I’m sick and tired of all the blathering about obesity and weight loss. It’s everywhere — in my inbox, on TV, and in every magazine I pick up. “Choose to live free of fat!” “Discover the real you — the thin you.” “Lose 20 pounds in 4 days! Guaranteed.” With all those fat-free foods and diets and diet pills and colon cleansers and exercise machines and TV shows about the joys of gastric stapling, you’d think we’d all be thin as sticks. If only.
My doctor is just like the rest of them. Earlier this week, he’d barely begun to check my plugged-up sinuses before he started on about how if I don’t lose thirty pounds, I’ll be looking at an early grave.
As for my feminist friends, of course they sing a different tune. Whenever I dither over whether I can justify a small dessert with my doctor’s warnings still ringing in my ears, they launch into a tirade about how this is another instance of the patriarchy controlling women. Don’t I realize I have the right to dress and look however I want?
So this morning, I was talking with my therapist, and I mentioned feeling a bit pushed and pulled by all of this, which led him to proclaim that all my problems are the fault of my overeating inner child, trying to fill up the vast emptiness of my soul with food. I bought myself a coffee and two doughnuts on the way home.
The phone was ringing as I came through the door. Karen’s getting married next month, and she was calling again to find out if I’d bought a dress. I told her no, as I’m hoping to lose some weight before then. “Stella,” she said, “it’s time to face facts! Just get yourself a dress, any dress, anything but purple. Long or short, sexy or prudish, I don’t care. Just not purple.”
“But I love purple,” I said. “That’s what I was gonna —”
“Well, you can’t,” Karen said, her voice starting to rise in that way I’d heard all too often of late. “You just can’t. Frederick’s mother is wearing an aubergine suit, and I don’t want all my wedding photos to look like I’m standing between two giant eggplants.” I can’t really blame her. Frederick’s mother isn’t exactly a thin woman herself.
So, I agreed: anything but purple. I do want to support my friend even though I have a few doubts about Frederick the Not-So-Great. Karen has always had lousy taste in men. Number one was a charming, handsome crook who ran a jewellery store where, it turned out, he was selling jewellery that belonged to other people. Then there was the man who was engaged both to Karen and a woman in Ottawa. Karen only found out when she happened to answer his cellphone by mistake. As for Frederick, he seems sweet but really, really needy.
I barely know him, but early last week he called to talk about his weight. He’s definitely a little chunky, but I — obviously — don’t have any great advice for him. It was a short call. This week he called to ask for help choosing the perfect gift for his perfect bride. That led to a recounting of what his therapist had said about getting in touch with his authentic self — a self, he confessed, that would absolutely crumble if he lost his new soulmate. Oh-oh. Then, before I made my escape, he started telling me he’s been eating quite a bit lately, what with all the wedding stress. An enormous bouquet of flowers arrived the next day to thank me for our little chats. Oh-oh again. On the other hand, Karen really, really needs to be needed, so it’ll either be a perfect match or a perfect disaster.
Anyway, with the wedding only two weeks away, my quest for the dress is weighing heavily. So far, everything I’ve found was either much too fussy and frilly or much too matronly and mother-of-the-bride-y. Or much too small. I didn’t tell Karen any of this or she’d have needed even more Valium than she’s already taking.
There was only one shop in town that I hadn’t tried yet, so yesterday afternoon I drove through a near blizzard in search of Pretty Girls. I found it in a little strip mall wedged between a pizza place and a travel agent. A rake-thin older woman in a blue smock waved at me from the back. “Come on in, dear,” she shouted. “I’m Maeve. Nasty weather out there.” Her hair was pinky-beige and all piled up like a wedding cake.
After our routine complaining about the weather, I launched into my story about needing a maid of honour outfit, and why it could be any colour but aubergine. Her first question was when the wedding was happening. I didn’t want to tell her it was in only two weeks since I know proper women are ready at least twelve months before, so I just said it was a winter wedding, hoping she’d think it was next winter.
Maeve took a step back and looked me over. “Well, there’ll be no patterns or horizontal stripes for you,” she said, “although you’re awful tall for vertical ones.” She quickly added, “But you do have a pretty face. So, you’ll be wanting something dark. Very slimming. And nothing clingy. Not for a girl of your size. No sirree! So, how about purple? It’s very big — that is, very in this year.”
“Ah, no,” I said. “Sorry. Can’t be purple. As I said, the mother of the groom is wearing aubergine and —”
“Oh-bur-what?” she asked.
“Aubergine,” I repeated. “You know, purple, like an eggplant. It’s French for eggplant.”
“Eggplants are green,” she said.
“No,” I said, “zucchinis are green. Eggplants are purple. And it’s purple I don’t want.”
“Humph,” she said. “I’m not so sure about that.”
We began the search. Soon I’d found a promising dark red dress with a cropped jacket. Maeve insisted that red was not meant for “big girls,” but I ignored her and headed off with it to the dressing room. There I discovered the store label was wrong and it was only a 14, so Maeve scurried off in search of an 18. Soon she was back with an 18 — in purple. “Sorry,” I told her again, “but it really can’t be aubergine, that is, purple. I like it, I really do, but . . .” Maeve rolled her eyes.
Then she tried to interest me in an outfit decorated with plastic jewels and big shoulder pads — a leftover from an eighties soap opera. We did find a nice dark green skirt with a silk shell, but the jacket was the colour that troops wear in the Middle East. “You’ll never know until you try it on!” she kept saying.
“I do know,” I wanted to say. “It will make me look embalmed.” I gave in and put it on, and I was right. When she came to see it, she shouted, “No! The problem’s not the jacket. It’s your feet! Put on your proper shoes. Surely you brought them?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t think —”
“You girls never do.” She whipped the curtain shut, trotted off, and returned with a pair of silver slides with two-inch heels. They were probably a size 6, and at least a third of my foot fell off the back like the unsolvable dilemma of the stepsisters ugly. “Never mind,” she said. “You’re much too tall to wear heels anyway. You’re someone who needs some expert advice. You need a makeover. First a diet. Then I’ll find you a proper outfit, and I’ll send you to this wonderful cosmetician I know. When she’s done, you’ll look so good you won’t even recognize yourself!”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. I thanked her and said I needed to get going.
I knew Maeve wasn’t pleased with me, and her voice was sharper when she called out to me from the checkout counter. “Excuse me? What was that colour again? Oh-bur-what? I’m going to call.”
“Au-ber-gine!” I shouted.
She started punching numbers into her phone. “Gerry,” she said, “it’s Maeve. Have I got one for you! Listen to this. Wait a minute, wait. Excuse me, dear!” she called to me. “What was it again? Oh-bur-what?”
“AU-BER-GINE!”
I emerged and headed for the door. “Wait!” she called to me, her hand over the mouthpiece. “Just wait!” She looked back at the phone. “Sorry, Gerry. Listen, it’s oh-bur-jean. . . . Yeah, right. . . . I don’t know. That’s what she says.” A few seconds later, a big smile began to spread over Maeve’s face. “Right,” she said. “Thanks.”
She slammed down the phone and looked up at me. “I knew it,” she said. “I haven’t been in this business thirty-eight years for nothing. When it comes to fashion, I know what I’m talking about. That oh-bur-jean you were talking about, it’s not a colour.”
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