Went to Target the other day. Target is the kind of place best approached with your eyes closed. You can't help wanting everything you see. A gorgeous aqua twill party dress by Isaac Mizrahi caught my eye immediately.
I love Isaac Mizrahi. The man knows how to design for a woman's body, particularly this particular woman's imperfect body. The dress in question hung from the rack fetchingly. It spoke to me.
It said, "Terry, if you buy me, I will make you beautiful."
Standing there in my jeans that emphasize the wretched lump beneath my navel (actually, all jeans emphasize the lump beneath my navel), I knew the dress told the truth. Just like the A-line skirt I bought from the Isaac collection a couple of years ago (for, like, $24), the dress would erase all lumpenness from my physique. I would look absolutely smashing in it.
The price tag read $29. A rumble went off in my head, echoing the thundering in my heart: I - have to - have this - dress! I - have to - have this - dress!
And then a small voice said, "But Terry, you don't have any place to wear it."
And the dress countered, "But, I know you, Terry. You'll find a place to wear it."
And I thought to myself, that dress knows me better than my own mother.
So I took the dress off the rack and held it against me, like a boyfriend you love just a little bit more every time you look at him.
I picked at the label inside the dress and read the washing instructions.
I decided I could live with them.
But then I saw the dreaded words, the phrase that makes me shake down to my heels:
MADE IN CHINA.
And I knew I had to say goodbye to my beautiful dress. Because it's made in China, it's possible that somebody else's kid, maybe the same age as my kid, sat for hours upon hours without a bathroom break and perhaps a beating or two, sewing a dress that would make me feel good about myself for a couple of hours. She was paid about twenty-five cents a hour for her trouble.
I wonder why Target won't pay Americans (or fairly treated allies) to manufacture their beautiful things. I'd have paid twice or three times the price for that garment, and you would have too, if you'd seen it.
It killed me to return my beloved dress to the rack. It hated turning my back on it and walking away.
But I did it. I had to.
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