In the Land of Lilliput

"Twenty inches. This just won't do Mammy, you have to get it down to eighteen and a half." -- Scarlett O'Hara, as she tries to fit into her corset after her waist expanded due to childirth.

I am in the women’s clothing department in the biggest mall of Asia, surrounded by gazillions of stylish yet affordable garments, and I have managed the impossible.

I could not fit into a single thing.

Nothing.

Nada.

Hiccups. I WANNA GO HOME!!!

Well, I can’t claim to be a Nicole Richie. I’m probably somewhere between a Liv Tyler and a Queen Latifah (hey, don’t say I didn’t give enough lee-way), but the selection in this city would be enough to make Ms. Tyler shake her elvish sword in frustration. I don’t even want to imagine what Queen Latifah would do.

I guess I got a bit complacent about the weight. In Nueva York, I could probably go to any store and find something in my size in about 3 seconds. Well, maybe except the chi-chi designer boutiques made for skinny bitches with fat trust funds. Based on a generic US size chart, I fluctuate between a medium and a large. I have the shoulders and hips of a size 8 but a torso of a size 12 which means I can slide my jeans down without even unbuttoning or unzipping my fly. Makes for a good party trick. I’ve always known that US sizes were bigger than anyone else’s, but the joy of being a medium again just made me forget that to that rest of the world, I might not even be on the size chart anymore.

So here I am, like Gulliver in Lilliput, being tied down by itty-bitty people, wondering how the hell I got here in the first place.

Perhaps this is a not so subtle conspiracy to get me to lose weight. My mother must have contacted all the taipans (with her Chinese connections, I would not be surprised at all) and conspired with them to make size 6 the new extra-large. So here I am, schlepping from store to store, mall to mall, and I’ve only bought a few pairs of flip-flops.

Thank God I have sexy feet.