Monday, September 25, 2006

Dresses and Depression

I went to the mall to look for this perfect dress for a debut. It has to be slinky but not burlesque, sexy but not vulgar. By all means, these qualifications are simple. Tough.

I grabbed a green dress, a polka-dotted black and white dress, and a lacy off-white dress. I stalked off to the fitting room with my prizes and my self-esteem intact. When I left, I felt so horrible and mad at life, the universe, and everything.

It can’t possibly be! There must be something wrong with the fitting room mirror. I can’t possibly be that fat. There must be something wrong with the mirror.

There must be something wrong with the mirror.

As this sentence made a marquee on the screen of every neuron of mine, I went to another shop. I grabbed three dresses and stormed the fitting room. With a sinking feeling straight to the gut, I have come to a numbing conclusion: I am fat. The mirror says so. The reflection is mouthing off the three bad, dirty, and pathetic excuses for words (wait, is ‘I am’ two words? Is ‘am’ a word?). What, you think I’m joking about this mirror thing? I really believed the mirror was fattening. So sue me. It was only yesterday that I have pounced upon the discovery that I am wrong.

That really depressed me. I know you’re fairly sick of me whining about my mass, and I’m sick of it too. Obviously, I have issues. Acknowledging them really does a lot. A lot to depress me.

It well may be that this fat-issue is all inside my head. Maybe I’m anorexic, hunh? But if I’m anorexic, I’m a pathetic excuse for one. I eat to my heart’s content, impulsively and uncontrollably. I weigh myself everyday. I weigh the same everyday. So what’s wrong then? Maybe I am just in love with Whining. You know Whining? I’m sure you’ve met it. It’s annoying and gratifying at the same time.

I can get all serious and gunk and say that society is cruel and that it imposes upon us poor hapless women unrealistic expectations of being beautiful. A woman has to be bone-thin, with ribs sticking out like a dog not fed for a week. A woman has to be fair, and if she is tanned, her tan has to be a specific shade of brown (copper, if you may) to be attractive. A woman has to be this, a woman has to be that, a woman has to be everything that she is not.

As I constantly bitch about, TV commercials are the agents of this cruel Inquisition, er, imposition. There are also magazines as excellent funnels to drain out a woman’s self-esteem. They tell you, quite successfully, that you are ugly. While most of us know that it’s just a marketing pitch, there will always be the lurking fear of the television or the glossy page being right. Lurking fears are the worst kinds of fears. They paralyze us because we fail to acknowledge their existence and thus disable us to be anything but afraid and incomplete and inadequate and weak.

I can get all serious and gunk and say this. I am.

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