Last month, we published a story exploring the pressures on retail staff when it came to customers and body image issues. This  piece, from Rosanna H.S Meikle and originally published on on Substack, offers an even further personal insight into the frontlines of retail.

It’s a balmy day on Karangahape Road, and the store is sweltering. Surrounded by clothes that  have been loved before, a certain funk of sweaty tourists and urine from the long night  before. Folding, tagging, fold again. Smile, “How’s your day?” expect nothing in return. A moment to rest, foot shifting from ball to heel. A timid “hello” from the changing room, a  face grimacing from the curtains. Heart dropping, I await the dreaded question. 

“Do these pants make me look fat? Be honest, please.”

To be honest, I don’t want to be honest. I don’t even want to look. I don’t want to  categorise the shape of a stranger's body and determine its worth. I don’t want to look into her eyes and see the smile drop the longer I am silent. My own relationship with my body is a minefield; I don’t want to trip on someone else’s and go kaboom.

I hear a deep desire for honesty in a question along that line, maybe a lack of truth in the home. A hope that the person in the store can be the fatness oracle, so your questions can finally be answered. I am not that, I am a stranger behind a desk. I am someone with my own breadth of body issues not wanting to contribute to yours. 

There’s a sadness to  questions like these, that our own assessment of ‘flattering’ isn’t good enough. We are beholden to the idea of thinness and its mounting popularity; the irony of being asked if they look fat when they’re smaller than me.

I see the women I love in moments like these: my mother in the softness that grew me. My aunt, in her post-cancer body, trying on a wardrobe that doesn’t fit the same. Me in my endless good-not-good enough, 24 and lamenting what could have been. A teenage friend sharing a changing groom grimacing under fluorescents; have my legs always looked like this?

We pass on these insecurities like cold sores, mothers to daughters and friend to friend. Stranger to stranger through a thin curtain, we are stuck in a cycle of hatred that spans generations. A love of complaint, a love of insecurity.

Love is probably the wrong word; we don’t love the gum stuck to our shoe, perhaps an acceptance. The truth is that no matter how far we sink into body-positivity, the more claws hatred gets. 

I use roundabout sentences to avoid complications: “If you think it’s too small”, “Do you feel comfortable?” peace treaty in a sentence; I do not want to be involved in your self-hatred. I want to be involved in your self-love, a body sauntering out of the curtain, an exclamation of “I look hot!”.

My favourite interactions are the rotation of characters that come through my door, gorgeous older ladies who teach me that  fashion fades and style is eternal (as said by the ineffable Yves Saint Laurent). Loving yourself isn’t always acceptance and peace. It can be pearls and an outfit that isn’t quiet.