Do you know what really grinds my gears? Changing rooms. If they aren’t filled with screeching children peeking under the doors as their haggard parents scream expletives, there’s always the middle aged attendant asking if you would possibly like the size up after wrestling for half an hour with the zip. Worst of all the curtains rarely reach the edges giving unsuspecting passers-by an unannounced glance of half an arse cheek. The locks don’t work, the doors are too small, the curtain hooks are broken and a complete stranger walked in on you starkers attempting to escape the irate and expansive queue.
Now perhaps this is a slightly biased female perspective, men seem to enter a shop and be one of three sizes S, M L, no trying on necessary, pick a size and Bob’s your uncle, whoever he may be. Women do not only have their size to worry about, it’s the shape of your size. Are you a 34DD top heavy with spindly size 6 legs? Do you have the classic patronisingly ‘British pear shape,’ tiny wee breasts with nicely rounded hips and bum that friends reassure you is just like J-Lo? This is before we’ve even got on to ‘styling for your shape,’ a term so endeared to by all those television ‘stylists’ who grab their victims wobbly bits in front of a mirror, smile smugly as they weep hysterically about their lack of self esteem, and fix their lifetimes insecurities with an A line skirt. While Gok Wan proudly parades stretch marks and cellulite around shopping centres across the UK, I’m not so sure we should be subject to this when minding our own business on the high street.
Fancy stores are no better, heavy curtains and human sized doors they may have, but when you ask the dopey weekend girl to hold on to the tights you can’t take in, they mysteriously disappear by the time you exit the fitting rooms, hot and bothered, red in the face, giving up on the whole idea. Who needs new clothes anyway?
