I Hate My Clothes

And on Labor Day, I … labored!

I cleaned out my closet! I filled two extra large trash bags with clothes that are too big! They are on their way to a worth­while charity.

Wow. There is a lot more room in my closet now and I can actu­ally see clearly what clothes are hang­ing on the rack.

I also found the bot­tom of the laun­dry pile. No kid­ding. I don’t think I’ve seen it since … well, prob­a­bly last Labor Day! I have laun­dered myself into a tizzy, but the laun­dry room has absolutely no bas­kets of clothes wait­ing to be washed, the ham­pers are empty, the bath­room cup­boards are bulging with clean tow­els and linens. I’m sur­prised there wasn’t a power out­age, con­sid­er­ing that the washer, dryer, dish­washer and air con­di­tioner have been using up the kilo­watts all day long.

In the process of tak­ing a seri­ous inven­tory of my cloth­ing, I real­ized some­thing: I hate vir­tu­ally my entire wardrobe.

As I was pulling clothes out of my closet and try­ing them on, Big­Bob would walk by peri­od­i­cally and just shake his head. A cou­ple of times I called him into the bed­room and asked his opin­ion. He just stood there look­ing at me, dumb­founded. It was his “What? Are you kid­ding me?” look. At one point, he got exas­per­ated with me, threw up his hands and said, “Give it all away and start over.” Then he mum­bled some words I refuse to type here, stomped off to the fam­ily room, turned on the tele­vi­sion, and pro­ceeded to yell at Dale Earn­hardt, Jr. about his driving.

I found myself ask­ing the same ques­tion repeat­edly: “What was I think­ing when I bought this?” Over and over, I lobbed cloth­ing into those bags, say­ing, “Good riddance!”

Of course, the rea­son I pur­chased them is the same rea­son that every woman who is strug­gling with her weight buys the clothes she does: They fit. There are many items of cloth­ing in those bags — and still more hang­ing in my closet — that I can hon­estly say I only pur­chased because I needed to buy some­thing to wear and they at least fit prop­erly (at the time). The selec­tion of large size cloth­ing, espe­cially items suit­able for busi­ness, is extremely lim­ited. So as a woman of a cer­tain size, you learn to accept what is avail­able, com­pro­mis­ing style and indi­vid­ual expres­sion for fit and, all too often, com­fort.I have pur­chased my cloth­ing — all cloth­ing, includ­ing shoes and under­gar­ments — online exclu­sively for sev­eral years now.I’ve never really enjoyed shop­ping, espe­cially for cloth­ing. But order­ing online and hav­ing clothes deliv­ered also spares one from the exhaust­ing and frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence of tak­ing cloth­ing into a fit­ting room — and then bring­ing it right back out when it doesn’t fit. It spares you from the stares, tongue cluck­ing and gen­er­al­ized dis­ap­proval of the size 2 clerks that major depart­ment stores invari­ably sta­tion in the “Women’s” (Don’t you love that name?) department.Once I fig­ured out what size to order, I just vis­ited the same web­sites repeat­edly, order­ing the newest ver­sion of what­ever I bought last time.

To some extent, that approach has served me well because my pro­fes­sional cloth­ing does tend to be for­mu­laic and uniform-like. After all, there is only so much excite­ment you can build into basic black, gray and navy blue suits.

But there sure are some beau­ti­ful blouses and sweaters than can be worn with them, not to men­tion accessories.

It will still be quite warm here in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia until at least Octo­ber 1. Even though I hate vir­tu­ally all of the cloth­ing that remains in my closet tonight, it will serve me until then. That is my tar­get date for tak­ing stock again, with empha­sis on fall and win­ter items. And hope­fully, my sum­mer cloth­ing items will all be too large by then and I will be able to fill up a cou­ple more large bags, leav­ing me noth­ing for next spring and summer.

Guess that would mean I’d just have to break down and shop. I hope that by then I will be able to actu­ally enjoy it.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Fem­i­nism, Weight Issues, Weight Man­age­ment

On the Same Topic:

• Read­ing Project: Fat is a Fem­i­nist Issue (Week One)
• Read­ing Project: Fat is a Fem­i­nist Issue
• The One Lie My Mother Told Me (Part Two)
• Time to Shop
• Time to Clean Out the Closet — Round 1