Dressing Down

Dressing Down
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 29, 2014

I thought I’d arrived early, but to my dismay I was unfashionably late. A warehouse frock sale waits for no woman. The hall opened at 9. It was now 20 past and the building was heaving with bargain hunters.

I’m normally a prudent shopper, but my commonsense turns to compulsiveness when my favourite brand is discounted by 70-percent. I paused in the doorway to absorb the arresting sight of a hundred women on a shopping assault. A flock of twenty-somethings swooped past me and descended on a table of $20 jeans like seagulls on fish ‘n chips. I scampered over to join them.

A gaggle of trendy mothers, trailing their toddlers, kept up a running commentary as they rifled through a rack of embroidered shirts. “It doesn’t matter if we buy the same one,” called one. “Just ring me before you wear it!” Beside me, two middle-aged women were grousing about the lack of bigger sizes.

Finishing up at the jeans table, I elbowed through the throng and squeezed in beside a leggy exotic-looking woman who was sifting through a rack crammed with silky tops and dresses. In the presence of such lithesome beauty, I felt like a pelican in the company of a flamingo. “Swap?” she said.

I looked at her blankly.

“Swap?” she repeated with a hint of annoyance. I realised she was impatient to exchange places so she could examine the rest of the rack. Feeling stupid, I feigned nonchalance as we side-stepped around each other. She resumed her intense inspection of price tags.

I bent down to pick up a crumpled cream smock, which had slipped from its hanger. I held the dainty thing against me: could it fit?

“Are you going to try that?” said the flamingo, eyeing off my prize.

“I’m not sure. Is it a shirt or a dress?”

“On you, a dress.”

“Oh,” I replied, defeated. “My mini-dress days are over. You try it.”

“Thanks,” she said and added it to the collection of hangers already dangling from a slender hand.

After ten minutes, I’d exhausted my search but a peach-coloured cardigan, some grey jeans and a pastel top were showing promise. I picked my way towards the makeshift changeroom at the back of the hall.

Communal dressing rooms unnerve me. This one had a crude curtain barely shielding us from public view. I staked my claim to a square foot of floorboards, and attempted to undress gracefully. Strangers, stripped to bras and knickers, fussed with zips and buttons.

No-one made eye contact. I tried to avert my gaze from the nudity on parade but short of shutting my eyes, it was impossible. Hopping to remove the pair of cheap but too-tight jeans, I reflected on our different bodies: the taut tummy to my left, the pot-bellied one in front, the one now puckered from pregnancy. I sucked mine in and tried on the cardigan.

Knickered bottoms ranged from scrawny to wobbly, ample to pert. I compared my despised muscly calves with the slender legs attached to the girl beside me. None of us said a word as we wriggled into shirts and dresses and tops and pants. Some fitted. Some felt like tourniquets.

I reached for the pastel top. Lifting my arms, I slipped it over my head. Half way down it jammed around my forehead. I tried to ease the fabric past my ears, but it refused to dilate. Blindsided, I clumsily felt around the neck-hole to locate the button I’d missed. There wasn’t one. Squirming to free myself, I hoisted the shirt off my head and flushed with embarrassment.

“I can’t get my head through the hole!” I wailed.

The girl with the ballerina legs snorted. And with that, we dishevelled women dropped our guard and began to chat.

“Give it to me!” said a petite lady to my right. She looped the shirt over her head where it stuck fast across her eyebrows. I leaned over and helped her tug it free.

“Thank goodness it’s not just me!” I said.

“Nope,” she replied. “I must have a fat head too!”

“How ridiculous!” said the tall woman in the corner as we passed the offending shirt around for inspection. “Now our heads are too big for fashion?!”

“What do you think?” asked the leggy girl. Trying on a lacy dress, she was analysing her reflection in the mirror.

“I’m not sure about this bit,” I said truthfully, pointing to where the fabric billowed around her narrow hips.

“I’m built like a boy!” she moaned, twisting to frown at her rear view. And right there, I realised few women are ever happy with what they’ve got.

But the peach-coloured cardigan made me feel good. It was a steal at 40-bucks. I bought it as compensation for my giant head.

The Call of the Mild

The Call of the Mild
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 22, 2014

It was the first time I’d been up close to a Miss Universe contestant. I felt intimidated – how a pigeon must feel standing next to a flamingo.

I turned to cross the shopping centre forecourt and noticed a small crowd creating a hubbub on the plaza. Curious, I stopped beside a white marquee and read the placard: Miss Universe 2014 WA Parade, Today 1pm and 3pm.

From behind a partition, one of the contestants stepped out beside me. Gazing up at her, her pre-Raphaelite mane ringed by a halo of mid-afternoon sun, I craned my neck to make out the top of her head.

She turned to talk to an official and I admired the waterfall of butterscotch-blonde hair cascading down her back. I cast my eyes to ground level to count the storeys on her platform sandals. And that’s when I noticed her left buttock had escaped her purple bikini. I couldn’t help but stare. Was she meant to have this much rear exposure? That golden crescent of buttock was perched on the top of her leg like a chicken tenderloin. (It reminded me to call past the butcher and get something for dinner).

I wondered if it was the official’s job to point out her rebellious rear end? Would she be mortified? Or was this a bit of cheek to outshine her competitors?

Swimwear has always been my nemesis. Beach-lover I am, but I still recoil at the evil hours I spend each summer trying to find flattering bathers. Even in my teens, when I should have been flaunting what I had, I was too self-conscious to parade it about. I wanted to be admired, not ogled. Mum drummed into me that too much flesh was tawdry – so I kidded myself boys liked the feminine mystique. Mystique was a glamorous word to an 18 year old – it put a seductive spin on my girlish confusion about men’s desires.

My girlfriends and I would pore over our Dolly magazines. Beauty in the 80’s was in your face as well as plastered on it – drippy lip gloss, eyeliner in iridescent aqua or electric blue, permed fringes stiffened with gel to defy gravity. Obsessing over my appearance in Mum’s bathroom mirror, I’d recite her mantra to my reflection: ‘Be Yourself!’

Then I’d troop off with my clone-friends to the Sunday session – all of us sporting the same wildly teased hair and giant earrings, and wearing our matching jackets with shoulder pads like foam mattresses.

In the 80’s, the dating game played in our favour. At the pub, we girls would huddle in an impenetrable circle around our handbags. Few boys had the fox-cunning or charisma to lure one of us away from our flock. Male mating calls were still primitive – a glance held a second too long, a smile spotted across the bar, or the venturesome “Got a light?” We knew we had the power of veto. Those girls who forgot to button their blouses or made-out in public were tramps. Nudity was cheap.

Bare flesh is no longer risqué. I’ve had enough of the micro-shorts that are everywhere this season. Please someone tell me – what statement is this fad trying to make? My 13-year-old goddaughter tells me they’re good for attracting guys. Call me old-fashioned, but I think your shorts should be longer than your bottom.  

Back on the forecourt, I wondered if it was envy making me so uncomfortable? Me: middle-aged housewife, mother-of-three, flat-footed in my orange thongs. I decided I needed coffee and joined the queue at the open-air cafe. The Miss Universe cavalcade had started and patrons were being offered a bird’s eye view.

I sat down next to an elegant woman tapping away on an iPad. She acknowledged me with a smile and pointed at the parade, straining to make herself heard over the loudspeakers: “Picked the wrong day to come here for some peace and quiet!”

I nodded and laughed and we surveyed the girls stalking down the runway, hips thrust forward, cupfuls of bottom jiggling suggestively: “They’re 90-percent naked!” she sighed. “I feel like a voyeur.”

She was right. It was like passing a car crash – shoppers had slowed to a crawl, some were leaning on their trolleys, mesmerised. And then I spotted my Miss Universe wannabe waiting off-stage. She looked nervous, shifting her lissom frame from one flamingo-leg to the other.

Then an odd movement caught my eye. She reached a slender arm behind her back. With thumb and forefinger, she stretched the elastic of her bikini bottom and tucked her wayward buttock back into place. Voila! A fraction of modesty restored. She put on a dazzling smile and stepped daintily onto the catwalk.

And I stepped daintily away to the butcher shop to buy a kilo of beef skirt.