Did you know that you could use 135calories per hour trying on clothes?

This is a story for every woman who has frowned at her image

 in a dressing-room mirror and wished for a better body.

 

So here I am, one arm loaded with white bootlegged pants, sequinned vest, printed chiffon blouse, frayed, skinny jeans and a v-necked T-shirt in bright pink, while balancing my extra large tote-handbag on the other arm. Feeling quite chuffed with my choices, I wind my way through the clothing rails towards the nondescript Fitting Room sign all the way down to the other end of the store. 

A sullen, young girl, with expertly made-up face and long straight hair, wearing a pair of painted-on skinnies and a tiny little vest mans the fitting room. Clutching the huge plastic ring with the number 5 inscribed on it, I make my way to the little cubicle in the fitting room.

Hanging up the clothes on the one and only hook on the wall, I set my handbag on the stained carpeted floor and make a mental note to keep an eye on it, just in case the person in the booth next to mine snatches it through the gap in the cubicle. You just never know where women shoppers with criminal intentions lurk.

The first thing to do is to unzip my high-heeled, knee-high boots so that I can remove the comfortable lycra tights I’m wearing. Balancing on one-high-heeled boot I lift my other leg to unzip the boot. This of-course sets a whole series of unprecedented events into motion as can only be perpetrated by me! The zip gets stuck causing me to totter around on one heel, only to fall, crashing into the left wall of the booth with resounding thuds and bumps of earthquake proportions!

Trying desperately to regain my composure, dignity and balance, I lean against said wall and proceed to remove offending boots and peel off tights. Clad in my flesh-coloured ‘big girl’ panties, I remove the cowl-necked poncho followed by the long-sleeved top I wore, anticipating a cold day...but of-course it turned out to be a real scorcher of a day!

Standing in my beige sportsbra and panties, I survey my surroundings in the little cubicle, noticing with relief that my handbag still lay on the floor, now covered by my recently shed attire. ‘Ok, I can do this’ I say to myself, ’just take a deep breath and think calming thoughts’, yeah right!  

The little fitting room cubicle has become considerably smaller since I entered, which seems like 30 minutes ago! I was surrounded by three full-length mirrors and six mini-spotlights spewing out bright yellow shards of lights, ricchotteting off all 3 mirrors. Which sick and twisted, sadist came up with idea of putting all these lights into the fitting rooms! If it highlights every pore on my nose, my family of chins, imagine what it’s going to do for my cellulite –ridden thighs and my bolly (what I affectionately call my fat rolls and extended belly).

I sternly admonish myself in the mirror. ‘Don’t look at the bod, just the face!’, which I proceed to do while pulling the sequinned vest over my head. That’s when I see it...I have these huge pores, almost crater-sized ones all over my face! How did I miss that this morning and every other day I’ve looked in the mirror? Well, I guess my little 60watt light bulb above my bathroom mirror sympathetically did not highlight them like these 1000watt spotlights are doing now!

Ok, keep my eyes on my toes...oops! Not a great idea! I’m in desperate need of a pedicure, I realise staring forlornly at my claw-like toenails barely covered by last season’s red nail polish.

Still clawing at the waistband of the really trendy frayed skinny jeans, pulling it up over my calves, I notice with horror, the cellulite around my bulging knees!

Now I am acutely aware of the cellulite on my bum and thighs, and have been for an embarrassingly long time, but when and how did they do the great trek to my knees, for heaven’s sake? 

Staring disconsolately at my ample bottom, with its cellulite-cheeks oozing out of my panties, I realise how much they look like cheese being squeezed out of a tube. Note to self: ‘Never eat cheese out of a tube again.’

Expertly managing to maintain my balance, I pull up the jeans over the offending body parts, only to grunt in frustration, trying to fasten the button over the wobbly bits. Sucking in the belly, I lift up my hands to create the illusion of an elongated body, when I notice the chicken wings I have for arms.

By then I have lost the will to try on the other clothes, lost the will to shop, never mind to live!

Hurriedly, I put my own clothes back on, and leave the image in all 3 mirrors with glass- shattering look of disgust. Laden with an unseemly mess of clothes, I leave the fitting room and hand over them to the fitting room attendant. Miss Teen SA who seemed to have shed the sullen look, now sports a smirk, and asks all innocently, ‘Do you need a bigger size?’

After being unceremoniously dragged out by a hefty security woman, while clawing, kicking and screaming at the obviously terrified young fitting room attendant, I vow never to set foot in the store again. I slink off dejectedly to the Food-hall, order a cheese burger, potato wedges and a Diet Coke and sit down and ponder what I could have done differently :-)