The Fitting

by Weirdness Magnet

September 6, 2006

Universe: Non-fandom

Ratings: PG-13 for self-mutilation references.

Author's Notes: Recent events inspired this story. This is a work of *fiction*. This will probably not make the bride-to-be in my life feel any better about it.

**

Intellectually, she knows there's really no way to make a bridesmaid's dress look good. She has a hard enough time with clothes to know automatically this dress will be worse than any of the others she's tried on.

She'd had input about the dress style, and by "input" she got to choose between two dresses that would neither conceal nor flatter her shape, all spaghetti straps and too-light fabric that would reveal every bulge, every shadow, every hint of the cellulite and uneven flesh beneath.

It was lavender. The bride picked the color.

She stands on the small carpeted platform surrounded by mirrors and tries not to look. She tries to focus on the voices beyond the curtained fitting area, voices of brides and mothers and sisters and friends, all fussing over details. "How do I look?" she hears one ask.

There's a tug by her ankle. The seamstress is Asian, but she can't tell which country just by looking. The woman crouches by her ankles just by the platform, her fingers turning under the hem and securing it with straight pins. Her fingers work quickly and with the certainty of one who is both experienced and naturally skilled.

The seamstress doesn't look old enough to be either. She imagines the woman in a mud-walled hut in a jungle in some distant, untamed country, squatting on the floor and learning how to hand-sew so that she might be fortunate enough to work in a sweatshop someday, making clothes and sneakers for privileged Americans.

She glances in the mirror at their reflection: her standing, the seamstress kneeling by her feet. She wonders how the seamstress came to be here, in this place altering gowns for spoiled American women, women who have so much money that can they eat too much food and pay a fortune to burn off, cut off or suck out the results.

Women like her.

She looks at the mirror, angled so she can see the back of the dress. The thin straps hide none of the fat on her arms. They look like sausages, or like the arms of teachers she and her friends made fun of in school. How can a person get cellulite on her arms? she winces to herself, and sees the way the fabric catches on her wide hips. Maybe a slip would make the dress skim her body better, and mentally reviews the places nearby that might sell her size.

"Turn please," the seamstress says in her heavily accented English.

She turns to the right. There will be no way to hide the way she looks during the ceremony. All those people, most of them she doesn't know, looking at her backside. From the front, the dress isn't so bad; her boobs are big enough to distract most people from anything else, but from behind... she doesn't have hair long enough to give people something else to look at. All they'll see are her fat arms and the rolls on her hips, and she won't be safe until the reception, where she can throw on the wrap she ordered specially to cover up after the ceremony.

There's only a few weeks. There's not enough time for a diet to make a big enough difference. She feels the desperation rise like bile in her throat. Maybe this will be what it takes to get her to eat right and exercise like she knows she should. Maybe this is the breaking point where she says, "I can't live like this any more," and puts down the chocolate and the soda and the pizza and everything else she likes, and starves herself and exercises and does what other women must do to look better than she does. Maybe this is the breaking point.

But she *always* says the classic "this time will be different" speech and it never is. There's always Oreos or a special occasion and she always ends up looking like she does now. And there's nothing that reminds her how badly she feels, the way her breath is coming too fast and her revulsion at her own reflection is about to make her scream or throw up and cry.

"All done," the seamstress says.

She steps off the platform and goes into the dressing room. She pulls the dress over her head (it's too tight to slide down her hips), careful not to dislodge the pins. She puts on her jeans and her boots, and right before she pulls on her shirt, she takes one pin out of the hem. It bites her flesh easily, leaving a thin line of red. She closes her eyes and holds on to the feeling.

Once she's safely dressed again, she carries the gown out. The seamstress takes it and hands her a ticket. "Pick up Wednesday after five," the woman tells her.

"Okay."

"Eighty dollars. Pay at the front."

She walks through the store, past an array of thin, tanned girls in flip flops and short shorts and hair tied up in artistically disheveled ponytails. A few of them eye her jeans and long-sleeved shirt curiously. The women give her the up-down look, silently comparing themselves to her, and, finding her lacking, smile a little.

She hands the clerk the credit card her mom gave her. The clerk runs the card, hands it back to her. The clerk's eyes widen. "What's that?"

"What?"

"That, on your shirt."

Trace of red spreading through the thin white cotton. "Nothing. I scratched myself on a pin getting out of the dress."

"You didn't get any on the gown, did you?" the clerk demands. "Stains won't come out of the crepe, and we don't provide cleaning services anyway."

"I know."

"The dresses are non-returnable."

"Yes."

She signs and tucks the receipt and ticket in her wallet. She walks out the door and spots her sister waiting in the car with the engine running.

"Am I late?" her sister asks. "The cake people took forever."

"No," she says. "I just got done."

"Any problems?" Her sister swings the car into traffic and adjusts the radio volume.

"No," she says.

"Thank god something went right. We've got to be at the florist by three. We'll just make it." Her sister shoves a CD in the player. "Tell me what you think of this for the first dance."

She looks out the window and half-listens to the song, rolling the straight pin between her fingers.

~end