Each day at work I see women in various states of undress, depending on how comfortable they are with being practically naked with a stranger. Within minutes of breaking the ice I have my hands touching the small of their backs, my fingers tugging at straps and fiddling with clasps. I teach them how to lean forward and touch their own bodies, to scoop their breasts into bra cups and show them to their best advantage. But most of all, I think, I simply ask them to embrace their bodies and be a little kinder to themselves.
Because not one woman I've seen -- in all these years that I've seen women without their clothes on -- has been completely happy with her body. I repeat this: not one.
Not even the women who spend more time in the gym than in the kitchen, or even the ones who have been injected, sucked, pulled, and augmented. Somehow, the women I see always manage to find a body part or feature they are wholly dissatisfied with. "I have no boobs!" some wail. "I wish I didn't have such big boobs," others complain. Many see fat where I simply see skin, and some even apologize for it, letting me know that they're working on removing all traces of it in the gym. They say this as if I'm offended by skin less than perfectly taut.They don't see what I see: a woman with a body unlike anyone else's, simply because no one else has lived her life.
If you don't know this about me already, I sell lingerie. My specialty is bra fittings -- which I happen to love because when I'm in the fitting room I'm part-therapist and part-educator, never a salesperson. You see, when a woman has her shirt off in front of me and is feeling pretty vulnerable, the last thing she wants is to feel that I'm trying to take advantage of the situation by selling to her instead of helping her, of taking instead of giving.
I've learned so much about my fellow women doing what I do. I've discovered that many women hold such rigidly dichotomous view of themselves. For instance, when they ask me for a bra they can wear at work, they explain that they want something comfortable enough to wear all day and that will prevent bits and pieces from peeking through their shirt. They usually also mean they don't want anything sexy. When I do get them into a bra that does what they want and also gives them terrific cleavage they're uncomfortable with the view, even if they don't wear shirts cut low enough to actually expose anything south of their collarbones at work. I hear them say their boyfriends or husbands would love to see them in this bra, but...
And they say this as I see them smile at their image in the mirror, their "girls" looking perky and uplifted. But it won't do for work. If only I could tell them that underneath MY shirt here at work, I have pretty amazing cleavage, with some thanks to recent bra technology -- and no one knows but me, and that's good enough as far as I'm concerned.
The other day a woman marched up to me, complaining that none of our bras were comfortable. She told me what size she was, declining a proper bra fitting. When she asked me to take a look and see the "bad fit" of the bra she was wearing I saw immediately that she was at least a 34DD and that she'd had breast augmentation; her breasts were stretched thin, appeared hard and unnaturally round. No judgment here, just an observation. And another: she was wearing the wrong size bra.
I gently explained that a larger cup would provide a much more comfortable fit, especially at the bottom of her breast area, where she said it hurt when she wore our bras. She refused; she insisted she didn't want to wear anything larger than a 34C. I couldn't figure out why someone would choose to wear a too-small bra, especially when doing so caused any kind of pain or discomfort, but I could tell she wasn't going to budge. At this point there was nothing more I could do for her, and she left saying she'd go somewhere else to find what she was looking for.
As I saw her standing there earlier, I realized that she looked like a centerfold model: tall, lean, tanned, blond -- and with massive boobs barely contained by swatches of fabric. Then it hit me like a thunderbolt: that was exactly what she wanted to look like! She wanted to look like that every single day. The problem is that in real life if you wear something too small, you're uncomfortable -- period. If you want to look like the cover of a men's magazine, put on the tiny outfit and take a picture. Then take the damn thing off and wear something sexy but comfortable, something that actually fits right.
Somewhere in the middle of asexual and sex object is a real woman. My job in the fitting room -- as far as I'm concerned -- is to help her see it, if she doesn't already, but through her own eyes.
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