You’d never know it from looking at fashion magazines, but more than half of American women wear size 14 or larger clothes. Yet even though we big beautiful gals are in the majority, we still starve ourselves trying to look like something we’re not.
The thing is, our family’s physical heritage tends to run large. We’re descended from sturdy peasant farmer stock – tall men with broad shoulders and tall women with big hips. This is great when you’re plowing fields and having lots of babies to be farm hands, but it can be a disadvantage in our time of highly processed foods and much less physical labor.
Anyway, about six months ago our cousin Celia got engaged. Since we’re a close family, Celia wanted nearly everyone to be in the wedding party. The trouble started when she began looking through popular bridal magazines. Before we knew it, we were constantly arguing about how to lose fat so that everybody could get supermodel-slim for the wedding. It wasn’t a happy time.
Finally, our aunt had had enough of her daughter turning into Bridezilla over this issue of body size. Auntie is one smart cookie, and it wasn’t long before she figured out a strategy that saved the day – and the family.
One of Auntie’s friends sells bridal dresses and evening gowns in town. She told our aunt that the question of body size often comes when choosing bridal gowns. Instead of trying to argue anymore, though, Auntie’s friend loaned her a couple of catalogs that she uses to order dresses for her shop. These catalogs were full of beautiful, full-color photos that showed how a plus size wedding dress could fit well and look stunning at the same time.
Now Auntie is cunning. She knew we wouldn’t voluntarily come to another family gathering about wedding dresses, so instead she invited us over to try on party jewelry. While we were going ga-ga over all the sparklies, Auntie pulled out the catalogs and her measuring tape. We knew from the look in her eye that none of us was leaving until we’d solved this wedding dress issue.
Marge, who is a fabulous seamstress anyway, got out her tape measure and measured everyone of us right then and there! We each wrote down our measurements and decided on what body shape we each have. We haven’t had so much girlie fun in ages!
The great wedding dress battle had a happy ending, just like a good romance should. The bride and her attendants walked proudly down the church aisle in wedding gowns that fitted us perfectly and made us all look like fairy tale princesses (large economy size, of course). Our aunt’s scheme really saved the wedding day.
