Changing Room Trauma

Time to Drop My Pants

Well, yesterday I finally acknowledged that the time had come.  With this warmer weather it has simply become too hot to continue to wear my full-length, black boot-leg pants to the gym. I can’t deny it anymore. It’s either prepare to collapse from heat exhaustion or swallow my pride and expose some flesh.

God.

So that was it; time to buy some shorts. Even though the backs of my thighs have a little orange-peel-action going on and the arse is not what it once was. Even though I haven’t owned a pair of shorts since Wham was topping the charts and even though my spider veins look like one of the kids decided to draw a roadmap on my legs with a blue pen. All in all, it’s not a pretty sight but neither is lying prostrate on the gym floor next to the treadmill panting like a Golden Retriever in a heat wave. Time to choose my embarrassment. Watch out world: the Great Whites are coming out!

Hold on Tight, Self-esteem – We’re Going Shopping

So pretty soon I’m flipping through the shorts rack at my local sports store. Geez they’re, well, short. I was hoping for something more short-ish…and less SHORT!

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” the shop assistant asks. Damn, she’s good. If I answer with my standard “Thanks, I’m just browsing” that would be lying (thank you so much Craig Harper and your Pants on Fire post). She’s cornered me with her clever interrogation skills. Where do they train these people? The KGB? Mossad?

I know when I’m beaten. “I need some shorts for the gym but I don’t want them to be too short because I have, um, wobbly bits.” There, my dirty little secret is out. Sure I’m leaner than I was a few months ago but at my age weight loss doesn’t automatically guarantee firmness.

She smiles. Actually, I like her. She looks fit and healthy. She’s not too skinny like some of the shop assistants in the boutiques. Some of those girls look as if they have thrown up everything they’ve eaten since their thirteenth birthday and never lifted anything heavier than a Bacardi Breezer and a cigarette.

“Why don’t you pop into the fitting-room and I’ll just bring you heaps of pairs that I think will be good for you – you can’t tell until you try them on. Oh, and I’m new here so please just let me know if I double up.” I like her even more now. She’s new to the job and I’m new to shorts. Hope starts rising in my heart that this might not be as traumatic as I had envisaged.

The Torture Chamber

Until I enter the fitting-room. There’s a mirror in there. In fact there are four mirrors; one on each wall and one behind the door. Just what I need; a 360 degree view of my semi-naked self under lights that NASA could use to land a space shuttle. Why do they do that? Don’t they want us to buy their clothes? Would it be too much to ask for a little candlelight? And maybe one of those trick circus mirrors that could make a sumo wrestler look underfed? Stuff reality; I need flattery and denial in my hour of need, thanks very much.

I step out of my jeans and catch a glimpse of my legs in the mirrors. All four of them. Mirrors that is. Not legs. Geez. This place is lit up like an operating theatre; you could remove tonsils in here. Every little (ok, big) imperfection is lit up like potholes on the highway during night road works. And what’s with the horizontal lines on the backs of my legs? Hold on. If I lift up my butt with my hands like that … the lines disappear. Magic. Now all I need is a full roll of duct-tape and some of those industrial clamps… and I’ll be laughing. Or maybe not.

Truth in Advertising

I have to remind myself that I’m shopping for new shorts, not new legs. If I want new legs (well, as good as new anyway) then clearly I’m in the wrong place – I should be at the Medical and Cosmetic Clinic down the road. I’m not sure whether or not I would ever have the courage to undergo liposuction. Part of its appeal is its simplicity. Even the name has an endearing honesty to it: lipo (fat) suction. There’s no bones about it, is there? No marketing ploy there. It’s like the medical fraternity became tired of creating flattering euphemisms for new procedures so for this one they just said: “Listen Princess. We’re gonna suck the fat out using a tube hooked up to a very over-priced vacuum cleaner. If you don’t like the name, put up with your dimpled arse.” Gotta love it.

I’d be quite worried, though, that the surgeon would lose concentration for a moment and start hoovering where he shouldn’t. You certainly wouldn’t want to hear ‘Oops. Not again. Dang those lungs look just like fat sometimes.’ How embarrassing would it be to die during liposuction? I have always hoped to have something rather spectacular written on my Death Certificate (the last Merit Award we receive in life, really. Although there will be no shaking the Principal’s hand on school assembly for that one.). ‘Caught in crossfire whilst on secret UN assignment’ would be quite cool or maybe even ‘Unfortunate engine explosion whilst test-driving the new McLaren supercar’. Yep, I’m afraid that ‘expired during a liposuction procedure’ would not be my exit of choice from this mortal coil. I wonder if there’s a special queue in the next world for people who have departed during unnecessary cosmetic surgery? I imagine it would be one of the slowest queues. Right next to the queue for people who didn’t listen when they were told ‘don’t try this at home’.

Why Is My Mother In The Mirror?

“Here we go”. Miss Smiley is back with fourteen thousand pairs of shorts. She even manages to pass them to me without whipping the curtain open like it’s opening night on Broadway. She explains that although the first pair looks like normal shorts on the outside, they actually have bike shorts on the inside to guard one’s privacy. I’m sure that will be appreciated all round, frankly. My poor trainer isn’t paid enough to see anything scarier than a flabby bicep.

They look ghastly on me. Although they fit well (Miss Smiley is even good at guessing my size), with my flabby white thighs I look like a middle-aged housewife on a Pacific cruise. Sigh. Why isn’t every fitting-room equipped with a coin-operated valium dispenser? Now that would be a retail innovation. As I take off the shorts, I apologise for making them endure such a traumatic experience: ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Great. Now I’m talking to clothing. I’m really losing it. Sadly, the other thirteen thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine pairs look even worse. Maybe collapsing from heat exhaustion wouldn’t be so bad? Surely it’s one of those things that becomes less unpleasant the more you do it?

‘How are you going for size?’ Miss Smiley is back. I want to ask her if she means the shorts’ size or my size? All I can manage in reply is a despondent ‘Schnurf’.

‘Why don’t you put on the best pair and let me have a look?’
I comply and she gives me the once over.
‘You know they’re not that bad.’
‘You think?’
They’re the most flattering you’ll find’.
‘Yep. I know.’
‘I’ll leave you to get dressed’.

I appreciate her honesty. She’s not trying to convince me that I look like Maria Sharapova.

Get a Grip

What to do?

I have two choices: either I can continue to be self-conscious and worried about what everyone else will think of my wobbly bits or I can bloody-well just get over myself and realise that I’ll be wearing shorts to the gym not the Oscars. I pick up my handbag and walk to the counter. Miss Smiley is waiting.

‘How did you go?’ she asks.
‘Yes, I think I’ll take them, thanks.’ Then I exhale. Decision made. 

Guess what? Nobody at the gym noticed my new shorts. I wasn’t fined or politely asked to leave or even given a condescending death stare. It seems that everyone else is so worried about their own wobbly bits that they can’t be bothered looking at mine.

Cool.

CJ xox