The New Beautiful

“If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.” - Matt Haig

I haven't been feeling very good about myself lately.  Though I've put a few pounds on, I can't seem to summon the will to do anything about it.  Added to a slowdown in my business, I've developed a case of the summertime blues.  On Saturday we will be going to the wedding of the daughter of dear friends.  It is a black and white wedding meaning that guests are required to be attired in black or white only.  At the last minute, the bridal couple added navy blue as an option.  Thanks a million.  I'm not sure when it became acceptable to dictate to guests what colours they are required to wear but I'm writing my ignorance off to age.  At some point the rules of etiquette changed and I didn't notice.  But I digress.  I have at least a half dozen black dresses and at least a half dozen white ones.  And for good measure, I have a half dozen black and white ones.  Dressing for this event should hardly be a challenge for me.  But as I'm feeling fat and unattractive in everything I own,  I set out on Tuesday to find a new dress that perhaps I would feel better in.  Big mistake.

Five hours of trying on dresses at Yorkdale made me want to run directly to the freezer where I had stashed a pint of Hagen Daz Black Cherry Amaretto ice cream.  Every dress I tried made me feel a little worse than the last.  I saw some beautiful and very suitable dresses but if I could get into a size six, I wouldn't be in this crisis in the first place.  At one shop I saw a great dress hanging on the rack and thought it would be perfect for my needs.  It had a big tag hanging on it that claimed it was an instantly slimming dress that would make the wearer look ten pounds lighter.  I thought I had hit the jackpot.  But the only size they had in the dress was a size two.  I spent a fair bit of time trying to understand why anyone who can wear a size two needs to look ten pounds lighter.  Then there was the perfect black dress at another store.  It came in small, medium and large.  I couldn't get the large over my hips to even try it on.  Seriously?  Who was the dress made for?  A large child perhaps.  I gave up and went home.  That afternoon I read an article about the new size option at J. Crew - Size 000.  How is that even possible?  Is triple nothing going to be the new yardstick we are being measured against?  It strikes me as sick.

I finally resigned myself to the idea that I wasn't likely to find a dress that I was going to feel good in.  Today I was running some errands at Fairview.  I happened upon a white lace dress.  It was on sale and it fit perfectly.