There are always odd situations that come with starting a new job; a period of getting a grasp for the culture and becoming accustomed to the type of customers who buy the company's product. Last week, I accepted a position with a clothing retailer that sells sizes 3 - 24. The store is laid out so that straight sizes are on the left side as you enter, and the plus sizes hang on the right side as a mirror image of the left. Since most people are drawn to the right side of rooms as they enter, a lot of women who are on the smaller end of straight sizes look perplexed as they pull skirts or sweaters off the rack and hold garments against themselves that fully obscure their bodies. At that point, I gently approach them and ask if they are looking for a gift or something special for themselves. Some laugh and ask where they can find the same item in a smaller size. Some act offended that we carry the same items in a size 3 as we do a 24 (and often stock more of the large sizes than the small ones). Others stare blankly, because they have never heard the term "plus sizes."

I have a confession to make: I'm buying clothes again.  I have a huge bag of clothes that don't fit my body or my style, including several dresses I can't afford not to sell.  I should deal with those before I buy anything new.  I should start taking better care of my clothes before I buy anything new, always hanging them up, ironing the skirts.  I should have more money before I buy anything new.

 But there's something about fall that just brings on the clothes lust.  I can't be the only one, right?  Fall sends me prowling for tights, corduroy jackets, sweaters, clothes in shades of black and grey.   I ordered those "cable knit" tights we won't do the honor of linking, the ones that turned out to be a cable PRINT and disappointed everyone monumentally, in black and grey.  I ordered merino wool sweaters and herringbone skirts from Target, in black and grey -- probably setting myself up for another disappointment, what with the straight sizing, but my autumn clothes-lust knows no reason.  I bought arm warmers.  God help me, I bought jewelry.  We need groceries.  Gas is up to three dollars a gallon.  I want this skirt .  I want red shoes.

 What is it about fall?  Am I just insulating myself against a generally cold and dark few months?  I think I tend to feel like clothes make the difference between a forbidding season and a cozy one.  What would really make the difference, of course, is being able to afford the heating bill.  But that's not how I think this time of year.

So, back in the days when I read fashion magazines -- which I really don't recommend to anyone looking to maintain a positive body image -- I was always fascinated by the "Splurge vs. Steal" spreads, where they'd put a ludicrously expensive item next to a somewhat similar, only moderately expensive item and act like the latter was actually within reach for most of their readers. Oh, terrific! There's a $175 pair of shoes that looks sorta kinda like a $500 pair! Maybe when I win the lottery, I can get the "cheap" ones!

Not to mention, as often as not, the "cheap" item looked A) cheap, and B) nothing like the splurgey one, to my untrained eye. I guess it takes more fashion experience than I have to be able to spot the similarity between a minimally adorned $2500 handbag in some luscious, unusual shade of green and a fringed and bedazzled $65 PVC job in a shade of purple most often seen as the background color in fifth-graders' drawings of unicorns.

But as I was doing my holiday online window shopping ("Windows shopping?" HA!), I ran across two dresses that immediately made me think, "Splurge vs. Steal!" Even though, um, the cheaper one is not very cheap, and they don't necessary look that much alike. So maybe I have what it takes to be a fashion editor after all!  

Devoted Shapely Prose readers (which you all are, RIGHT?) might remember that back in July, I ordered my first Igigi wrap dress. If you don't remember -- or if you're a brand new concern troll who doesn't understand that when a blogger links to something, you're supposed to go read it -- please allow me to quote myself:

Ever since I started hanging out at Fatshionista, I’ve been hearing about the miraculous Igigi wrap dresses. I mean, everybody’s been making wrap dresses over the last couple of years (hallelujah to that), and there are some great ones out there for much cheaper — I’ve got a couple from Target, and every Fatshionista except me apparently got one from Old Navy last year. But for fat girls, Igigi is the gold standard. Owning an Igigi wrap dress is, so I hear, cause to bust out the champagne and weep softly in disbelief at your good fortune. Diane von Furstenburg may not be interested in catering to us, but Igigi comes through with fantastic quality and cut for a third of the cost.

This is what I have heard. Fingers crossed that it will turn out to be true.

Tragically, it did not turn out to be true. There wasn't anything wrong with the dress, mind you -- except that I never got it. I expected it to arrive right before I went out of town, but instead, it arrived the day I left and the UPS guy tried to deliver it 3 times while I was gone, then sent it back to Igigi. At that point, I decided my bank account was better off without it anyway, so I let them keep it.

But a couple weeks ago, someone from Igigi e-mailed to ask if I'd be interested in doing a garment review. HELL YES, I said, and she shipped me out the same thing I'd ordered back in July -- the yoke wrap dress in nautical blue -- that day.

Everything they say about Igigi wrap dresses? It's true, y'all.

Fat assed mannequins may soon be appearing in a store near you.

 Uh, is anybody else as suspicious as I am about this alleged shift towards representing a "rainbow of shapes"?  I feel dirty, like somebody's trying to sell my own politics back to me.  It ain't sitting right.  I need a Tums.

I was first pronounced medically obese when I was 9 years old. I remember because the doctor, who didn't know anything about us beyond our dark skin and our Latin names suggested in very slow, simple English that my(vegetarian, journalist) mom stop feeding me bacon, hamhocks and deep fried things. Fair advice for a kid who's diet consisted of bulgar, brocholi and brussel sprouts. Not much changed in my diet since the doctor's advice were based on assumptions and were utterly useless. I remained obese.

I'd been in Weight Watchers since I was 6 and it hadn't worked, so when I was 15, my mother decided I needed to join a gym. The gym was perhaps the experience that typified my angst, awkwardness and discomfort in my body. It was one thing that I'd always meet some bloody end (I was regularly shot off of the back of a treadmill as it accelerated and my legs refused to cooperate, I also frequently found some part of my body between the weights, crushed and blue) but it was another for the "personal trainer" to make a big show of finding a SECOND tape measure to measure my hips (and really, who at a GYM of all places only keeps a 36 inch tape measure??) . I dreaded the experience.

It was not until college when I met and began dating a jock that I began to find pleasure in moving my body. I excelled at sports that required racquets and then I began playing rugby, lifting weights and biking. I never lost weight but my body changed and felt stronger. Now, I go through fitness bouts-- I used to work out everyday no matter what. Sometimes I don't make it to a gym for a month. Sometimes I am so physically active that I don't know what to do with myself. I've been going to the gym near my job at lunch for the last two years. It isn't especially regular since I don't work a normal schedule, but I go whenever I can since it provides a great distraction and release from the rest of the day.

Every once in a while there is a GYM GIRL(GG) there. Most of the people at the gym are happily absorbed in their headphones, gossip magazine or the tvs. They're paying attention to their reps or heart rate or RPMs-- but not GG. She only has eyes for me. She sometimes sees that I will be working out for 45 minutes to her originally planned 20 and she will up her workout, redfaced, flustered and constantly (and indiscretely) peering at my Precor display  until I finish mine. Sometimes she just walks back and forth and stares openly as I run, run, run away from my day. She's usually somewhere between 18 and 23, and frequently just on the edge of chubby. Chubby in the way a girl who is size 8 is "plus" in a room full of girls that are size 0.  

I'm never sure what she's thinking. I'm guessing it is something equating her worth or morality with the idea of a fat girl who does 45 minutes without breaking a sweat going top speed on a high setting. But I don't know. I just wish she wouldn't stare. Sometimes it throws me back to the shrill "OH MY GAWD, I NEED A SECOND TAPE MEASURE!!" but most of the time, I just want to snap at her and say "Listen chickie, I've earned my right to kick your ass at anything in this gym while still being fat as I am. Take it in and move on."