Eirik Stavem – to whom it may concern…

Dressing rooms in clothing stores are evil…

I’m not a shopper… in fact, I really hate shopping for clothes when I’m looking for a specific item that I need, because I never find anything that I like! This is probably the reason that I only buy new clothing on impulse… What usually happens is this: I’m in a shopping mall for some reason, I walk past a clothing store, I notice something that I think looks nice (usually a pair of Diesel jeans or blue Diesel t-shirts, but that’s a different story), I walk into the store, and I buy it… most of the times (especially when buying my standard stuff) I don’t even try it on before buying it…

Marianne spent most of December in Oslo with me, and one day we went down to Oslo City to look for christmas presents to eachother. This process involved me trying on different clothing to give Marianne some options for my christmas present – which brings me to my reason for writing this:

The lighting in those dressing rooms is really merciless! If you have the tiniest flaw, it becomes obvious in that light, and if you have obvious flaws, there’s just no way to hide them in there..

A combination of working with computers, sitting on my ass all day long, and not being the most frequent visitor to the local S.A.T.S. branch has led to a steady deterioration of my physical condition, something I was clearly reminded of in the dressing room of Denim Gallery when I took off my t-shirt to try on some clothes. It’s been a really long time since I’ve felt that bad about myself, I even had a medium Quarterpounder menu at McDonalds to comfort myself, that’s how far down I was…

Fortunately I usually bounce right back to my old self again quite quickly, but I still think those dressing rooms are evil… Maybe the idea is that if you don’t feel good about yourself without clothing, you’ll buy more of their clothes? Anyway, I have discovered the secret; the problem is that they only have one spotlight in each dressing room at some places, and it’s placed directly above you. Simple science tells you that if you put light behind an object, it will cast a shadow on the opposite side. The same goes for bulges of accumulated excess energy in your body (a.k.a. fat). So when you’re standing directly under a spotlight in your birthday suit, you’re guaranteed to notice some inperfections you’d never seen before.

Needless to say, my current plan is to eat more healthy and go more often to the gym – after christmas of course! However, 27 years of experience tells me that my goldfish-memory (ever seen Finding Nemo?) will soon kick in, making me forget all about the dressing room experience, and go back to my old ways of eating unhealthy and going to the gym once every century… Time will tell!