Communal Dressing Rooms, Really?

Tip: Get over your post-baby body hang-ups or do something about it- your choice.

Personal truths, things we know for sure…hot topics these days, huh? Well, this I know for sure: small-space, 360-degree mirrored communal dressing rooms were most certainly designed by men.

Once upon a time, in what seems today like more than an eternity ago, I wouldn’t even think twice about disrobing in front of total strangers. Once the insecurities of high school (about the three stretch marks I had) wore off, and I was finally not only comfortable but confident in my skin, I’d make a b line for the dressing room resigned not to wait in the absurdly long line for private dressing rooms. I scoffed at those silly women wanting, needing the shield of three walls and a door to hide from the glances of their fellow dressing counterparts. Then I had kids.

Ah, a Mother’s Day treat, out for an afternoon of shopping, sans the children, and lunch w/ my twenty-something, commitment-free sister. Excited that baby-doll shirts and knee length shorts are still fashionably in, I toted my pieces over to the dressing room area. In my post-partum ignorance or perhaps sheer denial, I convinced my sister that it would be silly to wait in line for our own room when we could just join the ranks of other secure-in their-own-skin women unafraid to share their bodies with other like women.

What initially seemed like gobs of great finds quickly became a pile of not going-to-work. Too low-cut for my barely-there breasts. Too circulation-depriving for my ever expanding child-bearing hips (which, by the way, should theoretically go away now that I’m done using them, right?). But I was okay with my shopping disappointment as I watched other women shift, tuck, and eventually give up on pieces that wouldn’t work for them either.

Then my nemesis sauntered in. Perpetual smile on her face, she had to be at least 5-9, and everything she tried on worked, even the items she and her mother decided weren’t perfect. She was thin, but not in a does-anybody-have-a-donut-for-this-girl? thin. She was well-proportioned and most envy-worthy of all she was smooth, skin so taut that a ripple of cellulite wouldn’t stand a chance. She rocked skinny jeans the way they are intended to be rocked, with a clear space between the inner thighs and tapering off at just the right spot on the ankle. The bohemian blouses she pulled over her head draped softly over her shoulders and didn’t for a second make her appear bloated or consumed. That’s when the despair of what used to be set in. All of a sudden my alliance with my out-of-shape comrades I had been leaning and counting on in the dressing room began to unravel. The “oh-well, I guess these don’t fit” nonchalance morphed into the “I’m not even going to bother try these on” devastation. I suddenly looked a little more critically at my dimpled thighs that I had full sight of thanks to the panoramic mirrors and the stretch marks on my stomach that have now officially overtaken my tummy.

I left the dressing room feeling defeated, convinced that I would hit the gym first thing Monday morning to reclaim what that girl in the dressing room had so unintentionally flaunted. I left the dressing room questioning the basis for such an arrangement where women are exposed and vulnerable. Some business man (probably akin to my own MBA, finance-minded husband) driven by sales figures and bottom lines decided, “Hey, we could conserve space and just throw the shoppers of our consumer-glutton society into one big open area so there’s more room for more stuff for more profits.”

I am pleased to report- I quickly dismounted my soapbox. Because the truth is if I really wanted to do something about any of what I’ve just ranted about I could. I could choose next time to wait an extra five or 10 minutes for my own dressing room. I could use the gym membership I bought last month and decide once and for all to get back in shape (I didn’t, however, hit the gym like I was so convinced I would do upon leaving the dressing room). But the sad and perhaps astounding truth of the matter is that I probably won’t do either. I’m so impatient these days, and shopping without my daughters playing hide-n-go seek in the clothing racks is a luxury I don’t often have. 10 extra minutes of waiting in line for a personal room just isn’t going to happen. And even though I periodically wallow in the pity party I throw for my new body, experiencing lapses in the confidence I’ve built as a woman and a mother, I like myself. Actually, I absolutely love and adore myself (most of the time). And the parts I don’t like, that’s what more productive shopping trips are for.