c. Susan Sorrell Hill
The Illustration Friday word of the week is zoom.
Confession: I belong to the minority of women who abhor shopping. It’s not because I don’t love clothes, stores or spending money. I do love them. I love those things as much as the next average female. It’s because I absolutely detest dressing rooms.
I think there’s a special place in you-know-where for the persons who invented the dressing room, and especially for the ones who invented dressing room mirrors and lights. What were they thinking? Perhaps it is some secret plot to get a woman to just buy everything she’s dragged into the dressing room, in order to get out as fast as possible? Or could it be some subtle misogynistic thing…?
It’s the zoom effect of those lights and mirrors that freaks me out: the up-close-and-personal confrontation with my face, my behind and, yes, my thighs. “Do I really look like that?” I wonder, just before my brain starts bouncing violently against the insides of my skull. I’ve tried trying on clothes without looking in the mirror, but the truth is I really do want to know in advance if I’ll be making a fool of myself out there.
I wish sometimes I’d be pleasantly surprised in a dressing room. That it would be a nourishing and comforting shopping experience, and that I would not come away, ego-bruised and praying fervently that my clothes would last forever. Just so I wouldn’t have to go shopping again. Wouldn’t happy, confident shoppers spend more, in the long run?
I’ve started to really appreciate mail-order catalogs. Especially the ones with the Easy Return Policy. So much less pain.
“Self-Portrait–Sort Of” Â Â (watercolor, pen & ink)
Still time to vote for your favorite three oil paintings in the M. Graham & Co.‘s first online art show and competition: please vote for my own Parlor Persona painting here, or use this same link to browse the entire show to find your own favorites. (Read my recent post about this competition here.)Voting ends November 29, 2012. Thank you!
I know what you mean! I think I go “real” shopping about three times a year and that’s only for the experience! LOL! I have a great mirror at home, that always makes me look good; then again, this is also the mirror that forgot to let me know I had my skirt stuff in my pantyhose when I went to a parent-teacher conference!!!! At 53, I’m all about pleasing myself, when it come to clothes; now for art supplies, I need a 12-step program….
I loved the illustration, a true sense of warped or zoom perspective.
I have my skirt-in-the-pantyhose sort of stories too, Indigene. Those things keep us humble, I suppose. Does your mirror have a sister…? I’m beginning to suspect that my bathroom mirror is in league with those dressing room mirrors! Yes, we fifty-something women must finally come, for our own sanity in this crazy culture, to that place of gently pleasing ourselves: in clothes, in everything! Oh yes, those seductive art supplies…I know what you mean.
I hate shopping. It’s not the changing rooms it’s everything – the time used, the fruitless search for something nice, the cost…
Self-portrait hmmm
Yes, there are definitely much better ways to spend one’s time. The time and expense involved makes a very good argument for wearing something simple, like jeans and a T-shirt, for the rest of one’s life–and just getting on with Living…
I totally agree. A good pair of pjs is handy too
Yes, I hate shopping, my wife buys my clothes, (OK, could be understood as, I do not want to deal with my personal stuff, and I’m overloading of tasks to my wife, but not, every time she buys something to me, buy something for her, the law of compensation)
Very good post, Susan, I really liked (your illustration is a style that I had never before seen in you)
Good week, Sausan!
That’s a very good arrangement you have, Roberto…and you both must like each other’s taste in clothing too.
You aren’t alone. I hate shopping too. The secret to a happier home mirror experience is low wattage incandescent lights
Thanks for that tip, Linda…and maybe never wear my glasses in the bathroom too?