Why I Still Hate Shopping

I've posted before about shopping for clothes, and I think every plus-sized woman (who the hell thought up that phrase anyhow?) has gone through that love/hate relationship with the dressing room mirror. I am beyond the "does this make me look fat" stage- because I am over 200 pounds and I am fat, and clothes don't hide that!! And while my favorite store for clothes, Kohl's, has larger sizes that are a step above other stores, I still get annoyed with my choices.

Tonight I went through it. I stopped at Kohl's to take advantage of their big sale, and because I wanted a few new tops for this summer. I have a tendency to shop for work clothes before I will casual clothes. And the other night when we went to the Braves game, it took me almost an hour of trying on clothes to figure out what to wear- getting dressed in the morning for the office takes about five minutes. I don't have a lot of T's or cotton tops, mainly because I don't really care for unforgiving cotton- which on me tends to accentuate every roll and bulge. And so I don't have a lot of good tops for summer. The few that I have that I love, this is probably the third or fourth summer I will be wearing them, and they are starting to show it.

Summer is a hard time for me when picking out clothes. I'm okay with shorts or crop pants, but when it comes to tops, I don't have much luck. A short-sleeved fitted cotton T doesn't do as much to cover everything like a big flowing peasant blouse in the winter. And I've been known to wear long sleeves into the office during August- here in the Deep South- just to hide the jiggly fat above the elbow. Or, if I do get a cotton top, I end up getting 1-2 sizes bigger than what I normally wear, just so it won't cling to me and show everyone right where my bra straps start and stop.

But I digress. So tonight I went to Kohl's, and while I was standing there in the "Women's" department (which I'm not sure why it's called that, because a 43-year-old who wears a medium is still a woman- you don't have to be overweight to qualify for that title)- which is right next to the "normal" sizes. And as I'm looking over at the oh-so-cute outfits on just the next rack, I'm holding up big frumpy shirts with way too obvious bright colors or designs. Like a giant pink butterfly across my midsection is going to draw your attention away from that area. But, I came home with a bag full of clothes nonetheless. Which made me wonder- if I was a medium (not the psychic kind, because I would already know the answer to the question), and the clothes that I bought tonight were right there in a medium among all the other cute clothes I saw tonight- would I have bought these same tops? Or did I buy them simply because they fit and they were all I had to pick from?

I realized that no, I would probably not have purchased even one of the items I brought home, if I'd had all the choices that I saw over in the Misses department. Not that I hate any of the clothes I bought, I just hate the fact that because of my weight, my choices are so limited. I've blogged about this before, but tonight just seemed to remind me of how the plus-size clothing industry is SO SO way off the mark. Why can't they take those same cute tops I see over in the regular sizes (I guess I am irregularly sized), and add a little more fabric and cut it a little more generously, and make it in my size!!

Sandy