I was out shopping for a pair of jeans yesterday. I had a number of epiphanies. Be careful of the mirrors you use. Some make you look bigger than others. Those that are slightly tilted back make you look taller and more slender. After trying on countless pairs I decided at 50 I may have outgrown my jean wearing years and was preparing to go home when in walked my good friend and stylist extraordinaire, Deirdre Datttoli. She had found the perfect jeans for me. They actually fitted my shape – perfectly – except for being a foot too long but that is par for the course when you are 5’1″.
And get this – they were size 6!!!!!!!! OMG the last time I could fit into size 6 I was actually 6 years old and it was a kids size. But hang on. That can’t be right. Everything else I tried on was between size 12 and 14? I love these American sizes. It is the ultimate in self-delusion! But Lo. Maybe I am slender. Maybe the skinny mirrors are right and the fat ones are wrong. What if the American sizes are right and everyone else in the world is wrong?
Just to add to my confusion, I realised that my body can morph within a nano second depending on my mood and of course my hormones (gotta love being a woman – you never get bored). One day I can look at myself and feel great and other days, feel like a blob. And yet very little changes objectively. It is all an illusion or rather, our perception.
So the moral to this story. Don’t trust the mirror. And, maybe more importantly, don’t worry so much about outward projections, work on how you feel about you.
