‘Feeling confident, being comfortable in your skin—that’s what really makes you beautiful.’ Bobbi Brown
The exciting news in our house is that we have a family wedding next month. The challenging news is that it’s in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa which, while requiring us all to hop on a plane, is entirely appropriate as our son will be cementing the family UK, ZA relationship of thirty years by marrying his beautiful Zulu/Xhosa fiancée, plus I gain a bonus African daughter. The inevitable and even more challenging news involves everyone finding something appropriate to wear for this occasion. Easier said than done.
Weddings require us all to make more effort with our appearance, so we primp and preen, and make the necessary pilgrimages to the fancy shops to check out what they have to offer this season. Our images, after all, will be immortalised for evermore in the photos, so none of us want to look back and be overwhelmed that we were allowed to leave the house in something we all later regret.
I set myself to this important search at Westfield mall recently, accompanied by a daughter whose stamina and focus was impressive. I went into shops I’d never heard of and swept through their rails with a gimlet eye and low expectations. Undeterred by a paltry selection, we took dresses into multiple changing rooms to try on, only to confirm our doubts about colour, style, fitting, length, necklines etc etc.
Fear not, fellow wedding guest (wherever you have been invited this season), there’s always the online option. Or is there?.
Undefeated and undeterred, I fired up the laptop and typed in the website I’d been given. Good heavens! No less than 3,397 options were offered to me by this particular retailer. Surely, I would be spoilt for choice.
Reader, I kid you not; it was a nightmare. Even selecting the ‘occasion’ wear from an alternative online supplier reaped me few benefits.
After who knows how long, I desperately wanted to a) give up and b) advise them to include some basic filters on their search option. For me that would include: no black (it’s not a funeral; we’re celebrating), no white (it’s not my wedding – who does that? So rude!), no brown (now I’m embracing silver, brown drains me of all colour), no yellow (I’m European; it makes us all look ill unless it’s a delicate shade of cowslip and these were more screaming fried egg); no spaghetti straps (I’m not 18 anymore); no strapless (too risky), no backless (still not 18), no floor length (I’m not pretending to be bridesmaid for goodness’ sake), no minis (did I mention, still not 18, or even 21 for that matter), no see-through/sheer (let’s not frighten the horses), no capes (!), no feathers (seriously).
Every page offered me 72 supposedly new options, though some definitely came up more than once. I made a note of those I thought were OK but, admittedly, it was a short list. One of those in close up proved to be too long and very unkind in the stomach area (four children, menopause and cortisol turn out to be real things). So it was whittled down to one (yes one, people), out of 3,397. Slim pickings, but maybe I’d cracked it.
Alas, this celebratory delight turned out to be completely out of stock, except for those still enjoying the gloriousness of fitting into a size 10, of whom I am no longer one (see, ‘I’m not 18, or even 21 anymore’).
Years ago, I had a part-time job in Laura Ashley, Winchester, which helped furnish our home when we were newly-weds ourselves. (I vividly remember picking up discarded clothes in the changing room, thrown aside by a titled lady who should have known better and carefully hanging them up to be returned to the rails. But I digress.) At the time a report came out that said the average size of women in the UK was a 14. I was appalled. It seemed enormous to a recently graduated student who could still enjoy the footloose and carefree size-10-feeling while eating almost anything. Foolish fool that I was; I knew nothing, had accomplished very little and hadn’t yet had much experience in The School of Life & Hard-Knocks, and the unfortunate but inevitable consequences all those events have on a female body.
An internet search now tells me that the average size for women in the UK is a 16. Either sizes have changed (and that’s real: I have garments sizes 10-16 in my cupboard, all of which fit me well); we’re all eating more, or not moving enough, or are simply more stressed (there’s that pesky cortisol again).
So, in terms of solving the family wedding challenge, it’s still unresolved. I have two nieces getting married this year and have fabulous outfits for both of those much-anticipated occasions, including hats to die for. For my son’s extravaganza, I’ve made myself something while still promising to visit the ‘posh’ shops of Bath next week. I fear a hat may suffer on the 12 hour plane journey and doesn’t quite pick up the African vibe. Meanwhile, I’m reminded that it’s entirely natural that our bodies, faces, especially our skin, will change as we age. I have had friends who’d love to have had the opportunity to do just that but have left us too soon and so have been denied that path.
Now is the time for leaning into the truths that we’ve been telling our children from their earliest years and which we choose to keep believing for ourselves, or not: what’s inside us is infinitely more important that the vessel that carries us for the duration of our lifetime.
Old wisdom tells us that ‘man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart.’ A brief look around us, a long look in the mirror and some self realisation suggests it’s time to set aside the former and spend some time sprucing up the latter.
[Images from Pixabay]
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