Breaking Down in the Bloomingdale's Dressing Room
I am 37 years old, I’m in New York for the launch of my third novel, it’s a Wednesday, I’m alone in a Zara dressing room stripped down to my bra and panties, and I am texting every man I’ve ever had a crush on. Not 24 hours earlier, I discovered my husband’s affair with my best friend.
I have always felt at home in a dressing room. I spent a lot of my early 20s taking hourlong naps on the floor of a Bloomingdale’s dressing room in Chicago. At that time in my life, I was broke, anorexic, and deeply unhappy. I was also scared of the dark. The well-lit rooms with their locking floor-to-ceiling doors were a godsend to me. I’d arrive to the store early, put a coffee on my credit card, and wander the multiple levels by escalator for an hour or two. I’d spend another hour in the women’s section, collecting armfuls of designer clothing I couldn’t begin to afford.
Sometime after lunch, I’d seek out a dressing room, make a pallet of the day’s outfits, undress, lie down, and sleep. I’d wake up late afternoon—refreshed, naked, a little dazed. With a dreamy extravagance I haven’t known since, I’d begin the ritual of trying on the clothes.
I hated my face and body back then, but I loved to watch myself in the mirror as I tested out the personalities that might belong to those decadent and strange designs. I’d sit, I’d stand, I’d pose. I’d get very close to my own reflection, forgetting about the clothes altogether, and concentrate on the features of my face. I’d smile, laugh, become abruptly angry, play coy, play shy, play coquettish. I allowed my face and body to make all the movements and expressions I fantasized about in private but in public was too ashamed to attempt. Occasionally, I’d become heartbreakingly attached to a certain piece—a hand-embroidered miniskirt, a blue silk blouse—and I’d buy it, adding to an amassing debt that would ultimately take me more than 15 years to pay off.
It makes sense to me, then, that on the Wednesday following the realization that my marriage was over, it was in a dressing room that I began to look forward to the future; that I began to bring about the version of my life I’d been stifling for decades.
My text to each man began the same way: “Guess who’s getting a divorce?” A few expressed surprise, a few indicated they’d seen it coming, a few didn’t respond at all. Only one or two answered in meaningfully flirtatious manners.
But the men and our text exchanges were hardly the point. The point was that, in my 20 years of adulthood, only 10 of which I’d spent with my husband, I hadn’t been myself. Certainly, I’d made decisions I believed in, I’d written books I cared about, I’d traveled to places I wanted to visit. But I’d also lived the majority of my life paralyzed by my vanity and also my ego’s desire to appear not vain. I’d been tormented by the idea of being looked at, judged, commented on behind my back, while at the same time—in the very same moment of insecurity—equally tormented by the thought that no one was looking, judging, commenting. I’d gotten married in spite of being uncertain, I’d maintained friendships about which I was skeptical, I’d stayed quiet when I’d been humiliated, and I’d often—more often than I care to admit—privileged the desires of nearly everyone else in my life over my own.
What happened that day in the dressing room is that I stopped thinking about the desires of other people. I thought only about me and mine. I didn’t suddenly turn solipsistic, but that day—gleefully texting the men I’d always wondered about and trying on clothes that my husband or best friend might have told me were too young, too fashionable, too not me—I was considering only what I wanted. I was privileging my desires. In a Zara dressing room, on a Wednesday in 2016, at 37 years old, I finally started behaving as the person I wanted to become.
In the six years since my divorce, I’ve discovered a coterie of books by female authors who’ve helped me navigate my midlife possession of womanhood and all it can be: writers like Deborah Levy, Annie Ernaux, Lisa Taddeo, Stephanie Danler, Sheila Heti. I refer to them whenever I feel the old creep of insecurity or the return of my tendency to turn inward and quiet. I’m not scared of the dark anymore. I’m not depressed, not unhappy, not broke. While I no longer starve myself, I still fight the occasional instinct to withhold food. These days, I have fewer opportunities to lose myself in a dressing room for the afternoon. Instead, I order online, taking advantage of the return policies of the brands I love (Nili Lotan, Staud, Rag & Bone, No.6, Velvet, Smythe). There’s a floor-to-ceiling mirror in my bedroom that I rarely consider.
Then, there will be a day—a tiny miracle of an afternoon—when I am home alone with several hours unexpectedly to myself. I’ll pull the shades, lock the door, and strip down to my underwear. The body I have now is 20 years older, and it’s one I appreciate (and many days even admire), mostly for its health and its strength and the time I’ve dedicated to feeding it and exercising it. Every day, I can find fault with it. But on those rare and glorious afternoons I have accidentally to myself—only when the desire strikes—I’ll take an armful or two of clothes from my own closet. I’ll spend time trying them on, accessorizing each outfit appropriately. I enjoy the decadence of the experience and the fact that the clothes are mine, that I can afford them, and that I’m no longer in debt.
But, mostly, what I relish on these days is my own reflection and the way it matches the person I’d wanted to be for a very long time, the one who—with great and daily personal effort—I have finally become.
You Might Also Like
