The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

Attention clothing retailers: Take note.

We pudgy girls (and guys, for that matter) have money too, and we hate being treated like pariahs because we don’t look like the size six designer’s mannequin. While it is true that we often prefer to shop online, in the privacy of our own homes, because fitting room mirrors aren’t flattering to anyone, and especially not us, the fact is, we can’t always. The fit of a garment can’t be judged from a photograph, and sometimes we just need that new outfit faster than UPS can get it to us.

Besides, clearly most of you haven’t figured out that you can’t make attractive plus-sized clothing just by taking your designs for slim people and using more fabric. Pay attention, I know this is a difficult concept to understand: When the human body gains weight, its shape changes. Hips widen at a different rate than busts. Sometimes weight gets distributed to the lower abdomen. The body becomes curvier. Those cute little flat-front capris that look so great on a size 4 model look terrible in a size 16. So we can’t shop online even when we want to, because we never know how the clothes will look on us.

I will take this moment to note, however, that Nordstrom’s does have a pretty good solution for this- all their shipments come with pre-addressed return packaging, so if it doesn’t fit, you can return it very easily. This drags out the shopping process, but is a great way to accommodate those of us who prefer to shop at home.

But here’s the thing, guys. It’s all over the news that Americans are big. And so while you try desperately to preserve your hip image by discontinuing your plus-size lines and relegating the fat chicks to shopping online, you’re catering to a smaller and smaller (no pun intended) group. Sure, the thin girls will continue to buy your clothes, but you’re ignoring a lucrative section of the market.

And we’re becoming very savvy consumers. We don’t wonder why you’re excluding us from shopping at your stores- we know perfectly well that you don’t want us scaring away the pretty people. What we wonder is… how can you be so short-sighted? How can you fail to notice the significant economic power we command?

Sure, I’d like to lose weight, and I’m working toward that now. But the fact is, I can’t realistically expect to ever be a size 6- Even at my ideal weight, I will always be at least on the upper end of the non-plus range. And while I’m losing all that weight, I still need clothes. (You think you hate fat chicks now? Keep refusing to clothe us- we’ll be walking around naked and then you’ll really hate us.) Not only do we need clothes, but we need clothes that aren’t sweatpants and baggy t-shirts. We need clothes that don’t look like we pulled them out of our grandmother’s closets.

What we want are attractive, professional clothes. We want pretty, casual clothes that we can wear out for a night on the town. We want the perfect little black dress. We want a range of options between Lane Bryant and Torrid. We want silk, lace, and cashmere. And let’s not forget that we’re willing to pay good money for clothes that flatter our figures.

We also want you to train your staff better. When a plus-sized person walks into your store and asks for a size that you don’t carry (first of all, shame on you for not carrying it!), the correct answer is not, “We don’t stock sizes THAT big.” Oh yes- I’ve actually heard retail employees say that. The correct answer would be, “Let me check in the back… Oh, I’m sorry, that size seems to be out of stock at the moment. Would you like me to order one for you?”

And if I don’t get what I want? Well, I’m losing the weight. And when I’m down to a size that you carry in your store, I won’t forget how you treated me when I wasn’t.

Dear Anonymous,

If you want to use my RSS feed, get a real aggregator. And posting Bloglet error messages into people’s comment boxes with no other information is just plain rude.

Love,
Tiff

Just a quick note regarding the Alias season finale:

DAMN YOU J.J. ABRAMS!!

I cannot adequately express how thrilled I am that the complete “Weird Al” Yankovic catalog is available in the iTunes Music Store.

This article in the Post is sad-but-true. Despite my love of reading, I found it hard to make time to read for pleasure in high school and college because I was always reading something else. Even now, I’m not really making time for pleasure reading, and I want to get back into it.

We had a couple of books to read over the summer every year in high school, and in addition to those, my school’s librarians would put together a list of age-appropriate and slightly more challenging books as recommendations for each year, complete with a quick plot synopsis. Some of them were completely uninteresting to me, but I did manage to find a lot to read from them and used my library card liberally. My mom, always interested in anything she thought might further our erudition, saved these recommendation lists carefully. I wouldn’t be shocked if they’re still floating around. I think an excellent way to combat this is to do one unit per year in reading and English classes where kids get to choose a book from such a list and report back to the class.

So in that spirit, here are my recommendations for some stuff teenagers might find interesting to read, based on what I was reading then, so the list will probably skew a little girly. They’re mostly things that are written in reasonably contemporary language, so it doesn’t feel like work to read them, but they’re still challenging. Some of them are things I read for class and enjoyed, and I haven’t spent any time worrying about PG-13 or R-rated content. My teachers weren’t afraid to assign “banned” books, and I think an important part of my education was reading books that challenged my moral assumptions. I’m grateful that my parents aren’t the book-banning sort.

Younger teenagers:

Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson
A Begonia for Ms. Applebaum and The Pigman - Paul Zindel
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith (I still read this regularly… it remains one of my favorites.)
The Diary of Anne Frank - Most kids read this in school, but sometimes it gets banned because of the content of page 117 (in the most popular paperback edition). It’s worth reading, and is riveting in the same way a personal blog is.
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle - A Newberry winner, and an excellent example of young adult fantasy literature that isn’t mindless or condescending. She wrote sequels, too.
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis - Duh. Again with the well-written fantasy lit. Topics are appropriate for young children, but teenagers will get more out of them.

Older teens/college age
The Autobiography of Malcom X - (Alex Haley) - This will surprise some of you, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson - Stephenson’s books are challenging, but in a very engaging way. I actually read this a couple of years after college, but don’t see any reason I wouldn’t have liked it when I was 18.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - Especially good for teenagers who appreciate British humor. This is the book that started me on the path to geekdom.
East of Eden - John Steinbeck - Seriously. I loved this book, even at 15. I bet more kids would like it if they weren’t forced to read it.

I’m sure I’ll have more once I have a chance to get home and look at my bookshelves. Feel free to share your suggestions in the comments.

Where I work, we have a core value called “simultaneous promotion of all interests.” That means that it’s my job to not only make the client happy, but also to make the person I place there happy, and also to do what’s good for me and for my employer. In other words, I’m to make sure I find that magical point in which the person I place with the client is happy with the work and what they’re being paid, the client is happy with the quality of work being done and the bill rate they’re paying, my employer is billing a fair price for the service we provide, and I don’t have a client or talent making my life hellish.

Sounds good, yes?

Well, that also means that if I have a junior-level help desk position open, and my choices are A. A junior-level help desk person, and B. A network engineer/database administrator, I’m going to lean toward choice A. Why? Because unless it’s a short-term fill-in sort of job, my client wants someone that isn’t going to get bored and quit. I’d rather place the person who is a perfect match and will be able to use the experience to advance his or her career than the person who is massively overqualified and who will constantly be trying to get something else that’s a better match for their skills.

I’m not against the idea of people taking whatever they can get while they look for something better in principle, but if I have the choice, I’m going to place the person whose experience level is the closest to the requirements of the position, because then:
- my talent is pleased to have something good to put on his/her resume
- my client is pleased to have someone with a low turnover risk
- I am pleased at the lower likelihood of having to refill the position on short notice
- my company is pleased that the client and talent will be loyal to us for future business opportunities.

Thus, if you call me and tell me you’re a network engineer who also has three eyars of Oracle DBA experience, I’m not going to put you in a help desk position unless I’m all out of help desk people to fill the job with. So don’t argue with me about it.

Dear [Customer’s HR Manager]:

Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. I am sending you this handwritten thank-you card to kiss your ass, and because I’m pretty sure [competitor you work with] doesn’t do this kind of stuff.

Love,
Tiff

The teaser for Bewitched looks cute. Will Ferrell will of course be hiliarous as Darren, but…

Does anyone else think it would be hilarious if, halfway through the movie, Darren was played by someone else entirely? Say, Owen Wilson?

You know what would have made the Star Wars prequel trilogy better? (Not perfect, just better…)

If we had ever gotten to like Anakin.

Think about it- Luke Skywalker had his moments of being whiny or nerdy or impatient, but ultimately, you liked the kid. He was dorky, but he appealed to the dork in all of us. He was good-hearted, and you really wanted him to win.

We spend the prequel trilogy waiting for Obi-Wan to kick Anakin in the teeth and tell him to quit his bitchin’. You never wanted Yoda to kick Luke in the teeth.

Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side would have actually felt tragic if he had ever been, well, good to begin with.

How ’bout you? Are you Internet Famous?

Amalah had me howling today.

Dan Hon is giddy as a schoolgirl.