Shopping as a chubette!

Everyone wants to know why I love shopping so much; I'm not sure really because it was always a pretty humiliating experience since most clothes I liked were too small, and people never tired of telling me that.  My mother constantly searched for things with elastic waists that didn't look like they should be worn by a 50 year old spinster! (Does anyone even use that term any more?  I guess it's really sexist, but remember I was experiencing all this before the world became politically correct!)  We hit the jackpot when we discovered that the local department store (Zeiman's on Orange Street in Newark) began carrying chubette sizes.  What a wonderful introduction for me when Merv yelled to the back of the store, "Ceil, we got a chubette coming back!"
Regardless of the insulting remarks, I just loved to shop, it made the world seem to have so many possibilities; of course most of them didn't work out, but it just made my determination to find something that fit even stronger, and I soon discovered that clothes were not the only thing to buy; there were: shoes, pocketbooks, knick-knacks, and jewelry--beautiful jewelry!  I had found my life's passion!!!

A Chubette's Halloween Memory

This Halloween, I was reminded of my young life as a chubette; actually, my whole has been lived as a chubette, but there were certainly times when it was more prevalent in my life than others.  Halloween was one of those times.  I always wanted to be a princess or a ballerina, but was always reminded that I was too chubby for those costumes, especially since my mother wasn't one of those creative, crafty types who could make costumes out of sheets, doilies, or old Christmas tree skirts, no, we bought our costumes at McCrorys’ Dime Store -- those paper-thin, shiny, highly flammable ones that barely made it over my pudgy body parts.  Actually, thinking back, the costumes didn't really matter, because by October 31, it was usually so cold that we needed to wear coats or jackets over them and people just had to take our word for what we were dressed up as!  Those costumes always came with facemasks, which was another problem for me because they didn't fit over my glasses; oh yeah, did I mention that not only was I a chubette, but a 4-eyed chubette--oh, the gods really smiled on me!  I kept reminding my mother that princesses didn't wear glasses, but my mother insisted that I would get hit by a car without my glasses so I was relegated to just holding the mask over my face with the glasses on while I went about my  trick or treating. I don't really know why I loved Halloween so much, well wait a minute, the bags of goodies certainly played a big part, but I guess it was just the chance to be somebody special--not some 4-eyed chubette, but a beautiful princess, even if it was only for one night a year!