Where I Belong

I’m hovering.

I’m between milestones. Between sizes. Not quite a plateau yet, but I need an extra push to get me to the next ten pounds. To get me to the next size down.

I need to get there.

And I will. It’s just taking some time.

It’s always been a goal of mine to get out of the Plus-Sized department. My mom and Gramma are pros at scouring the clearance racks, and it’s always been frustrating for me to have to walk away from them to look in a different department. And really? 12 racks of 90% in the “regular sizes” and 1 in the bigger sizes. Plus, most stores tend to mix maternity in with plus sizes. Like Fat Ladies aren’t self conscious enough. Nothing like pulling out an adorable top, only to discover it was made for a pregnant woman. (“Wow, this shirt is so roomy! It really hides my tummy, almost like it was made for…Oh.”) I’ve never been able to grab a medium off the rack and try it on. Or take a shirt my mom has just tried on and say, “Hey, let’s see how it looks on me.” I would love to be a medium. I would settle for a large. Hell, at this point, (and with my rack) even an extra-large will do. I just want OUT of the Plus Sizes.

And I’m getting there.

I went shopping last week…there was a skirt that I had seen at Kohl’s that I really wanted. It was pretty, and I was very excited to buy it with my Kohl’s cash. It was not in the Plus-Size department, which was thrilling. I grabbed it, and a couple of others, with some shirts and headed into the dressing room. I zipped it up without even sucking in…and was disappointed to discover that it had pleats in all the wrong places and made my ass look like an elephant. A pink elephant, at that. Damn. The next skirt was the same style, so I didn’t even bother. The next one was cute, but tighter around the legs than I was comfortable with. Then came shirts. The first two had buttons, which create a big, gaping problem for me. The third had snaps, which I thought might work…until I couldn’t even pull the shirt down over my gigantic…problem area.

I almost cried. Standing there in the dressing room in a skirt that made my hips look like a bread truck, with my head and one arm sticking out of a shirt I couldn’t squeeze into…I almost broke down.

That’s it, I thought.
I’m done, I though.
Back to the Fat Lady department…It’s where I belong.

I struggled out of the shirt and blinked my tears away. As I hung it back on the hanger, I noticed a zipper down the side of the shirt. Oh. Yeah. I unzipped it and slipped it on with no problem…and turned to see two huge cantaloupes fighting to escape from the snaps down the front of the shirt. No, wait. Those were my breasts. Yowza. Definitely not work attire. Satisfied that at least the damn thing fit, I put it, and everything else, back on the rack and meandered my way back to the Plus Sizes.

Kohl’s has a pitiful selection of clothes for Fat Ladies. Every once in a while, I will get lucky with a cute shirt or two, but unless I need elastic-waist pants or a bedazzled sweater, there isn’t much to chose from. For example, my Kohl’s had 3 styles of plus sized dresses, each in two different colors. Two of them looked like shapeless sacks, one of them made me look pregnant—it wasn’t maternity, I checked! Come on, Kohl’s. Fat Ladies want to look pretty, too!

I could not find a single skirt, but grabbed a few more shirts and made my way to yet another dressing room.

No.
No.
No.

Damn, why are these shirts so tight? Checking tags, I realized I had somehow found my way back to “regular” sizes and grabbed some XL’s as opposed to the plus-sized 1X. I wanted to leave everything in the dressing room and spend my $20 in Kohl’s cash on socks, but I only had one more shirt to try on. An XL. Why bother?

And what do you know? It fit.

Guess I may not belong in the Plus Sized department after all. (Not for much longer, anyway!)