My sister's awkwardness expressed itself in a variety of ways. One was her distance from reality. She was the classic young girl who dreamed of her Mr. Right, who came in the form of Cinderella's prince charming to Harlequin's Fabio. She wanted the perfect white wedding and nothing else would do. Some women want children, and marriage is a way to. They think they want a wedding but it's really children. Now with out of wedlock parenting, weddings for wedding's sake were still important to the conservative, religious, and romantics. My sister fell into all of these categories, which made wedding planning all the more difficult. Wedding planners should take into account such considerations before estimating the cost of planning. The more factors to these three that are present, also including mixed-race marriage, differing religions of the betrothed, immigrant parents who are way more open minded than Americans because they were brave enough to move halfway around the world, all of these should go into estimating the cost of wedding planning. For when too many of these factors mix,...kablooey.
My sister of course, wanted to wear white, have the whole get-down-on-his-knees-to-propose groom, the perfect dress with either lace or beads or embroidery or all three plus ruffles, and everyone to be happy on her happiest of days. Because she believed in happily ever after. To the exclusion of not much else. Sure, she worked hard, but there was a majority part of her that could not be fulfilled as a wedding could. And I mean wedding every bit as much as marriage.
Another distinctive characteristic was my sister's way of communicating. She had funny thoughts that were not so funny. I mean that they weren't silly that you could laugh at them. They were just...odd. You had to think about it before you responded and that usually meant that you decided to ignore the odd part. But even I will admit that it was hard.
For instance, after reading so many Silhouette romance novels, my sister had the idea that women should have an hourglass figure without the corset. That waistlines naturally curved inward to an extent that would be possible if a woman had her unattached rib removed. Since full figures did not run in our branch of the family, my sister was intent that her waistline look small. So, when she would try on dresses in the fitting room and the saleslady would ask if she needed a different dress, my sister would say yes and explain that the dress she tried on made her look "straight" and trace out with her two hands two parallel lines. Straight. Well, she did look straight because she is not big busted. So, like all women, including big busted women, she wore a padded bra, but didn't like to super size it. so she still looked straight and asked the saleslady for a dress that would make her look curvier. Then my sister would trace out with her hands, two sideways V's. In other words, her hands came together where a waist tapered in and then her hands spread out where a waist blossomed into hips. She pointed out to the saleslady that the dress was not sewn that way and that was the reason it made my sister look straight. Even though she knew she looked straight, she thought a different dress, if sewn differently, you know, with a bust of thirty-two and waist of twenty inches and hips of thirty three inches, would shape her body into those measurements. If you asked her, at another place and time, if a dress could conform a body to a more hourglass shape without being made of whalebone corset, she would say, of course not, don't be ridiculous. But there she stood, asking another bemused saleswoman that it was the dress's fault my sister did not look as if her waist were smaller and her figure not curvier.
Sure, some clothes make you look fatter and some even make you look slimmer. But when a dress looked as good as it could given its styling and it was evident that the dress was not what made my sister look straight, she would still insist that there was another off-the-rack dress made of silk that could be sewn a little tighter at the waist to make it smaller. Even when the dress she had on was pulling at the seams and the waist could not be sewn smaller, this did not stop my sister from insisting that the dress made look straight because the waist was not small enough.
Any smaller dress on my sister and the seams would bust. Pointing out that the seams were taut made her look at the mirror, her hands on her waist, a disconsolate look on her face, and shake her head and say, "but the dress makes me look so straight! If the dress were sewn in at the waist and out at the hips, then I wouldn't look so straight. Some dresses make you look better, don't they?"
"Yes, but this dress is as tight on you as it can be without tearing at the seams." I must have explained this a dozen times since my sister went through puberty. When the sales associate suggest she try a corset or waist cincher, my sister would reply it "looked fake". No...you mean Barbie looks fake? Well, since she doesn't have to wear a waist cincher, I guess Barbie's fifteen inch waist is natural!
I do not know that we should blame the media for young girls' self image and expectations. For if it is not big breasts and an unnaturally small waist that is the object of unobtainable obsession, it will be something else, for some people are impressionable, the same way they are stubbornly insistent that the clothes they wear can be made in such a way to make them look like an ideal that does not physiologically exist without cosmetic enhancements.
That might seem contradictory, to be so impressionable from one's external environment and yet be so stubborn. Since human nature is far from consistent and rationalization makes perfect sense and truth to the rationalizer, there is nothing inconsistent in such a nature. It is in all of us. In one out of two hundred, the inconsistency is expressed in the particular as to make one say "whu-ut..." Don't forget the chronology. Media suggests something. Then impressionable adolescent without question takes it as life's most important and worthy goal to be achieved. Happens all the time. Only the way that it expresses itself in individuals can peg one as a typical adolescent or as a person that isn't the most well liked because people who cause discomfort, much like ideas, are rarely welcome in our circle of friends.
Chapter Three: Growing Up Immigrants American Style
Chapter Two: That Was Not Me
Marrying Sis: Chapter 1: Something That Would Never Happen
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