Playing Dress Up

Isn't it funny how time stands still in a department store? There are no windows so it's like a casino, you never know if the sun is going up or coming down. I have to admit, I miss the big department store days of NJ where we lived within a fifteen minute drive of three huge malls, including one that was newly built in Freehold with a Nordstrom. The Navy Dress came in the mail yesterday, and wonder of wonder, it fits! But it needs to be shortened to tea length, and the straps need adjusting so I high tailed it to the tailor. The straps are see-through silk crepe, so on the way home I stopped at our one and only indoor mall's department store last night, Belk, to buy a strapless bra. The bra cost almost as much as the dress but, hallelujah, they were having a sale!

Let me preface this tale with the book I just finished reading, "The Thoughtful Dresser," by Linda Grant. I read an article about it in a US Air magazine; it was about finding one red high heeled shoe in the Auschwitz museum's shoe display. This is a plexiglass box filled with all the discarded shoes of 25,000 Jewish people who came through the gates toward a final solution in one day. It is of course a symbolic display, and it got the author thinking about the woman who would wear such totally non-utilitarian shoes on her journey. She postulates that she must have loved them very much. Grant is a journalist who was short-listed for the Booker Prize and so I read this non-fiction book about what makes us women tick when it comes to clothes...and shoes. One thing I learned is that the women's movement really started with the flappers (aka my dear Mother). They were not afraid to show their legs, and ask for what they wanted. And then after WWII, we have the birth of the big department stores, like Bamberger's and Macy's, and they became a safe place for women to travel alone and seek the company of other women for shopping and dining. Men had golf, and 'men only' bars and clubs - we had the department store and nunneries. Before this, women pretty much stayed at home, or on the farm, didn't drive and depended on salesmen who would come door to door or a local fabric shop and seamstress for their clothing.

Well, last night I got that department store friendly sisterly feeling. The undergarment area was literally buzzing with women buying 'two for one' and all manner of spanks and nighties. They reminded me of the butterflies I watch sashaying around my flowers. Once I mentioned the wedding, we were off to the races. Women of all ages had something astute to tell me about weddings. I'm also concurrently reading about Marie Antoinette who got into alot of trouble for not wearing a corset; so I wondered aloud how different this new shapewear is to the girdles we flower children never ever wore. And I lamented about looking for the dress; "Why can't a designer make a dress for the average sized American woman that doesn't make her look like a stuffed sausage or a cupcake?" Really, I'd like to know. So any Parson's graduate out there, listen up! We are not all size 2!! We women of a certain age are mostly double digits; not plus, not uber thin - hello normal!

And on my way out, I passed the make-up counters. Now I used to hate those pushy make-uppy women who tried to tackle you in the aisle and spray you with cologne. But I thought to myself, buy some eyebrow pencil! There will be pictures taken at the wedding that will outlive me! And before you know it, I made an appointment to come back to Belk today and have a makeover!! I luxuriated in my time spent on the stool this morning, under harsh fluorescent lights and bought way too much Bobbi Brown make-up. But I now have eyebrows! Oh and plenty of undergarments!