I Feel Pretty

I very rarely buy new clothes. Most things in my closet are 10 to 20 years out of date. But I look at clothes online a lot. I bookmark things I think I would like but don’t follow through and acquire new clothes.

Mostly because clothes shopping is rarely a happy, positive experience, and it’s hard to talk myself into doing something I know will bring me down. Plus, I don’t want to order online clothing unless I know how the brand fits my body. So it’s clothing stores or nothing, and I’ve opted for nothing for many years.

But ChickieNob and I decided to try clothing shopping while we were in Antwerp. I picked out a few dresses, she picked out a few bottoms, and we made our way to the dressing room. The woman working the room told us we weren’t allowed to share a changing room, which meant that I stood in my dressing room for a hot minute before I gave up, too scared to try to get into a dress by myself in case I needed help getting it back off. We left the store feeling defeated.

We decided to give clothing shopping another try, and we opted to go to the Boden store on the outskirts of London because we knew people with curves who shopped at Boden. The two experiences were day and night. While the first store had pounding music, unhelpful employees, and clothing for only one body type, Boden was brightly lit and quiet. An employee came over and asked if she could start a dressing room for us and if we wanted to share one. (Yes!) ChickieNob said, “I’ve never been to a store where there were so many things I wanted to try on.”

Me too.

I felt pretty.

I ended up with two dresses and a top that goes with an old skirt I have at home. I walked out of the store feeling so good about it myself. I can’t say that I’ll do it again any time soon because I mostly live in sweatshirts and cargo pants, but I’m still smiling about the positive experience.