A Shorty's Lament

People in the clothing industry must all be overweight giants. Or else, they all have monkey arms. Also, the entire industry is not well-endowed in the female sense, based on my field experience.

That's right, I went shopping today.

Shopping is one of my favorite things in general. I can look at shiny things, try on pretty things, and I'm actually pretty good about not buying things I don't need (shoes don't count in this, shoes are infallible). And it's great cardio; I can easily walk a few miles on a good shopping day.

However, now that I have apparently completed my brief foray into skinny-ness (sigh), it's more frustrating than ever to try things on. The fashion world seems to be imbued with several gross misconceptions about those of us who are, to speak the language, petite.

For example: according to clothes, the taller a woman gets, the fatter she gets. Consequently, the fatter she gets, the taller she gets. They don't make department store pants for short chubby girls. Even in the petite section, there is a marked difference in inseam between the 0P and 12P.

And apparently, short people are all in mourning over their limited stature. More on that in a mo.

I ventured all the way to Manassas Mall today (I try to leave the house once a day to stave off cabin fever) in search of a suit for my job interviews (plural!) this week. My brother's girlfriend had brought one over for me, since we're about the same size, except she's taller.

Trying her suit on quickly, it looked great, fit fine, the button was in the right place (under the boobs, otherwise it stretches and makes weird lumps, see Paragraph 1), but when I tried it on later, I realized the arms were too long.

Since I am, after all, 25 (shudder), I figured I couldn't really get away with rolled-up suit sleeves for a job interview. I also wasn't about to alter my brother's girlfriend's suit. In a day.

Ergo, to the mall I went.

First stop: Macy's. Its "Petites" section was composed almost entirely of sweatsuits. Is there a large contingent of the population that can get away with wearing brightly colored sweatsuits of the type my grandmother used to wear? Should I have purchased some and worn them to these interviews?

I somehow stumbled upon two real suits, both black, since all short people are sad, and yet none of the jackets that were in my size had a corresponding skirt in my size. I tried on some "well I could maybe squeeze into an 8 if...no, no I can't"s and gave up on Macy's.

Near Macy's is Express. While I know Express is way beyond my budget, they also have cute work wear. The salesgirl was patient with my queries of "Why? Why would they have a grey suit jacket out if none of the grey bottoms--and there are several grey bottoms--match the grey of the jacket? WHY?" But all of my wondering whether a grey jacket would go with a black skirt (no) was moot, since the arms were too long.

Money still in my pocket, and probably a murderous rage growing in the salesgirl's belly, I headed to H&M.

Shouldn't have bothered.

Finally, since my car was parked by Penney's, I went in there. They had two petite suits, one of which had a skirt AND jacket that were the right size and same color, AND the arms were the perfect length. AND it was super cheap.

Still, as I tried on the various mismatched bits Penney's had to offer, I wondered why there weren't any fun colors in petites. Do tall people feel sorry for us? Are you trying to make us not stand out because you know we're way cuter than you? Do you think we're ashamed of our height and we don't want to wear a nice light grey suit with a pop of a jewel tone underneath?

Let's get one thing straight, Tall People Who Are Trying To Oppress and Depress Us: being short is awesome. Except for the ill-fitting clothes thing.

I mean, look. We can wear heels without ever worrying if we'll be taller than our date. We don't even understand why women worry about being taller than their dates. We can make friends at the grocery store by asking taller people if they could retrieve something from an upper shelf (embarrassing, yes, but a good conversation starter). We don't constantly get asked "Do you play basketball?" When we fall down, we get less hurt because we don't have as far to fall.

But still, if anyone out there has any influence in the low-budget fashion world, spread the word: short people are fat too, and we like to wear colors other than black. And would it kill you to throw us a pinstripe every once in a while?