Navel Gazing

This place is stretching my body image to its limits.

The clothes that I have brought with me, especially the pants, are all looking ragged. For the past month or so, I have been trying to buy new pants. Throughout this process, the ego has been taking some hits.

In the states, I can walk into a store that caters to the reasonably young and reasonably stylish and find pants that fit me. They are not even the largest pants in the store. Here, that is not the case. I am a giantess. I try on the largest pair of pants in the store and they are too small. There’s nothing quite like having a sales clerk tell you that you are too big for everything in the store. Not good for the ego.

But the clothes that I brought from home are all looser. Have I been shrinking or are the clothes stretching out as I hang them out to dry? Or are my perceptions changing? Women here wear clothes about two sizes tighter than women in Portland do.

Recently, people in my office have decided that I look like Nicole Kidman. They call me ‘Nicole’ and tell me I’m pretty. Good for the ego.

And just a few minutes ago, I weighed myself. If my kilo to pound conversion is correct, I weigh exactly what I did a year ago.