Wardrobe Crisis in Lapbandland!

What to Wear?

Okay, a problem has come up. I've lost about 23 pounds, but I'm a good 50 pounds from my goal. What I'd like to do is stay home and hide, watching The Gilmore Girls and ER until I lose that 50 pounds. Instead, I have to go to another city to answer questions at a movie showing.

Let me explain. About 20 years ago, I directed a film about Elvis fans. It was the height of the dead Elvis craze, and I took a crew to Memphis and we made a film about the people who travel there each year to pay homage to the king. It was an absolute blast, we made a really good film, and I showed it in New York at the Independent Film Festival and in Los Angeles at the American Film Institute and it got a great reception and won some awards. 

Flash forward to now. A well-meaning friend saw that the TWENTY year anniversary of the premiere of the film was coming up and arranged several showings in Atlanta. Of course, they asked me to come. Here's the problem: (and this is going to sound shallow), I don't have anything to wear. Nothing I own really fits right anymore. I have clothes of all sizes, but anything smaller than what I've been wearing for the last 3 or so years is pretty out of style. I want to look nice, but to be honest, I'd like to look a little more than nice. I lived in Atlanta for 23 years, moved up here five years ago, and I haven't seen many of my friends in all that time.

I want to look hip but casual, I need to be cool (its hot as Hades in ATL), and nothing I have is going to work. I've been wearing Wal-Mart stretch pants more than anything else lately, and that's not going to work. So I've spent the day looking around the internet for something to wear. I've looked at JJill, Coldwater Creek, a variety of plus sized stores, Chico's, and Kohl's. I have seen pretty much nothing that will work. I can't wear a dress yet, since my legs are still too chunky, can't wear short sleeves since my arms are chunky too. Arrrrrgh!!!

All of this sent me to thinking about the past 25 years and how I have been doing this dance that entire time. When the film was originally made, I had just gone through the Optifast diet and lost about 60 pounds, so I looked okay in NYC and LA. But only because I had starved myself for 3 months previous. Since then I've been up and down more times than I can count. I'm sure I'm kidding myself about my friends being judgemental about my weight since they've seen me big and small and every size in between. But that doesn't mean I want them to see me looking dowdy or dumpy or stumpy or lumpy. No matter how great my eyemakeup looks that night, I'm pretty sure people will tear their eyes away from my baby browns long enough to notice if I'm wearing Wal-Mart stretch pants and a Lane Bryant top that doesn't fit right. So today is a low self esteem day. I've wasted YEARS of my life worrying about this same thing and I'm praying this will be the last time a big event comes up that I have to worry so much over what I'm going to wear. Really. It needs to be the last time. View blog reactions