Cinderella Goes to Vietnam

Like all women, I sort of believe that if I could just find the right dress the boy would fall in love with me, I'd be crowned queen, and everyone I went to junior high with would be forced to sign an affidavit affirming that, despite what they may have said in 1991, I am actually very very cute. So when I found out that in Vietnam custom tailored clothing was as pleantiful as noodles in my soup, as four year old girls selling ugly soviener fans, as plastic bags floating like sad jellyfish in the Mekong River, I was thrilled for 30 seconds before I became terrified. What no one ever tells Cinderella is that no amount of tulle will make her thighs smaller. And Cindy is never expected to design her own dress -- the birds do all of the hard work!

Of course, I arrived in Hoi An with a plan. While I'd googled my netbook to death looking for advice on tailors and fantasized for weeks about the outfits I'd create what I actually really needed was a new suit. I figured the most practical thing to do was to have something made at a couple of different tailors and pick the one I liked best to help me suit up. Hoi An has (for once I am not exagerating) over 200 tailor shops and they mostly seem like duplicates of each other with the same double breasted jackets, flowy sundresses and business trousers hanging in the entry way. There are a couple of higher end places that are working harder than most to cater to Western tastes with uniformed staff and free bottles of water. This forced me to struggle over the battle of best price vs. possibly better quality. The fancy pants store was charging $45 for a pair of fancy pants and $15-$50 for a dress shirt -- basically JCrew sale prices. The smaller shop with just the owner hanging around in jeans to serve you charged $25 for trousers and $10 for shirts -- not quite yard sale cheap but a reasonable improvement. Ordering pants and shirts was fairly simple -- I started with what they had hanging in the windows and modified to match the vision of the Bannana Republic Martin Fit pants that make my thighs seem less thunderous than usual. Happily, save the very cute custom tag and buttons, the cheapie prototype pants are just as good as the fancies and I place my order for pinstripes at $75 cheaper than expected.

It's after the practical shopping is done that things fall apart. This shopping is fun and I love clothing; so why not get some dresses? Some shirts? Some casual tops? Do I need a sequined formal gown with a mile long train? Cause they have those! ROYAL BALL HERE I COME! I suppose I didn't really need anything other than a suit, but the thing is -- I have not been shopping in over 2 months. This is probably the longest I've gone without a new shirt since high school when the mall was a 4 hour drive. Add to this the fact that I have worn the same shoes everyday since February 8th. Add to that the fact that in Vietnam I am a millionaire and you have the recipe for my new wardrobe.

If only I had even a smidge of Project Runway in my DNA (or magical little birdies in my hotel room) things might have been easier. But instead I stand in front of bolts of beautiful fabric completely perplexed. How can I look at 65 pages of dreams and dollars and diagrams and see a technological wonder but be unable to translate yards of silk into anything more complicated than a table cloth?

Fashion is too much like dancing. One minute you're smiling at the mirror or in the arms of the prince shaking whatever you've decided might be your groove thing; the next you're wondering -- Why are my hands in the air? Why does this neckline have five layers of ruffles? Why has my foot been taken over by epyleptic seizers? Why does this dress have a huge bow over my butt? When you think things through you start to worry that you look ridiculous. And you DO! We all look ridiculous constantly -- the only reasonable outfit is brown sweats and a baggy tshirt but nobody (save the occasional C# programmer) would ever actually wear such a thing.

As I try to design casual seperates the thoughts that fly through my head are suddenly imbicile -- "I LIKE DRESSES!" "RED IS A NICE COLOR!" There are a lot of red dresses in the world and the tailor wants more from me than "can you make me look pretty?" What I would have given for one of the hundreds of JCrew catalouges that are right now overflowing the basket where my neighbor is trying desperately to stuff all of my mail. As I try to mentally construct a dress that is pretty but interesting, unique but likely to look good on my bottom heavy hourglass the tailor hovers over me. "They are very nice here," she says, holding a tape measure around my boobs. She is the third Hoi An tailor to comment on my very western breasts which almost makes up for the free flowing comments about how enormous my thighs. With all the pressure to make myself into Cinderella and no Fairy Godmother in sight I'll take whatever compliments I can get.

Despite the trepidation over fashion design I still get completely out of control.

For roughly $325 I bought:

• 2 pairs of dress pants
• 1 3 piece suit
• 3 button down shirts
• 4 dresses
• 2 pairs of shoes

The speed that the tailors in this town work is a project management dream. An order for a suit placed at 7pm results in a fitting at 3pm the next day. I'm starting to doubt The Mythical Man Month -- if you need a baby in 4 weeks you should at least look into getting 9 Vietnamease tailors to attempt to put one together (but beware, rush order will incure additional fees and at the last minute they may have to substitute a polyester blend for actual fingernails).

The tailors custom fit each piece of clothing at least twice which is great except that they want you to have an educated opinion on things like fit and cut and how to fix them. This is hard for someone whose fashion vocabulary is as limited as my own. The moment of terror arrived when I'm standing in front of a mirror thinking "RED ALERT! The prince will never ask me to dance in this!" but have no ability to explain the problem. The tailor made exactly what was designed by Klemm Concepts, a sort of awkward shirt that despite its bright yellow polkadots manages to scream 54 year old woman who became a grandma much too early in life. How to translate such a problem into something a seamstress can act on seems impossible so I'm left hoping someone at the factory has a wand and a spare can of Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo.

The second dress I pick up is a jersey number that I figure will make a good beach cover up for our last couple of weeks in Thailand and a decent brunch outfit for summer 2010 once we return to mimosas in Park Slope. After two fittings I take it home only to find that when I shake and shimmy my ample bosoms my bra peeks out the top. Geoff thinks this is no problem but you can't go by him -- he's constantly trying to convience me that a bra alone is evening wear and if you'd like a sweeping view of Crackville you can stop by his ass anytime. But the lesson learned is that I need to figure out what I want and how to vocalize it before I take anything else out of the shop. So, despite fears that the tailor will hate me and that I don't actually know what I'm talking about anyway I muster up the courage to have sleeves redone, waistlines moved and jackets lined in electric blue.

And I look good! I can't promise that I'll be queen by July (the clothing has been shipped by sea and will not ride the tide into Brooklyn until sometime in June) but I'm at least hoping to retain the prince that I've got (who had some new shorts designed and for now is crackville free) and return to the real world looking like the prettiest thing in the boardroom and if anyone from Home Street Middle School wants to eat some crow, please, drop me and email. Cinderella never had to design her own ball gowns or find her own glass slipper, or figure out why the website has been down since 3am. Cinderella never wore pinstripes. Maybe I could teach her a thing or two.

The Internet Has Spoken

I have the best ass ever

Thank you to Google for telling the world what RAB readers have known for years.

On Being a Very Good Eater

My attempt to lose the 10lbs that I somehow managed to gain over the summer is not going so well. Oh sure I'm eating salads and going to the gym where I have been doing some RUNNING (Seriously. I have been running. Who am I?) but I'm not actually losing any weight. This is probably due to my love for food.

You see, I love food a lot. Often I'll find myself eating some food and excitedly thinking about the food I might eat next. It'll be lunch. I'll be munching on a nice crunchy salad with artichoke hearts and boiled egg and blue cheese and thinking to myself, "hmm what shall I eat for dinner? I could make spaghetti! Or order Thai basil chicken! Man tomorrow morning I get to have that yummy yogurt again, with the dried apricots, I CAN'T WAIT!" This cannot be healthy, right? Surely I must have some sort of hole in my heart that I'm trying to fill with food but when I try to recall being abused by the elementary cafeteria lady I quickly get distracted by thoughts of sloppy joes and chocolate malts. I think the hole I'm filling might just be my bottomless stomach.

I recently observed that having few buddies at my new jobs means I'm much more likely to eat a healthy lunch to which my friend Lisa replied, "Good Point. If you [worked here] we'd be all 'hamburgers!' every day." This is not true, sometimes I would want mac and cheese and some other times I would want Chinese pork buns, and least you think I only want to eat food bathed in grease sometimes I would just want roasted broccoli covered in lots of red pepper flakes. Part of my problem with food is that I love healthy foods which seems like a good thing until you're eating a trough of it and gaining 5lbs JUST FROM BROCCOLI.

Sometimes I fantasize about getting really fat. Because sure, I would miss my toes and sexy underwear and living past the age of 50 but maybe all of that is a reasonable price to pay for unlimited ice cream consumption? Maybe once I got past being the woman that kids moo at in the grocery store I could cover myself in a yummy blanket of ranch dressing and dig my way out with a truck load of french fries. Perhaps TLC could do a show on me (Half Ton Blogger?), perhaps they would pay me for humiliating myself on national television not with a free gastric bypass surgery but with my own personal chef who will make me endless supplies of fresh pasta covered in spicy tomato sauce. Doesn't sound half bad, right?

This fantasy is partially fueled by my desire to succeed. I am not always successful at eating less than 5 servings of jalapeno corn bread or doing my personal trainer prescribed squats at the super slow speed that makes my thighs shake in fear. Despite past successes I am not at all sure that I can succeed at losing the 10lbs that appear to be cling wrapped to my thighs. But I know without a doubt that I could kick ass at being really fat. I would eat ridiculous quantities of grilled cheese sandwiches. I would lounge around in a muumuu. I would be very good at sitting in a very large chair.

A Letter to My Personal Trainer

Hi! I am writing you this letter in hopes that you will find me hilarious and then you'll like me and probably not want to yell at me and/or make comments about how fat I am. This also seems like a good opportunity to warn you about my personal workout quirks. Firstly, you should not take the fact that I joined the Gym and just threw out the term "workout" all casual-like as an indication that I'm a Gym Person. I don't much enjoy feeling the burn or paying for gain with pain or running. I have also noticed that working out has a horrible return on investment. For example on Friday I did 30 minutes on the elliptical machine and apparently only burned 235 calories. Do you have any idea how many pieces of pumpkin pie I could eat in 30 minutes?

When you called last week to confirm our appointment I was glad that you were a dude. I had this fear that you'd be a girl exactly my height who weighed 50lbs less then me and who would say things like, "See my thighs? Yours are a lot bigger." I am still hoping that you are gay so that you can occasionally compliment my ass in a totally nonthreatening sort of way.

I am super not interested in being weighed at the gym. I lost 40lbs a few years ago and since then regularly weigh myself at home but I fear using a new scale which could show me as heavier and that could cause me to have a break down here in the gym. I would probably cry and that would probably be embarrassing for both of us so let's just stay away from the scale. I lost my weight through a diet I invented called "I Have a Very Acute Sense of Personal Guilt." Basically I wrote down everything I ate and felt so badly about eating fattening things that I eventually learned to avoid them. I never increased my exercise though I am naturally a "if it's only 3 subways stops away you might as well walk" kind of girl.

Despite all of my stated fears that you will make moo-ing noises at me while I stumble my way through a step routine I don't really think I'm fat. I just think that Gym People have ridiculous standards. Most of my fear of fat stems from the fact that I gained about 10lbs this summer and am having a tortuous time trying to lose it. This has lead to daily hallucinations in which I wake up one morning suddenly so fat that I can't actually fit through the door of my bedroom. On the bright side I don't usually keep food in my bedroom so this could turn into the most effective diet regime ever.

The main problem I have is that I really like food. Have you noticed how delicious it is? Here is a brief list of a few things that I very much wish I was eating right now: salt and vinegar potato chips, won ton soup, Greek yogurt with honey and almonds, pasta with really spicy sausage and broccoli, heirloom tomato salad with fresh mozzarella, Ben and Jerry's coffee coffee buzz buzz ice cream, left over thanksgiving stuffing, blue cheese with the black truffle honey that they make at Otto... I could go on. You'll note that I am not eating any of those things right now which is a sign of my incredible self control. If denying yourself food burned calories I would weigh 4 lbs.

I suppose you're going to ask me what my goals are. Gym people probably answer this question with things like "get a six pack!" or "run a marathon" or "work it." Mostly I want to eat more yummy food without getting fat. I would also like to avoid getting older and having some doctor say, "you have a life threatening disease that could have been prevented by doing a few sit ups 3 years ago." I would also like to find a way to see working out as fun. I know other people speak of this mythical feeling that washes over them post workout (perhaps it's in the sweat?) but though I promise I have done plenty of sweating I have never experienced this. I suspect the whole workout high thing is like magic eye posters -- i.e. a vast conspiracy maintained by all of humanity only to make fun of me. Would I like to be stronger, or more toned, or able to leap tall building in a single bound? Of course, but I need to be realistic. I will likely only make it to the gym 3 times in a good week. I will likely only stay for 30-45 minutes. I will likely behave as if this makes me some sort of martyr/hero combo pack.

Can we work together or shall I find the nearest Korean yogurt to drown my sorrows in (only 90 calories!)?

In Search of a $200 Piece of Ass

This Sunday I engaged in that most New York of hobbies – shopping. I was in dire need of new jeans (my favorite pair having finally succumbed to the weight of carrying my ass around at least twice a week for 2+ years) and had decided to allow my usually frugal self to splurge on a pair priced at over $40. I don't normally even allow myself to try on expensive jeans on the off chance that my ass would look so hot that I would no longer be able to live within the confines of The Gap and all hope I had of saving my money to one day purchase a home would be lost. But on Sunday I was brave and decided that a true New Yorker should at least know what a $150 pair of jeans look like so after a stop at Lucky Jeans (where I had the sales clerk hold a pair of fairly hot $110 pants for me) I sauntered over to Bloomingdales and quickly gathered all of their denim offerings in a 3x3 dressing room.

There are a lot of ugly expensive jeans out there. In an effort to make my fitting room task more manageable I decided to cap my jean cost at $200 and so did not try on any of the pairs that cost more than an ipod but my general feeling about the $100 and above realm is that women are suckers. 7 for all Mankind, Joe's Jeans, AG jeans – all of them let me down. I was fairly impressed with the offerings of Chip and Pepper and True Religion but no where near $196 worth of impressed. The main issue with all of these jeans was my ass crack. While makers of jeans for commoners have finally dialed their rise setting from the Patriot Bill sponsored, "I Got a Crack Just Like the Liberty Bell" ultra low to a more modest "Mmmm hipbones" the seamstresses at the posh sweatshops haven't gotten the memo ("The Homeland Security Terror Alert level has been lowered from Yellow to Orange, Ladies: PUT IT AWAY"). So most of my time in the Bloomie's dressing room was spent using all of my upper body strength to yank each pair of jeans into waist territory – most of the time with no success. Considering the recent spat of celebrity underwear raids I would advise all jean companies to offer their clientele back up exposure protection in the form of jeans that actually cover the wearer's ass.

Besides the discovery that designer jeans are not offering enough coverage to be worth the cost I also made one less happy find. It turns out that I don't really have an ass. I'm not sure how I got to be 29 without noticing this but my first instinct it to play the denial card. I am not one of those apple shaped girls whose skinny legs lead up to a flat behind hidden under a few rolls of jelly. I am decidedly pear shaped and you would think such a designation would grant its owner a nice plump tookus free of charge. No such luck. Regardless of my weight my lower body is pretty much all thigh. And so while I have ample flesh to squeeze into the behinds of expensive denim none of it forms into the kind of mounds that Sir Mix-a-Lot would croon over. From the floor up It's pretty much little foot, calf, knee, thigh, more thigh, dark meat as far as the eye can see, GOD DAMN GIRL, relatively tiny waist -- this combo does not drop dead jeans make.

I did eventually buy that first pair of jeans from Lucky (Classic Rider fit) and I feel good in them. The jeans themselves are likely not worthy of their $110 price tag but after 3 hours in dressing rooms I was willing to pay that price just to get a subway ticket home.

"On Losing my Identity" or "Who Moved my Boobs?"

It has been way too long since I’ve written anything about my boobs and I know that I am sorely in danger of losing my readers. For those of you that come here every few days looking for more information on my battle with bras and heartfelt analysis of the breasts of reality TV stars – it’s your lucky day. For those of you who work with me? Hit the Back button.

Once upon a time I was a 34DD, today I am a 32C. When a girl loses weight she tends to lose at least a little in her boobs. Women tend to fear this loss. Girls who have always been a little chubby have a tendency to fall into the trap of thinking that their breasts are their only attractive feature. It’s easy to see why – the world hates big thighs and big bellies and big arms and generally big girls – but the world loves big breasts.

I’m mostly fine with my decrease in cup size. While I used to consider my ample chest a possible strategic asset when it came to attracting boys it never served me very well. It sat out there – young, perky, propped up and on display but this almost never resulted in boys actually talking to me (and when it did, they were, unsurprisingly, never the right boys). I prefer to believe that men are less shallow than society gives them credit for and breasts just don’t mean all that much but it’s entirely possible that I just didn’t know how to work it (still don’t.). Either way no big loss to me, I wasn’t attracting men with my boobs two years ago and I’m still not today, the only difference is that now I can buy bras in styles other than "Extreme Grandma." And seirously, have you seen some of my skinny girl hot parts? My clavicles and hip bones stick out just so and I find them much more amazing than my breasts ever were. Though, it should be noted that these assets aren’t exactly delivering the goods either.

In theory I’m fine no longer being a busty girl -- except when it comes to self identification. It’s hard to change a key word that you’ve been tagging yourself with for 15 years so I find myself making jokes about being busty or bemoaning the pain of button down shirts as if I were still rocking a plus sized rack. Usually mid self disparaging comment I remember that I lost 40lbs and oh look! I can see my toes! Then I realize that no one is getting the joke and probably they are thinking “crazy girl, you have normal sized boobs, stop talking.” At this point I feel a little sad, I had some really great big boob related jokes in reserve that are now just going to waste. I can only hope that someday I’ll get pregnant and get my boobs back. Having to raise a messy little cheerio muncher will be a small price to pay for releasing my jokes from the prison of my average sized chest.

On Being Thin

I have weighed about 135 pounds for just over a year now. I’d never make it on America’s Next Top Model (Dear ANTM Producers: please make up a challenge wherein those girls gain about 15lbs each – Tyra should have some suggestions.) but it’s safe to say that I’m skinny. It’s tough to write that, I find myself thinking “I’m not skinny! That’s ridiculous, I look normal!” But the numbers don’t lie, I’m 5’4”, I weigh 135lbs, I’m a size 4. I’m significantly smaller than most American women.

Before I started officially dieting in March of 2005 I think I weighed about 170lbs but it’s hard to say for sure since I mostly avoided weighing myself. I wasn’t one of those girls who had always been fat, I didn’t hate my body, and I didn’t spend years trying to lose weight. I thought I was curvy, perhaps a little chubby but nothing too awful. I was so accepting of my body that I didn’t believe it could change. I believed diets were gimmicky and futile and too many women seemed to hate who they were because of their body size. I didn’t want to waste time eating cabbage soup and grapefruits and hating myself; I was a curvy girl and I decided to be ok with that.

In 2004 my mother and a friend both lost a good amount of weight on Weight Watchers. While I was impressed with how amazing they both looked I was more jealous of the power they had. They had changed something that I had convinced myself was immovable.

I started dieting to prove that I could control my body size. Once I began to lose weight I felt good and I realized that I wanted to lose a lot more than the original goal of 10 or so pounds. I gained a little understanding of why people became anorexic -- being able to change my physical form felt like magic. I’m obviously not advocating eating disorders but I was shocked to discover that I suddenly understood the appeal.

Ultimately losing weight was easy. It took time, but it wasn't hard work. I know no one wants to hear that, it’s supposed to be hard, if was easy we’d all be thin. Maybe it was easier for me because I had fewer emotional issues with food, or because I already liked vegetables, or because I have an amazing sense of internal guilt for someone with no religion. I figured out what I was eating (mostly through journaling), figured out what was good for me (mostly based on calories and Weight Watchers points) and stopped eating crap. Did I want to eat ice cream? Every minute (This is always true. Ice cream is the world’s most perfect food. There is never a time when I do not want to eat a scoop/pint/gallon/barrel full). I did not do any sort of formalized exercising. I live in New York City, I walk a lot. I used to go to the gym and while I'm sure it made me healthier it never made me skinny.

I weighed closer to 130lbs (and even saw the 120s once or twice) for a short while last November but eventually decided that 135lbs was a better weight for me, mostly because it was much easier to maintain and I believe that my body is happier here. I’ve since learned that a few people thought that the 130 me was a bit on the overly skinny side. This is astonishes me. I can believe that I am not at all chubby (though honestly it’s tough) but the idea that I could be too skinny is so foreign that it doesn’t seem possible. Changing your view of your own body turns out to be a lot tougher than changing the body itself. I don’t look at old pictures of myself and see a heavy girl, I just see me, an average girl who is moderately pretty but nothing special. I see her in the new pictures too. We’re used to our faces and (even more so) to the versions of ourselves that we believe in on the inside. Losing this weight has changed fewer things than one would have expected.

Things that have changed:

1. Shopping is much easier, almost everything looks acceptable (if not amazing) on me.
2. I am obsessed with food and constantly paranoid that I am eating poorly and will gain the weight back.

Things that have not changed

1. I still think I look average sized
2. I still do not have men fighting over me (I’m as surprised as you folks my ass is hot!).
3. I still think my thighs look huge about 10% of the time (this delusion is clearly hard wired)
4. I still do not hate myself.