Shopping over the past few years, I have become very skilled at looking at clothing and figuring out if it will fit. It’s a very good skill to possess. I’ll try something on when I have to, but only if I have to. That is because I have discovered the most uncomfortable place in the world. Probably not in the world, but you get the idea. This place is in shopping malls and retail clothing stores, and always guarantees one beautiful adventure for a shopper. This place is a place that I dread having to set foot in. It’s another world. It’s the dressing room.
When I’m scouring the shelves and racks of clothing, I feel like I become a different person. I’m tense. I’m on the hunt. I’m in game-time mode. Shopping is not a fun experience for me. I don’t go just to go. I go when I have to. I’m there for a reason. I look for what I need and I get out. So when I pick up something that I think about getting, I’m not going to waste time lollygagging in a dressing room with a piece of clothing that I questioned in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve chosen plenty of things to try on that have not worked out. And they’re probably still hanging on the walls of several Targets and JCPenneys across the country. But usually, when I make a choice, it’s a good one because I only pick up things that I know I can put all my faith in.
Last weekend, Old Navy was having a sale. I was in the mall to grab something from another store, and I splurged and decided to take an unplanned shopping detour. My dad was waiting on me in the car, so I called him and said, “Hey Dad, there’s a sale at Old Navy and I’m going to run in there for five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” he asked.
“Yes, Dad,” I explained. “You don’t understand. I really do mean five minutes.”
Sure enough, five minutes later I was making my way back to the car with two new shirts and a pair of nice shoes for work.
Another thing that bothers me about dressing rooms is the layout. Let’s be honest. Except for the 6-foot walls, there’s nothing private about them. What if you’re shopping with someone and you want an opinion as to whether that purple and orange sundress makes your head look really big? I mean, you already think so, but maybe you want to make sure it’s not just you. And what if it does make your head look big? Well, now you and your big head have to journey far from that 2-by-2-mirrored safe haven of fading walls and a broken door. You and your big head have to parade in front of the public to find your friend who was supposed to be by the door.
For some reason, people get uncomfortably comfortable in a dressing room. If you don’t know me, don’t tell me that I look cute in something. First, it’s disturbing and second, I just don’t care what you think about the way I look. When in conversation, there are some things that people just do not need to hear. I don’t want to walk into a dressing room and hear some lame conversation all about a girl who likes this guy who likes her best friend who is some other guy’s girlfriend whose mom is out shopping with her own best friend and best friend’s daughter who happens to be the girl in the dressing room to the left who is clearly not a size 3 but is trying to make it happen with a pair of blue jeans she loudly claims she “has to have!” So, by the time you leave, you know dressing room one has a hair appointment with a French guy named Paolo on Saturday; room five is leaving her husband for some Russian banker named Hugo; room 12 thinks she looks awful in red, brown and things with lines; room seven is on the verge of selling her difficult child on eBay; and you’re walking out with a ridiculous song in your head you heard over and over and over from room nine. Not that you didn’t hear it three times that same day on the radio.
After an experience like this, I feel like coming home, pulling all my hair out and then relaxing. It also takes me a few months to ever want to go shopping again. Today I was thinking about the next time I will need something that requires a trip to a dressing room. Hopefully it won’t be for another five or six years, maybe on my wedding day. Then again, maybe I just won’t go. I’m sure my future husband will understand.
