your standard, everyday torture chamber.

Some people call said torture chamber a “fitting room,” but I’d like to think that Merriam-Webster will soon come to the light and make the appropriate changes to their lexicon.

Because it is torture chamber, my friends. What else do you call a tiny room where every nook, cranny, and crevice is filled with the kind of unremitting fluoroscent lighting that showcases every inch of your now monstrous body, which seemed to morph into Jabba the Hutt territory during your journey from the clothes rack to the “fitting room”? What else do you call a room where none of the locks ever work, thereby increasing the potential that while you’re bent over trying to pull those jeans up your monstrous body, a mother and her child will walk by and see the horror of it all? What do you call a place where the person who inhabited it before you seemed to believe they were 90s-era Johnny Depp and therefore had the right to trash the place like a hotel room?

Say it with me, yes, yes: torture chamber.

Needless to say, I mostly avoid trying on clothes when I buy them. What? It’s true. To keep from bringing everything back because of fit or color or whatever, I just take forever in the store shop very judiciously. Which means I usually buy a size up. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. The typical result with buying a size up is that I end up looking like a low-rent gypsy trying to be Stevie Nicks. So the point of this whole diatribe: despite the fact that going to the torture chamber is pretty much walking towards your own doom, I’ve decided to–gulp–try clothes on before I leave the store. Why?

1. It makes sense.

2. The buying and returning game has gotten fairly old, believe it or not.

So, yeah, I’ve been frequenting the torture chamber. It’s not half bad. Well, not really, but let’s not rehash the horrors, shall we? And to prove that I’ve been changing my ways lately (I’m not all talk, you know), here you go:

Bought this sassy dress, by the way.

Bought this pretty blouse, too.