Recently, I was the recipient of a fabulous miracle that
occurred in the fitting room of a well-known department store. Now
this miracle wasn’t one of your usual, everyday miracles like
healing the sick or feeding the poor.
Recently, I was the recipient of a fabulous miracle that occurred in the fitting room of a well-known department store. Now this miracle wasn’t one of your usual, everyday miracles like healing the sick or feeding the poor. This was more of a personal miracle. You see, inside that tiny dressing room, I tried on a pair of jeans and they were too big.
You heard right. The jeans were too big. Too. Big. As in, “too large.” As in, “I needed a smaller size.” As in, “a reason to celebrate because my new jeans had to be one size smaller.” Now, you might think this is nothing. After all, every day women across the world have starved themselves into a smaller jean size. They’ve taken supplements. They’ve exercised until they become one with the treadmill. And after eight or so months of torture and famine, they are a size smaller.
But not me. No, I am a size smaller despite having inhaled every piece of chocolate in my house since Valentine’s Day. I am a size smaller despite eating like a horse – and I don’t mean I was scarfing down hay, either. And I am a size smaller despite the fact that I wouldn’t know what a treadmill looked like if one walked up to me and introduced itself.
And yet, I am a size smaller. Really. Now, I have to tell you, I was not prepared for this momentous occasion. It truly was a miracle. I swear to you, the minute I put those jeans on, the heavens opened and a voice rang out saying, “Yes, you are one size smaller. Now go forth and celebrate with a hot fudge sundae and then spread the good news throughout the land.”
That was followed by a scream of happiness from me and another voice from the dressing room next-door that sighed heavily and said, “Vanity sizing. That’s all it is, sweetie.”
Excuse me? I don’t think so. Vanity sizing is a term that means the clothing manufacturer had resized its jeans to make everything one size smaller. Everything but the person wearing the clothing that is. In other words, you’re still the same size – but your jeans aren’t.
But standing there in front of the mirror admiring my new, one-size-smaller butt (which strangely resembled my old, larger-than-life butt), I knew the truth. And the truth was, I was not a victim of vanity sizing. I was instead witnessing the miracle of weight loss without trying.
I had proof. I had a tag that read one size smaller than the size I have worn for the last 5 years. I was smaller. My butt was smaller. My thighs weren’t as thunderous as they had been five minutes before I tried on those jeans. That voice from the other dressing room was stupid. And wrong. And I smothered it by buying a pair of jeans in every single color and doing the happy dance clear out to the car.
And once I was home, I put on a pair of those jeans and called all my friends to tell them about my amazing weight loss. And every single one of them uttered the phrase, “vanity sizing.”
Well, I can tell you that I did not think vanity sizing had anything to do with my weight loss miracle.
But just in case, I hopped on the scale. And what I saw there was so shocking, so horrifying, that the minute I saw it, my contacts nearly popped out of my head. Instead of being several pounds lighter, I was … well, I was a bit heavier.
Obviously, there had to be an explanation. On the one hand, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but I was one size smaller. On the other hand, I was a pound or two – OK, four – heavier. And yet, according to my new jeans, I was one size smaller.
Obviously, there was only one reason for that and it wasn’t vanity sizing. Clearly my scale was broken. So I threw it away. Because who needs a scale when I had my new jeans to tell me my size? And that’s when I realized that vanity size or not, those jeans did me a favor. I saw my butt in a whole new way. It seemed smaller. Toned. Even a bit perky. And let’s be honest here. There comes a time in every woman’s life when a perky butt is a miracle, whether it’s vanity sized or not.
