Froggy's World - Alms for Oblivion (Weblog)

One size doesn't fit all
18th March, 2007

The sales assistant straightened her shoulders, held my gaze and asked sweetly, "Are they bigger than mine?" I kept my eyes locked on her for a few moments, trying and failing to prevent the red tide of embarrassment I could feel flooding through my body from rising to my eyebrows.
It had seemed like an imaginative if not entirely original thought. Faced with the need to buy a gift for my wife to celebrate her pregnancy, I had decided on lingerie. Nothing too exotic - no black lace or red leather - just something tastefully middle-of-the-road. How hard could it be?
I had the sizes courtesy of a quick, illicit peek in her undies drawer, although "quick" barely describes it. "Fast and frantic" would be more accurate, for fertile though my imagination may be, it was unable to conceive of an excuse that would reasonably explain why I had my head in said drawer had I been caught. "Just doing some research into women's underwear, my dear." Nope, she would never have bought it, so it was a check-the-size-and-run panty raid.
Thus armed with the vital statistics it was, I presumed, merely a matter of selecting the appropriate style. What nobody tells you is that there are sizes and then there are sizes, a particular size in one brand being a different size in another.
So I stood in the lingerie section facing an attractive 20-something blonde who had her chest thrust towards me and who was insisting I take a really good look and assess the size of her breasts relative to my wife's.
   "Perhaps slightly...larger," I muttered as I held both hands in front of me with outstretched palms and, having done so, realised I had no idea what I was going to do with them.
   "I think I know what you mean," she said, my hands dangling in front of me like those of a man looking for a light switch in the dark.
   "Thank God," I sighed as she selected a bra.
   "You should also get one of these," she suggested, holding up a thing with dangly bits hanging from it.
   "Ah, yes," I said. "A..." But I never finished the sentence because my mind suddenly went blank.
We stared at each other for a few seconds as the dangly bits continued to dangle at eye level between us. I felt like a contestant on Eddie McGuire's game show. "And now, for a million dollars, is it: a.) a headband; b.) a luggage strap; or c.) an extremely short skirt?"
   "It's a suspender belt," she said, holding it out for me to examine.
   "Of course it is," I said, feeling sweat run down my back, convinced the eyes of everyone in the store were upon me.
   "It works like this," she said, hiking up her hem to show me her pantyhose and demonstrating how the dangly bits clipped over them.
   "Right," I said, hoping that this show-and-tell exercise would not progress any further.
   "And of course, you'll need a pair of these," she said, hooking a G-string around her forefinger.
Grappling with images of her flipping up her skirt and asking me if the one she was wearing looked to be the right size or if my wife's bum was bigger than hers, I grabbed the fistful of flimsies and said: "That's fine. I'll take them."
As I left the store clutching my bag, I wondered if women went through a similar process when buying items of intimate apparel for their men. Did male sales assistants put their hands on their hips, thrust their pelvises forward and ask: "Is he as big as me - or...bigger?"
It occurred to me that this was not one of my better ideas, for if what I had bought was too large it would indicate that she looked bigger than she was. Experience told me you could err on the side of larger for the top bits but to do so with regard to the bottom bits was to court disaster on a grand scale. Similarly, if the bits for the top half were too small, it would indicate I thought she was less than she was while if the bottom bits were too small, it would be taken as a compliment.
Next time I'm tempted to buy something personal for my wife, I'm going to get an ironing board cover.

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