What Not to Wear

So the reason, as I discovered today, that "Women's" (or "plus-size") departments don't carry very many dresses is because Life After Menopause = A Life of Separates.  Women over a certain age, and weight—known wonderfully in Francophone Montreal as "Voluptué"—look better in separates than in dresses.  At least this voluptué woman does.

First store: 

Can you spell "f-o-o-t-b-a-l-l p-l-a-y-e-r s-h-o-u-l-d-e-r-s"?  To be fair, that's been an issue my whole life.  But the thickness of the rest of me now exacerbates the issue.









Same store, second dress:

The best try of the day—no big surprise that it's Anne Klein.  I always seem to end up liking her stuff the best.  But, cap sleeves on my extra-wide arms and the whole polkadots-on-a-barn thing just didn't quite do it for me.  On to the next store…








Second store, third dress:

Everyone always tells me I should wear more red, so I tried this one on because it was the only red dress in my size.  No.  Just no.










Third store, last dress:

Loved the color (a much prettier orange than my phone was able to translate)—the woman in the dressing room with me said, "Great color!" and James said, "I like the color."  And if they'd had it a size larger, maybe.  With a belt.  Or something.  Or not.








I tried on several other dresses, too, but felt unbeautiful in them all.  I ended up buying 2 skirts and a blouse (no pictures of those, sorry—I was getting too tired by then and just wanted to get things on and off and get out of there) so I'll have something nice to wear for our church's 250th Anniversary party this weekend and a friend's son's wedding next weekend. 

Unless my body decides somewhere down the line to let go of some of this new weight it has endowed me with, I am probably in for a Life of Separates for the rest of the time I have here.  Whatever.  The skirts and blouse are fine.  I'm relatively healthy, have a wonderful husband and family and lots of great friends, a decent job that I mostly enjoy, a goofy and loveable dog, a warm house and beautiful yard, and enough food to maintain this voluptué figure.  I can be happy with a wardrobe of separates.  And the royal blue blouse I got today is stellar!