of an odd ritual that works for us. I hold up the garment, roll my eyes and say, “You’re kidding.” Evan points to the fitting room and says, “Go.” At least half the time, the thing seems to fit. (The rest of the time, it’s enough of a horror show for me to retain my knee-jerk eye roll reaction. So far, I haven’t needed a salesperson or EMT to cut me out of any item of clothing as I struggle to take in air, but maybe I’m pushing my luck. That’s the kind of happening that will make the evening news, thanks to store security camera footage.)

 

If I’ve gone down two sizes in shirts—at least sometimes—things are even more dramatic with pants and, egad, shorts. My latest purchases are down by three, even four, inches in the waist. In my sized-down pants, I can fasten the top button without gasping or cramping. I can even carry on a conversation with my normal voice instead of with some breathy, helium-tinged tone. And, better still, rolls of flesh don’t hang over the belt. This is not on account of rapid weight loss due to some COVID-activated banana bread diet. I promise. In fact, I don’t eat that stuff. Bananas, good. Bread, better. Banana bread? A tragedy. 

 

According to Evan, I now have a butt…or at least a mirage of one due to the denim fit. In my twenties, I was desperate for butt implants so, if he likes what he sees, I’m not going argue the point. I can save my plastic surgery fund for my eyes, neck and some especially alluring elbows. 

 

I’m most shocked by the shorts and swimsuits Evan’s had me try on. I now own a pair of $95 short shorts that make me seem 6’10” in photos, the legs looking like they belong on a gazelle instead of a pasty Scottish/English guy who must apply gobs of SPF 70 sunscreen to skin that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. I have worn the shorts on a few occasions, but never in Vancouver where I live. Let the people of Salida, Colorado and Taos, New Mexico get all worked up over the need for new dress codes for daring Canadians ambling along downtown sidewalks. 

 

While it’s true I was on swim team in high school and wore Speedos for practices and swim meets,[3] I’ve reverted to a more modest look with age. I prefer loose, long trunks that look like basketball shorts with the hemline covering the tops of the kneecaps. Most often, when Evan dangles a swimsuit for me to try on, I hold up my hand, giving him my best traffic cop “stop” signal. “Not enough fabric,” I say. He can’t argue the point, but he’s persistent. The dude lived a few years in Miami and I swear it’s skewed his entire perception of what is acceptable to wear in public. I have one new swimsuit. What it lacks in material it makes up for in brightness, a rainbow of sherbet colors, with two hues missing. You can only get so much on a small swatch of fabric, after all.

 

I’m not entirely uncomfortable with the way I’ve been dressing. Sometimes it even feels good, especially since I have a boyfriend who appears so dazzled when I wear more formfitting clothing. Still, I can only hope that Marc Jacobs, Mr. Turk and Tom Ford will unveil new cloak collections for Summer 2023. Hell, it might be an act of charity for them to bring back parachute pants, too. The world has surely seen more than it ever wanted of this fifty-something body.  

 

 

 

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[1] Full disclosure, I don’t know if there are any such studies with such a conclusion, but this is the internet. There’s a low threshold in terms of how much backing I need for anything I declare. While I’m at it, I’ll posit that studies have shown that people with any sense of taste abhor cargo pants and Crocs. Stop resisting, guys. Throw those things out!

[2] For me, Tik Tok will always be a Kesha song. That’s as hip as I need to be. And I’m self-aware enough to know I can never attempt to “randomly” fit the lyric, “Po-Po shut us down” into a conversation.

[3] It helped that we all wore Speedos. The only way to survive a public appearance in unflattering clothing is to have an entire herd similarly garbed. See also, bridesmaids.