As a lady, I'm sure it's supposed to be taboo when asked what size you are. At least, that's what many a film or television show has taught me. But I'm actually really comfortable with my size now.
Sure there were really terrible moments, such as high school when one of my "friends" asked me in front of my statistics class my size, because she wanted to give me a pair of pants for Christmas. She carefully did it round robin style, asking the person in front of her to ask the person in front of him, to ask the row next to her. I think it got three people ahead, when I suddenly hear one of our more deep-voiced male classmates. "What size is Georgette's pants? Why do I want to know?"
Did I mention this was during quiet, studying the problem time? We all looked over to him, before the class focused on me. I turned red and announced that I was a five, and I shrunk into my seat behind my brown-paper wrapped math book.
One of my favorites was when shopping for brides' maids gowns at H&M with my friend Lauren. The nice thing about buying brides' maids gowns at H&M is that they are considerably cheaper than if the bride decided something more in the marketed bridal line. The downside is that H&M doesn't really store a variety of sizes, so there I was in the H&M dressing room next to Lauren's, and I couldn't get the stupid zipper to go up, despite it being an H&M size ten*. This didn't work at all as there were only a handful of sizes on the rack and there were six of us in the bridal party. It would have to do, and I would have to go to the gym in the mean time.
So when my aunt asked me what my pant size was, I told her around six or seven, leading us into a confused discussion over pants. No really, we couldn't see eye-to-eye about it, because my aunt insisted that pants were 00, 0, 2 and I insisted that pants went higher than that. We at first thought that there was some sort of translation issue as she spoke in Tagalog and I replied in English, but after a while, we plum gave up on trying to make sense.
Either way, she said, digging into a box of stuff she planned to send to the Philippines, I was welcome to these really nice pants her boss gave her, and when she finally found them, she handed me a black pair of theory dress pants for random's sake.
And it didn't end there. No, this magical box was full of treasures, like a polka dotted Marc Jacobs party dress, a flouncy black Phillip Lim dress with a weird pouch in front and big flower on the breast, a Vivienne Westwood skirt that I'm still trying to make heads of, and a Red Valentino denim dress. Everything felt like actual good quality, and I waited until she left to try each one on, mainly because these garments were around size two to four and I wanted to reserve the embarrassment of squeezing into these for my own time. My size be damned.
I struck out with the Red Valentino and the theory pants. I ditched this really cute dropped waist dress too, but I held my breath when I zipped up that Marc Jacobs number. This one had to work. Never mind that I wouldn't have anywhere to wear it to. But it did zip up and without difficulty. The only thing is, I can't raise my hands or do the YMCA, but I figure that I wouldn't want to in this dress anyway. I spent the morning spinning around in it, trying out my hair, writing this blog, but I finally took it off to get stuff done.
An LBD for New York Georgette. I'm trying for every New York stereotype aren't I?
Do you remember this episode from "Sabrina: The Animated Series" where Sabrina and Chloe wanted to fit into these skinny jeans?
*Never, ever believe what H&M tells you. Never. Looking for consistency in their sizes is like looking for consistency in a