10.8.99

Once we saw the dresses together and on our bodies, there was no doubt they had been switched. The problem was that my dress fit both of us perfectly while Pam's didn't seem to fit any better than it did at the last fitting. (At one point I even thought the seamstress switched the dresses so Pam wouldn't know that they didn't get around to working on hers. But for that to work they would have had to count on me not to notice how screwed up it was.) That night we decided to go back to the shop allied for counterattack. After talking, we discovered that the dressmaker targets image insecurities to divert attention away from shoddy construction. We realized that whenever one of us spoke up about some bulge that needed adjustment, the dressmaker tended to counter with comments to the effect that our ill-designed bodies simply did not fit the dresses. We were not going to remain vulnerable to such underhandedness. (It's crazy how even though you know it's not your body and you know that you are beautiful and not deformed and you're no longer an awkward adolescent but a chick with a brain in a job where you get to use your brain, you still let those sinister little jabs sew your mouth right up. And you live with an ill-fitting dress. Except not us anymore 'cause we're on to her!) So we went together and I watched while Pam stood before the mirror telling of a slippy shoulder strap, and I listened when the woman said it was her shoulder riding too high, and I spoke to say that the dress didn't do it when I wore it (and my shoulder isn't like that). Then Pam said that my dress didn't slip on her crooked shoulders and the woman, trying to organize us, said: That shoulder is higher than the other. Later Pam asked me if I noticed that the woman kept alternating shoulders. I didn't, but we both laughed hard about it. What we did not do, but should have done, is ask for compensation. But it was tiring being tough and that woman was used to being tougher and she didn't even offer to be a good businesswoman and give us a deal; instead she attempted to garner sympathy with a beguiling tale of rural poverty and attempted self-improvement. We nodded in mock interest and managed to get out of there with plenty of pins in the dress and the promise of correction.

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