Dressing Room Lessons
Some of the most intimate and consequential moments with my mother were those we spent in dressing rooms. I remember wandering through Anne Taylor and Burdines, combing my hands through silk and wool blend fabric. She’d ask me to look for a size 2 or 4 with a ‘P’ next to it. She is a tiny thing.
Once we were both in the dressing room, she’d give me her purse to hold and get to work. First, she’d take off her clothes and critically study her body in a bra and panties; then, she’d try on new clothes and study her body again before turning sideways, and- that’s right, study her body one more time. She’d alter the way she looked by squeezing her waist or sucking in her stomach and sticking out her ribs. Sometimes, she’d let out a huge breath of air and laugh at her efforts to look even thinner than she was.
It was in those small rooms, with big mirrors and flat fluorescent lights, where she passed down the lessons that would shape me. To avoid legs like these you must exercise, she’d say while slapping the sides of her thighs. She taught me that some shades of green made her look seasick or dead- and you don't want that. And, perhaps the most consequential lesson she imparted to me, was that there should always be a gap between your belly and the waistband of your clothes. This one came, not with words, but with her repeated attempt to suck in her stomach and scrutinize the space between it and the fabric- before deciding if the size she wore was really the right one.
Things were similar but different when I was the one trying on clothes. My mother would shake me around like a rag doll while pulling at the waistbands of pants and skirts. In the end, I was encouraged to buy clothes that were big for me because we only shopped once a year and things had to last. Don’t worry, she’d say as I stared at myself wearing the jeans she had cuffed halfway up my calf. You’ll grow into them.
By the time I was twelve, my mother and I were wearing the same size clothes, and though we didn't shop at the same stores (she shopped at Talbots, and I shopped at the Limited Too,) she’d try on everything I did- just to see, is what she said. By the time I was sixteen, I was bigger than my mother and shopping was no longer fun.
In the summer of ‘97, I stood in front of a huge mirror in a Florida mall, wearing bunched-up panties under a two-piece swimsuit, waiting for her to tell me how I looked. She was very direct and succinct. It just doesn’t look good on you, she said. I broke down in tears, feeling ashamed of what I had grown into, and my mother tried to guide me through a situation so delicate, that it might have as well been heart surgery.
The problem was, her background hadn’t given her the right skill set to do it and her efforts led me astray. At the time, the world we lived in said women’s bodies had to look a certain way if they were to be exposed. So, behind that thick canvas curtain in a Miami mall, my mother tried to protect me from the judgment society would cast on my shape, by encouraging and offering to help me do whatever it took to change my body. It was a pivotal moment in my upbringing and, sadly, it marked the beginning of a decades-long eating disorder. I left the store with two bikinis in tow and began starving myself that evening.
I was in my mid-twenties when my anorexia was at its worst. I was so sick I had started shopping for clothes in the kid's section of department stores, and those dressing rooms had become secret chambers where I measured myself against my illness. I pulled on the waistband of clothes, just as my mother did, making sure there was space between my skin and the fabric, but rather than buy clothes that were too big and tell myself I’ll grow into them, I’d buy everything too tight and challenge myself. I’ll shrink into them. I’ll shrink into them.
When my mother and I shopped for my first wedding dress, (I say first, because I have been married twice) I stood on a small podium as a woman pinned a sample size to make it fit. There was so much extra fabric she had to use heavy-duty clamps, and my mother said you can’t wear a huge ball gown. It’s like you are being swallowed by fabric. I reveled in my boniness.
Years later, while in an eating disorder recovery program that taught me to eat healthily, I found myself in the dressing room of a TJ Maxx, panicking because there was meat on my body again and it was time to shop for women’s clothes. I knew I had to let go of my feelings regarding the size on a tag because no brand was universal and, in the end, a tag was just a tag and a number was just an arbitrary number. It took me three to four hours to finally buy a pair of pants that fit properly- not too big, not too snug, just right. When I got home, I bravely cut the tag off my new jeans determined to continue on my road to recovery. Since then, I began to make it a point to not judge my body in front of mirrors. Clothes are clothes, and bodies are bodies, I told myself. It was a new beginning.
When my eating disorder was in remission, I spent a weekend in NYC with my mother. Where can I find I nice pair of jeans? She asked. I took her to a nice store on the upper east side hoping she’d buy me a pair as well. We both walked around the store picking clothes and handing them to the saleswoman who asked if we would be sharing a room. We said yes, and giggled like schoolgirls knowing we would once again be together behind that curtain.
Careful not to bump into each other, or into the fragile walls of the dressing cube, my mother and I teetered and balanced, holding each other up while pulling up one pair of jeans after another. Uy! Look at my thighs! But you look great in those! She said to me. And those too! I had never felt better- my mother’s approval always meant the world to me. Soon, we had three piles: a ‘yes’ pile, a ‘definitely no’ pile, and a ‘let's add it all up and see if we still have money for these’ pile, but once my mother took one look at the price tag, she told me she would only buy herself one pair. I’ll take you somewhere else and buy you something cheaper, she said.
As a young woman with no self-esteem, recovering from an eating disorder, and still placing my worth outside of myself, I took a hit in that dressing room and felt as though I wasn’t worth an expensive pair of jeans.
Fourteen years have passed since that day, and now I have a daughter of my own. She is eight years old, at the age when not all clothes have elastic waistbands, and when trying things on before buying them is supposed to be more of a thing- or so I was taught.
This summer, we were looking for a pair of denim shorts, so I walked into a dressing room with my little girl and set my purse down on the bench while flashbacks of my childhood accosted me. My daughter kicked off her sneakers and threw on a pair of light blue denim cutoffs, wore them for no more than ten seconds, and started to take them off.
What happened? I asked. They fit, let’s go pay! She said. I was dumbfounded, short-circuiting. What about the rituals? I thought. Shouldn’t she try on more sizes? Look at herself in the mirror longer? Scrutinize her body like every girl is taught to do?
I fell into the behavioral pattern from my past and asked my daughter to try on the shorts again. Perplexed she asked me, why? And it was my mother’s voice that came from my lips. To see how they fit, I said. My baby begrudgingly did as I asked and then stood in front of a huge mirror staring at herself not knowing what to do.
So, how do you feel in them? How do they fit? I kept pushing her because it was the only thing I knew to do. Then, to my surprise, my daughter began to pose, popping her hip, flipping her hair, and twirling around to catch a look at herself from a different angle. I feel fabulous mommy, now let’s go pay! She said.
That day, my daughter taught me perhaps the most important lesson I have ever learned in a dressing room. Let's love ourselves. We learn to be so critical of what we look like, what we sound like, and what we are perceived as. We are taught to look and then compare. Why? What for?
We are all beautiful and have the right to feel beautiful, no matter what that means to others. There should be no standard of beauty, we are beauty- simply because we are. The ability to be, live, and exist as us is beautiful enough. We don’t need to look any further. We should all look at ourselves in the mirror and marvel at who we are, and everything we become each new day. I am forever thankful to my daughter for making me see things differently that day- in a dressing room, with fluorescent lights and big mirrors. She absolutely loved herself. We all should.