I got up this morning to go to Pompidou, since I'm ten pages short of finishing my ten-page paper due sometime in the next two weeks, but the line was way too long, and I figured it would be more efficient to take care of some other things rather than wait in line for two hours only to not find the book I was looking for or to do two hours of work and get bored. Of course, today wasn't a prime example of efficiency for me, but I did manage to go grocery shopping, which really needed to be done.
I do have a lot of philosophical-y thoughts going through my head, but I don't think I could manage to make any sense of them, or at least make them make sense to you right now, so I'm just going to skip over those and bitch about not being able to find jeans that fit me. Call me size-ist, but you skinny people can just ignore this because you don't have this problem, ever - not in Paris, and certainly not in the States. I don't even really have this problem when I'm in the US. Yeah, my selection is not as vast as normal-sized people when I go shopping, but there are specialty stores that carry things that fit me (Torrid for the younger crowd, Lane Bryant for the more mature ones, or for work clothes, and Old Navy goes up to size 20? 22?) that I don't have to go to the eighth circle of hell to find. Department stores also have big-girl departments (with the exception of the really snotty ones, which in some cases really blows, if you're looking for a dress for a black-tie occasion), but those can be a bit pricey, especially when what you really need are some decent jeans because you wear holes in the thighs every few months or so. Clearly, I can't be dropping $120 or more on a new pair of jeans every few months, so I usually end up buying jeans from places like Torrid because a)they're relatively cheap, b)they fit me really well, and c)they don't make me look like a soccer mom. But Torrid doesn't exist here, and neither does Old Navy. So far, the only stores I've come across have been for old ladies or too expensive or both.
This, as you've probably figured out, is a problem. It's a big problem. It's an increasingly big problem. It increases in size as the holes in my jeans do, and considering only one of the FIVE pairs of jeans I have here doesn't have holes in the thigh/crotch region (and these are dressy jeans, at that), it's moved up the scale to a HUGE fucking problem. Granted, I live in jeans here. I wear pretty much nothing else, unless the occasion calls for something other than denim, so it figures that eventually I would wear all of my jeans out (and really, I was only off on my jeans ration by about 9 weeks). But now that I actually have no more jeans to wear, I find myself becoming frustrated, frantic, and of course, depressed that I can't find pants! Come on! I've already ironed on patches on two pairs, but they look ridiculous since the fabrics don't match, and it's not like I wasn't already self-conscious enough about my clothes in this city.
So, today, after deciding to not put up with the usual library bullshit, I headed to H&M, where they have a tiny plus-size section called BiB (Big is Beautiful). The clothes they have there usually make me feel like a second-class citizen because, really, would it be that hard to make the same thing that the normal people buy in a larger size? Bigger people don't automatically all have a thing for poorly-constructed tops and flowy bottoms. Some of us, probably most, actually want to look like everyone else, instead of feeling like we don't deserve "normal clothes" or can't have them. And last I checked, we've never had a meeting where we all got together and decided, yes, please do make us stand out as fashion pariahs in bland t-shirts and high-waisted jeans. Like I said, we get enough crap from people already. Anyways, back to my quest for jeans. Obviously, H&M had nothing. They had loads of jeans in the size below me, which is the last normal size, but nothing my size that didn't feel like it could be used for a parachute or hammock. I caught the bus and headed to the shopping center at Place d'Italie, knowing there was a plus-size store there. After that proved futile, and after half an hour of scrutinizing every store's goods from outside the windows, I thought it would be best to just see what I could find online and drown my sorrows in a café crème and some Stoppard.
Cut to a few hours later, when I'm sitting in front of my computer, flabbergasted that it'll take four to six weeks to get a pair of jeans from two different stores online. Seriously? I just don't know what to do. I see bigger girls around all the time, and they're not naked. WHERE ARE THEY HIDING ALL THE FAT GIRL CLOTHES?! I mean, aside from the crap they sell by Châtelet. I think I'm actually going to have to resort to having my mom send me stuff so I don't look like some crazy lady with patches all over her crotch.
That's my rant for the day. I'm going to watch some horrible French television instead of making progress on my paper because I'm such a dedicated student. Dammit, is it August yet?
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