It's not the dress...

There are two soul crushing moments that threw me from the comfortable naive womb of childhood ignorance into the glamazon idealized world of self doubt (also known as "adulthood). The first was seeing a horrifying picture of my fourteen year old self in our yearbook wearing a less than flattering spaghetti strap tank on retreat during freshman year.
That was a quick lesson. teeny-tiny straps make large boobs look Orca fat.
check. got it. Not to be repeated.

The second came in the same year when I asked my father the dreaded question. "Does this dress make me look fat?"

The answer of course was "yes, dear god, yes." (in fairness a overall topped-gingham-print-babydoll jumper shouldn't be worn by anyone). Instead Dad murmmered the caustically true response "It's not the dress...."

It took me a while to pick my jaw back up and change my clothes in a huff, but of course, I knew that he was right.

If I lived my life without my general self assurance or confidence, the seared memory of that comment might be crippling. But it's not. instead its morphed into the mantra that I attempt to slap myself with when I find myself trying on look after look in a store/in my bathroom/in my car and frustrated with the result. It's not the dress.

Of course sometimes it IS the dress (remember those haunting spaghetti straps that did me no favors?), but right now I have come to the formidable conclusion that for the moment, it most certainly is NOT the dress and I should probably get my act together. And so it begins. Hardly a tragic quest, but certainly a quest. One to figure out how to get active again, have fun doing it, and look hot even if I'm wearing that god awful overall/gingham atrocity.

Cheers ladies. Game time.