Silencing the inner demon in the dressing room
The search for designer denim that fits, internal voices be damned.
For the past two years, I’ve basically worn one pair of jeans. I own four, but there’s only one pair I like. The others are ill-fitting relics from my early days of intuitive eating when I didn’t know what weight I’d end up at, so I bought the cheapest pairs I could find.
These days, I’m feeling mostly good in my body and want to find clothes that fit and make me feel good when I’m wearing them. And lately, I’ve been dreaming about designer denim—a wide-leg trouser that’s both classic and boho, or a modern boot cut that pairs with anything. So when I found myself with a bit of time between dropping my daughter off at a football game and picking her up a few weeks ago, I decided to make a quick stop at Nordstrom, knowing they had a good selection of denim.
With less than an hour until closing, I was on a serious time crunch. And of course, as soon as I committed, doubts started creeping in:
Will there be a single pair that fits me?
Will they have my size?
What even is my size?!
Even as someone who’s midsize—right above the average U.S. woman—finding anything in-store that fits feels like a wild goose chase.
My nearest Nordstrom’s denim section is massive. I arrived to find none of the jeans were organized by size, and they were packed so tightly it was hard to sift through them to find the size tag, which is, of course, in a different place on every brand.
All of this had me frantically searching for what I thought might be my size, though I wasn’t sure what that exactly was in designer denim. I typically wear an XL or XXL, or a 16-18. I can wear plus sizes, but they’re often too loose; however, designer jeans usually go by waist measurements. The racks were filled with 25s, 27s, 29s, and 31s, so I ended up grabbing anything that looked like it might work—33s, 34s, 14s, 16s, and 18s—and took as much as I could carry to the dressing room.
Strangely, almost everything fit!
This isn’t something I’m used to, especially not with jeans in a regular department store, but here I was at Nordstrom, and somehow the 14s and 16s fit. Still, none of the jeans quite worked out. Part of the issue is the massive trend toward raw hems—not the polished vibe I was going for. There was also an abundance of skinny jeans, which are apparently back in style. I figured if I’d had more time, I probably would’ve found the perfect pair, but I didn’t. One of my big shopping rules is I have to love it, and the pricier it is, the more I have to love it. At these prices, I wasn’t in love, so I left.
Fast-forward a week. My daughter asked me if I would take her to the mall so she could help her bestie pick out shoes for homecoming. I decided I would go back to Nordstrom and slowly comb through the racks until I found the perfect pair. After last week’s try-on success, I was feeling good about myself, thinking, hot damn, I’m actually a size 14 in jeans now!
You know where this is going. I went back to Nordstrom, grabbed a dozen pairs of jeans, and headed to the dressing room. This time, almost nothing fit. Not the 14s, not even most of the 16s. I wondered if I’d hallucinated the last experience.
What is going on? It’s only been a week since I was here last. There’s no possible way I’ve gained enough weight to go up a size, right? RIGHT?!?
Yes, I was internally shouting, all those mindfulness techniques I’ve been practicing for months seemingly right out the window.
But it wasn’t nearly as bad as it would have been in my former life, where, right there in the dressing room is where I would have vowed to begin the next diet. And it would have been accompanied by a shit ton of destructive self-talk. How could you let yourself go like this? How did you not see what a massive balloon you’ve swelled up to? Jesus, do you have any self-respect at all?
I’m different now. I have a different relationship with my body. I know thoughts are just thoughts, feelings are just feelings, and neither is permanent. But I’m not immune to the sting of trying on something I expected to fit and finding I was wrong. There was sadness, frustration, anger, a touch of self-loathing.
I’d love to tell you that I countered all of this with kindness and self-compassion. But I didn’t. I left the dressing room a ball of unwound emotions and wandered the store numb.
But within a half hour or so, I could see it clearly: I had slipped back into diet thinking.
Diet thinking is that little gremlin that tells us we’re not good enough—attractive enough, skinny enough, beautiful enough—unless we’re a certain size. And in my dieting days, that “right” size was always a moving target. When I was a 12, I wanted to be a 10. When I was a 10, I wanted to be an 8. There was never a moment in all my years of restricting where I thought, I am just perfect the size I am.
At its core, diet thinking prioritizes thinness over health and promotes the idea that we must constantly monitor and control our bodies. It disconnects us from our bodies, teaches us to ignore hunger and fullness cues, and promotes an ongoing cycle of self-judgment. Rather than enhancing health, it often leads to stress, low self-esteem, and, in most cases, cycles of restricting followed by overeating. Over time, it erodes our health and makes it impossible to have a peaceful relationship with food and our bodies.
Most of the time now, diet thinking is just noise, internal chatter I can usually ignore. It got real loud there in that dressing room, but it was a fleeting moment—not pleasant but also not enough to derail me from my mission to detox from diets or find the perfect pair of jeans.
This week, I had an hour between appointments and popped into the other Nordstrom in town. I didn’t do a frantic quest to comb through everything, but I swung by the clearance rack—which was actually ordered by size—and found two pairs of Frame jeans that I liked. One was a pair of 32s and the other was a pair of 34s. When I tried them on, both were flattering, but neither quite fit. The sales associate checked to see if they had my size in stock elsewhere—there weren’t any—but she told me one of the styles is a classic that comes back every season. Later that night, I checked Poshmark and found a gently used pair of that style in my size. I’ll let you know how it fits when it arrives.
Have you had a similar dressing room moment? How do you handle those tricky thoughts that pop up around body image and sizing? I’d love to hear your thoughts—or your favorite denim recommendations!
💬 How do you show compassion for your changing body?
This week, I opened up a chat with readers about how they show compassion for themselves. I loved this response from
:“At 87, I’m grateful to be alive and give thanks in the morning that I woke up with a heart that beats, a system that breathes, an appetite and the ability to eat and digest, and although I’m in pain when I walk, I can still enjoy sitting and lying down. Be grateful for the gift of life and get over “looks” to have a happy one. ❤️😊”
It’s not too late to add your thoughts! Join the chat or drop your thought here in comments.
5-minute meditation: A self-compassion pause
This piece from
landed in my inbox this week as I was wrapping up this piece, and it felt like an apropos ending. Madelleine has an important message here: We all experience suffering. It’s ok to sit with our suffering. We are not alone.
I love my Frame jeans, I hope yours work out. My best jean buying experience was recently in a small boutique shop. I asked the owner what she had for short people and she pulled out the greatest pair of jeans that I never would have been able to find on my own.
I have had the dressing room meltdown SO. MANY. TIMES. Since I work from home, I mostly live in yoga pants. During the summer, I bought a bunch of cute summer dresses. But oh how I love a good pair of jeans. Finding some that fit me without spending a fortune is nearly impossible. They're either too long, or too tight, or too loose, or too something. I thought I'd finally found the right pair at American Eagle, but the more I wore them, the looser they became, until I felt like an unflattering mess. My stomach sticks out, so that's the part of me that is the hardest to dress, and it's even worse in jeans. I still haven't found a good pair that I like. And I actively avoid going shopping because trying on clothes is so triggering to me. I want to get to a place where it's not, but I'm not even close yet.