Shopping the Web...With Friends
by Rachel Barenblat
published in The Women's Times, Berkshire and Pioneer Valley editions, December 2001.
I am standing in my home office with my t-shirt hiked up around my armpits and my jeans pulled down to my knees, trying to run a metal tape measure around my breasts, waist and thighs. The metal is just stiff enough to bite where it pinches skin, just flimsy enough to buckle when I try to make it curve.
When I finally achieve a set of measurements that seems relatively close to reality, I learn that I've been pieced together from odd parts: my breasts are a size 12, my hips a size 14, my waist something in between. A thirteen, if they made bathing suits in thirteen. Of course, they don't.
I'm doing this because I'm going on vacation to somewhere warm, and my current suit is pilling around the butt from too many machine washings. I'm doing it online because there's no swimwear store at our local mall, and I'm unwilling to take my chances at Sears. I'm doing it alone because I figure online shopping shouldn't require company. Hopefully my computer will save me the indignity of turning into a live remake of a Cathy cartoon.
And here I am with clothes rucked in all directions, cursing at a metal tape measure that's better suited to scaling plywood than sizing my waistline. This is the easy way?
The first thing I learn is that everone is selling "tankinis" this year. A tankini is evidently a two-piece bathing suit where the two pieces meet, or overlap, to give the illusion of a tank suit. I don't understand, which makes me feel old.
The second thing I learn is that I don't want a suit which is striped, polka-dotted, or turns alternate colors upon exposure to water.
The third thing I learn is that I'm not a regulation size. And that's when I call in support troops. So much for going it alone: shopping's a communal experience, so I'm calling my community.
My panel of experts are my three closest female friends and my husband, all of whom are gracious about having a list of web addresses foisted upon them by an increasingly desperate swimsuit shopper. I don't need to explain the frustration of feeling ill-suited to color and size; all four of them have been here, in one way or another. They know what I'm talking about. That's the joy of shopping with friends.
"No floral," Sandy says. "You're neither (a) old or (b) fat, which are the only two good reasons to have a flowered swimsuit." A thousand miles away and also online, Cythia concurs. "I'm sorry, you're under the age of forty and you're not chasing a five-year-old, I cannot let you go floral, I just can't." So much for door number one.
"Who decided paprika was a good color for a swimsuit?" Cynthia queries later. She also takes issue with the neckline: "LOOK! MY TITS!" Okay, so that one might be a little revealing. Scratch door number two.
"I'd pick the plum tank," emails Emily. An identical email arrives from Ethan almost at the same instant. Sandy and Cynthia like it. They assure me that it is elegant, not boring. I stare at the size charts again, as if the numbers were going to change, and decide to order a 14 to be on the safe side. After four hours of excruciating waffling, I am finally taking the plunge!
The plum suit isn't available in a 14. Time for the big guns: email and chatrooms won't do, I need actual voices for this one. I call Sandy on the phone and together we compare J. Crew colors on our various web browsers.
"Petal" is discarded because it will wash me out. Black is discarded because I don't want to match my mother, who looks wonderful in her black swimsuit, and beside whose (faux) tan I will surely pale in comparison.
We decide I will order the plum suit in a 12, and order a 14 in some other color, and return the one that doesn't fit. I order my second suit in "ocean" (oddly almost navy, not ocean-colored at all), enter my credit card number, and receive my email saying the bathing suits are on the way. Feeling oddly bonded with my far-flung cohorts after the day's non-expedition, I send out a celebratory email announcing the suit's impending arrival.
I think next time I'm going back to the mall. It may not be any easier, but it can't be any worse. At least I had the satisfaction of spending an afternoon with my friends. Even virtual companionship makes shopping easier to bear.
Rachel Barenblat turns out to be a size 14 afterall. She is co-founder of Inkberry. Learn more at www.inkberry.org.