I am an emotional eater. If something upsets me there is nothing a chocolate chip cookie, or a dish of ice cream or maybe a slab of chocolate cake cannot fix in my mind. Notice how I didn't say some carrots or an apple would help..Probably why I struggle with my weight the way I do. But, as always, I digress....
Another emotional thing I like to do is shop. Shopping is a lovely form of therapy that doesn't add to my waist line. Yesterday I took my girls shopping. To soothe the sting of not freezing our asses off in Minnesota for Spring Break, my husband surprised us with a trip to Fort Lauderdale. Of course that meant we needed some new stuff to beach it up with.
I took two of my girls with me, nothing like shopping with your daughters. We love going to places like Ross's or TJ Maxx to see what kind of bargains we can scare up. That's typically our first stop. This trip was no different. You know you're in trouble when you send them in ahead of you while you take a phone call, you get in and they say to you, "don't freak out when you see all the stuff in the cart...."
Anyway, after much picking and loading of the cart, we headed towards the dressing room. You could only take 8 items in at a time so I volunteered to stay with the cart and their other stuff. As I was standing there a flash of white caught my eye. I looked down the aisle I was standing at the head of to see a little girl, maybe 4-5. She obviously picked out her own outfit, I have to applaud her mom for letting her, because she was dressed in a typical little girl's dream outfit. She had on a pink top, black pants, silver shoes and the piece de resistance a big, white tutu. She had these crazy curls that were wildly flailing around as she danced to her own private Swan Lake while her mother perused the aisle. I had to smile, and even wanted to clap when she was done with her little dance because her mother was oblivious to a performance I would chose over any of Anna Pavlova's. Then I watched as my girls came out of the dressing room one at a time in this outfit or that. I saw them tugging, pulling and readjusting what they had selected to try on. Rarely dancing their own Swan Lake in what they picked.
It got me thinking, when do we lose that confidence as women? Why do we stop wearing wearing white tutus and silver slippers in the same outfit?
As I came back to reality, and I watched said little girl begin her dance anew, it made me wish for my teenage girls to have that little girl swagger. The "I'm taking over the world wearing a tutu so nah nah nah on you" bravado. Sadly the time is so fleeting from what I have seen from my own girls.
This time I did clap as she curtsied to her imaginary audience. I gave her a brava! She smiled and went by her mom obviously pleased that someone liked her performance.
It made me wonder what would happen if we all rocked that tutu a little longer? I want my very own white tutu, I want one for each of my girls....
