I found an experience worse than getting a pap smear.

Pap? Uncomfortable. Un-fun. Roughly 10 minutes of Ew.

Buying a ball gown? Try three hours of Hell, added to the time needed for such monumentally important things as hair coloring, tanning and pedicuring.

After all, when one has to stand on the arm of one’s man and represent him favorably, one can’t sport six inches of roots, farmer’s tan, and chipped toenails now, can one?

But since the  gown dictates tan line, hair color, and nail color,  let’s talk about finding that gown, shall we?

I went ball-gown shopping on the Tuesday before a Saturday event. Which seemed like a decent lead to me, only the Special Occasion dress department at Nordstrom was decimated from either prom girls or more organized Fort Lewis ball-goers, who’ll be celebrating in fancy duds the week after me.

The ball I’m to attend is in Seattle, and since the significant one will be in his dress blues, I have to be of similar resplendence. So I can’t even glance at the kicky, ’50s-inspired, cocktail-adoring BCBG and Betsey Johnson dresses or the cute, colorful flowing silk, light-weight, suitable-for-Zoobilee things.

No, I have to go directly to long, sequined, silky, satiny, crepe-y, or black things.

Helping my esteem out loads, the fact that the last time I purchased a ball gown, 12 short years ago, I was a size six.  These dresses I was rifling through were exactly double that size.

My first armload actually came from the Point of View department and were reasonably nice, on the hanger.

On my body, they morphed into Pure Evil, the sort of Evil that needs land mines and fire, lots of fire. One asymmetrically-hemmed halter in a stretchy knit with gathers along the waist and hips that I thought the What Not to Wear folks would endorse made me look exactly like a big black pear. Succulent but not human.

Another gown, cerulean and long, made me look one blue makeup application away from Amazon Smurf-dom.

Yet another, a crepe kicky little thing with angel-hair pasta straps set in close to the neck and sequins around the boobage made me look like either a middle linebacker in drag or a former Eastern European champion breast stroker who’d sadly let herself go.

Not helped by the dressing room lighting (note to swimwear and formal-attire sellers: candlelight. Trust me on this one) or the stifling heat, my spirits started to sag, not to mention certain parts of my anatomy.

The salesperson helping me chirpily suggested a lingerie fitter come in to help me with foundations and shapewear, and I hadn’t the strength to say, “Thank you, no.”

After a fitting, the shapewear (basically, steel-reinforced Lycra bike shorts with a bra-line waist — essentially, birth control panties) and bra came into my room, and then Wrestlemania, underwear edition, began, with me pitted against nylon, lycra and three tons of steel.

Eventually I sort of won the battle, but an indignant chunk of flesh between bra-line and shapewear “waist” kept fighting its way out of the shapewear, which had a convenient see-through back.

Not a good look.

Of course, the dress I tried on with the undergarments was a pretty one, and the choir of shopping angels sang, briefly, but then one little angel sang a bad note, and another grabbed my attention with a “psssst.”

There was a flaw in the waistline, and while the salesperson didn’t like to hear me say it (and I hated to hear the words leave my lips) I had to smile and go, “Uh, for $288 I don’t want flaws.”

So back to POV I trotted, and found a few desperation dresses.

One actually worked, or would when the alterations department had its way with the straps.

The choir was slightly less enthusiastic about this one, but I think they, too, were soaked in sweat and desperate to get the hell out of that place, and as stoked as I was that a bullet-proof intrinsic bra and front slit meant I could leave the dreaded undergarments behind.

And then I was out of there, after plinking down the plastic, for the gown, the alterations, the shoes and steel-reinforced, high-waisted, all-in-one sheer hose and shapewear Spanx.

Now? I’m just a tan, pedicure and good hair day away from being Cinderella.



[Nordstrom, 4502 South Steele, Tacoma, 253. 475.3630]