The terror of dress shopping

So, one of the biggest benefits of working from home is that I never have to shop for clothes. For decades now, I've worn the same brand of jeans and cartoon t-shirts. I made one exception -- when I got married, I bought a dress. It wasn't as traumatic as I was expecting, my mom in law came with me, which makes everything easier. I had seen the dress on line and just knew it was what I wanted. We went in to a shop, saw the dress in person and the deed was done.

A while back, a good friend of mine gave me the happy news that she is getting married. I made the plans to fly to the wedding, thought about a gift, all that fun stuff. And in the deep, dark recesses of my mind, there was this paralyzingly frightening thought -- I only have 8 months to get a dress. Fast foward -- it is now less than a month till the wedding, and I have successfully avoided going shopping. So now I am starting to realize that I need to face the music and go shopping.

There are many things I hate about dresses. I hate the general fact that when women dress up we are expected to show skin, but when men dress up, they get to wear suits that cover up all their flaws. It doesn't matter how much I work out, no dress will cover up the pasty, pudgy legs. I just don't have the body type for a dress, and that was true even when I was skinnier.

But there are even more things that I hate about shopping for dresses. I hate that stores feel they have to use euphemisms, and I have to deciepher where they keep my size. I was in a store once years ago, in the Ladies department. I asked the clerk where I could find my size and she looked at me with complete and utter disgust and said, "This is the LADIES department, YOU have to shop in the WOMENS department." Huh?  So fat chicks are women, thin chicks are ladies? I just walked out of the store.

Another thing I hate is that obviously, if I'm shopping in the women's department, I have a fat ass. So, if the store is trying to sell me a dress with a 60 inch ass, why do they put the racks 12 inches apart? Sometimes I really think that sadists run these stores.

But the thing I hate most about dress shopping is the stores that claim to cater to fat chicks, yet when you read their catalog or go into their stores, all of the pictures show the clothes on twig thin models. Sorry, but I really don't care what the clothes look like on a 14 year old 90 pound model.  Quite a while ago, I started boycotting stores that used 90 pound models to sell size 22's, and rewarding stores that used models who actually showed me what the clothes might look like on me. Actual examples from online:

From "Just My Size":

 from Lane Bryant:

and from Junonia:

I shop from Junonia.

Unfortunately, I don't think Theresa wants me to show up at her evening wedding in shorts and a sports bra, so I have to look elsewhere for a dress. It's a terrifying prospect, but if nothing else it shows how much I adore Theresa.