Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall Page 20

  Onlookers scattered. I heard a child shriek, “Eeww! She’s throwing up, Mommy!”

  Yes. Yes I was. I was throwing up bright orange puke outside of Sephora, with tears welling from the pain and humiliation. I finally stopped heaving, but didn’t know what to do with myself. My hands were covered in sticky vomit, and I didn’t have even a single sheet of tissue in my purse. I wanted to look around for help, but couldn’t bear to face the stares I knew I’d encounter.

  In a few seconds, I heard Hanna’s voice behind me. “Are you okay?” she asked cautiously. I turned to look and saw that she and Laila were only a few feet behind. They both looked at me with pity and concern, and immediately went into awesome-friend/sister mode. Hanna had already grabbed a handful of tissues from Sephora, which she handed to me, while Laila ran off to a neighboring Chipotle to plead for a glass of water on my behalf. She came back with the water, as well as news of a public restroom nearby.

  I followed Hanna and Laila to the restroom, where I managed to wash my hands and splash water on my face before rushing into a stall to throw up again. Thankfully, nobody was around to watch the spectacle that time, but it still felt awful. I was glad Hanna had seen me barf plenty of times since childhood. It also helped to know that she saw ukky bodily functions on a daily basis in her job as a medical assistant. She was unfazed, which helped me calm down, too. When I came out of the bathroom stall, Hanna had taken off one of her layered T-shirts, and she offered it to me.

  “You have puke on your shirt,” she explained, and I looked down to see that my tank top was, indeed, splattered in orange. Tie-dye it was not. Good to know. I washed up for a second time and changed.

  Twenty minutes later the three of us were walking ocean-side near the Santa Monica Pier. I didn’t feel up to venturing down to the beach, but we found a bench with a view and sat for a while in silence, soaking up the sun as it set over the ocean.

  The salty air flowing in with the tide was the best thing I’d breathed all day. As I filled my lungs with deep, calming breaths, I recalled the oppressive perfume cloud I’d walked into at Sephora. Yes, I’d been hungover and already nauseated, but I also knew that my time away from my (formerly?) favorite store had changed it for me. Sephora no longer smelled like inspiration, and its flashes of mirrored light no longer looked like glittered glamour. Rather, for the first time, I’d recognized it—viscerally—as part of the invisibly oppressive “gilt cage” Mary Wollstonecraft had written of more than two centuries ago. The same dream was still for sale, but I wasn’t buying it anymore.

  • • •

  THE SECOND FRIDAY IN SEPTEMBER MARKED THE END OF SUMMER school at UCLA. I was relieved to wrap up both of my classes with final exams that my students could take online. Since the grading of my exams would be completed automatically through the testing webpage, my work was mostly done. All I had left to do would be to calculate final grades, send them out for students to review, and then manage all of the inevitable grade-grubbing and requests for extra-credit assignments that would be pulled at the last minute, before I submitted my final final grades to the UCLA registrar. Luckily, all of these things could be done remotely and electronically, rather than face-to-face; with no more in-person lectures to give, I was finally free to make my way back to San Francisco. I couldn’t wait. I’d missed spending time with Michael, and we had a wedding to plan, after all!

  But there were a few events on the calendar that I had to get through before that could happen. First of these was a party—well, actually, two parties—to be hosted by Michael’s parents in Louisville, Kentucky, where Michael had grown up. After learning that Michael and I would be getting married in California and that our wedding guest list would be limited, Michael’s parents offered to host an engagement party at their home to give their friends and extended family the opportunity to join in on the celebration, even if they couldn’t make it all the way out to the West Coast. Although we knew that most engagement parties take place fairly soon after the engagement, it had been impossible to find an earlier weekend that worked, so we decided to bend the wedding etiquette rules a bit in favor of inclusiveness. Michael and I started calling it our wedding preparty. Adding to the festivities, Sherry’s friends decided to throw me a traditional bridal shower on the Monday following the engagement party, so it would be quite the weekend!

  The Ackermanns had chosen a festive 1950s Hotel de Cuba theme for the event, instructing their guests to wear their festive finest and stocking up on expensive back-channel-imported cigars and an armory stockpile of rum. The guest list for the party—which, other than my immediate family and grandparents, was primarily composed of friends and family on the Ackermann side—was notably larger than our entire wedding list. Sherry’s party-planning skills were notorious, and it was sure to be epic. I was incredibly excited, despite my post-teaching exhaustion.

  I would be traveling from Los Angeles to Louisville via a two-hour layover in Las Vegas. I was disappointed that my layover hadn’t been routed through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, as I’d recently read about a new technological innovation for displaying product advertising in “smart mirrors” in public restrooms. The restrooms in O’Hare were among the first places to implement these mirrors, which reportedly welcome consumers with digitized brand advertisements appearing on the surface of the mirror, much like the screen of a smartphone. As the consumer approaches the mirror, the advertisement migrates to the top right-hand corner, and the rest of the screen becomes a fully functioning mirror.

  A CNN article interviewed Brian Reid, the founder and president of the Huntersville, North Carolina, company that manufactures and markets these smart mirrors. Apparently public bathrooms in airports had been selected because they are high-traffic. People use them right before boarding a flight and right after landing, and those travelers just about always stop to look at themselves in the mirrors above the sinks, Reid explained. So why not use these perfectly-functional-but-not-income-producing mirrors for advertisements? I wondered how people would react when seeing an unexpected advertisement as they looked at their own faces. I laughed out loud when I read Reid’s explanation: “Well, it is an unexpected sight. . . . And some people do think, ‘Gosh, is there no sacred place?’ But we hope people realize that we have purposely chosen not to be around the toilet. We’re over by the sink.”

  Yes, you read that correctly; this marketing middleman wanted consumers to be thankful that his company hadn’t put their promotional smart mirrors inside bathroom stalls. Since I was shunning mirrors, I had selfish reasons to be relieved by this, but even if I hadn’t been trying to avoid my reflection, I’m sure I would have found the smart mirrors placed inside toilet stalls to be ridiculous—not to mention intrusive. Still, I would have loved to watch people’s reactions to encountering these smart mirrors for the first time.

  Product advertisements in airport bathroom mirrors are just one application of smart mirror technologies. Indeed, the smartest smart mirrors are actually able to recognize the people or items that are being reflected in them, so that product advertisements and other digital content can be customized. For example, some department stores have begun installing smart mirrors in their dressing rooms. These “personal shopper” mirrors move eons past The Skinny Mirror by recognizing the articles of clothing being tried on by the shopper and then offering advice on matching accessories. The mirror scans the garment tag and then instantly displays items in the store that complement the garment. However, it was unclear whether these smart mirrors were programmed to know whether or not the garments complemented the wearer!

  Using similar personalization technology, researchers have also developed an innovative voice-controlled mirror that offers new ways for consumers to control and personalize their media content, as well as technologies that help monitor and improve health. The “Magic Mirror,” as The New York Times calls it, provides “motion sensing technology to read physical cues from a user, vo
ice recognition to detect verbal cues, and an RFID [radio frequency identification] tag reader to recognize objects in the mirror’s proximity,” according to medGadget. One blogger described it as “a giant wall-mounted reflective iPad with a webcam.”

  The Magic Mirror might, for example, recognize a box of over-the-counter medication, or a bottle of prescription medication, if they were tagged with an RFID chip. The Magic Mirror could then display important information, such as directions for use of the medication, a schedule of when it should be taken based on one’s calendar, doctor information, and the day of your next appointment with your physician. Of course, the mirror would also be wired to recognize consumer products so that it could offer customized coupons and promotions for these products, or those of their competitors.

  Getting back to reality, my layover in Las Vegas was uneventful. I did visit one of the restrooms in my terminal, but the only magic I found there was some woman’s left-behind ten-dollar poker chip, which I quickly blew through at a few of the penny slot machines while I waited for my flight.

  I arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, later that evening, along with my mom and dad, who drove there from St. Louis. Michael flew in later that evening from San Francisco. After a few hours of catching up, we all went to bed. If Sherry’s party-planning reputation held true, the next day we’d all be busy from dawn until dusk; we needed to be well rested.

  There was much to do the next morning, so once breakfast was over we were all quickly swept into the party preparations. From wiping down a few hundred bar glasses to polishing the silver and setting out plates and napkins, we were all put to work. I laughed out loud to see what appeared to be a borrowed funeral-home-lobby sign in the Ackermanns’ entryway that read WELCOME TO HOTEL DE CUBA! The caterers arrived and quickly took over the kitchen. A one-man Cuban drum band was setting up shop in the living room. Tiki torches lit a pathway to the house, and tropical plants and small potted palm trees lined the borders of the room, which was quickly converting to a dance floor.

  “Oh! Make sure you don’t take the price tags off those trees!” Sherry announced from across the room. “I’m taking them all back to the store tomorrow!” Hearing this, I felt a surge of camaraderie with my future mother in-law. It also reminded me that I needed to take a trip to T.J.Maxx to return the bed linens I’d bought to stage the second bedroom in my condo.

  Once the bulk of preparty tasks were completed, I ran upstairs to get dressed and do my hair and makeup. In my attempts to stay on the Hotel de Cuba theme, I’d brought along two bright floral dresses for the trip. The first, which I’d bought at Nordstrom Rack the week before, was a one-shoulder-strapped blue-and-yellow number with a knee-length A-line skirt. The other was strapless in bright pinks and purples, with a poofy shorter skirt. I’d had this second dress for ages but hadn’t found the right occasion for its debut. I’d initially planned to wear one of these dresses to the party and use the second one for the bridal shower on Monday afternoon. But my choices didn’t stop there; on my way out the door to the airport, I’d decided at the last minute to also bring along my “Little White (reception) Dress” I’d bought on eBay (aka Wedding Dress #3). Since most of the guests at the party weren’t able to go to the wedding, wearing this dress for both events seemed like a good way to get more bargain for my buck.

  I turned my head from side to side as I peered at each option, but my eyes kept coming back to the delicate ivory embroidery on the bust of the reception dress, not to mention the glimmering silk shantung fabric of the all-the-rage-those-days bubble skirt. My mind had made itself up. Reception dress it would be!

  I carefully climbed into the dress and tried to tug it up over my hips. It wouldn’t budge past my thighs. Whoopsie! I thought. I’m supposed to put this on over my head. Moments later the dress was on but still unzipped, and I did my best to fasten some removable padded bra cups into the bodice using double-sided tape. When I’d first tried on the dress several months back, the bust area had gaped open whenever my posture was less than perfect, à la Gwyneth Paltrow circa 1999 in her infamous pink Ralph Lauren Oscar dress. Not wanting to flash my wedding guests with every shrug, I’d found a pair of removable bra cups that promised to “add a full cup size” to my bosom.

  Once the cups were in place, I zipped the back of the dress as high as I could manage without help and slipped a button-down blouse over the whole ensemble to protect the white dress from makeup spills and smears. It was uncomfortably warm upstairs, and I was under two layers of clothing, so I was glad I hadn’t managed to zip the dress higher than my lower back. I quickly applied my usual makeup routine sans mirrors in the bedroom, and then headed over to the bathroom where Mandy was getting ready. After helping me with my eye makeup, Mandy pronounced me “ready for action!”

  “Could you help me zip this up the rest of the way?” I asked as I unbuttoned the blouse.

  “Of course! Oh my gosh, that is the most beautiful dress! How cute!” she exclaimed.

  But then she couldn’t get it zipped past my midback.

  “I think the zipper is stuck,” she muttered.

  “Oh, it always sticks at that seam,” I replied. I wasn’t too worried. I’d struggled to get the zipper past that very point when I’d first tried the dress on. It took some muscle.

  “Here, I’ll help,” I offered. I took a deep breath and then blew all of the air out of my lungs while sucking in my gut. I used my hands to coach the fabric tighter around my front so it could reach closer together in the back. “Try now!” I choked, forcing a last bit of air from my near-collapsing lungs.

  “Damn, it’s still stuck!” she exclaimed. “I don’t want to break the zipper!”

  Feeling a pang of anxiety, I asked Mandy if she could go get my mom to help.

  A few minutes later, my mom arrived on the scene.

  “Oh, you look so cute!” she exclaimed. “And my goodness! Those bra cups certainly do runneth over, don’t they?” she added with a singing chortle. I smiled with an exaggerated shoulder shrug, and the three of us began to battle with the dress. I tried to limit my breathing to shallow gasps of air, stolen in between zipping attempts.

  “Are you sure this dress is the right size?” my mother finally asked a few moments later. I wasn’t the only one who had started to sweat. “I don’t want to break the zipper!”

  “It fit a few weeks ago!” I insisted. “Seriously, just pull that zipper as hard as you have to. It won’t break, I promise!”

  As I felt my torso shrinking into submission, I imagined that I was Scarlett O’Hara being laced tightly into her corset by Mammy before the grand party at Tara. A few seconds later I was, indeed, zipped. Mandy scampered downstairs to join Sherry in greeting their arriving guests, and I attempted a sigh of relief; the air went out easily enough, but it didn’t come back without effort. I hoped it wouldn’t come to smelling salts.

  My mom gave me a slow once-over as I spun around to give her the full view. “It looks a little tight, but not too bad,” she said. “It’s a beautiful dress, but are you comfortable? Can you move easily? That’s the most important thing.”

  “Comfortable enough!” I responded, and it was true. Sure, it wasn’t exactly my favorite pair of elastic-waistband jeggings, but I ought to be able to get through the next few hours. “It feels fine,” I confirmed with determination as I slipped on a pair of matching white silk peep-toe heels.

  “Well, that’s good. The first guests are arriving, and I’m sure they’ll all want to meet you!” she exclaimed. “You’re the belle of the ball!” We headed downstairs together to join the festivities.

  When Michael saw me, he broke into a huge grin and said, “You look amazing, sweetie!” It felt great to hear that; I needed an extra boost of confidence before meeting the rest of the raucous Ackermann tribe. I giggled a bit when he wiggled his eyebrows at my unusually cleaving cleavage. He handed me a freshly made mojito, and I took his arm to meet th
e folks he’d been speaking with when I came up.

  Over the next few hours I must have met at least fifty people, all incredibly nice and welcoming. Unfortunately, all was not well with my dress. I could feel the bodice jutting into my rib cage, and the bra cups kept threatening to rise up through the low neckline. I was constantly tugging at my dress or slipping into the bathroom to reposition my breasts so that they fit into—instead of under—the bra cups, which seemed to have their own travel itinerary for the evening. The embroidered fabric of the dress rubbed against the skin below my armpits, and I began to feel overheated and sweaty thanks to the packed crowd. To make matters worse, I quickly realized that I couldn’t sit down. I’d committed a cardinal clothes-shopping mistake—I’d forgotten to try sitting down in my dress. Even though the bubble skirt appeared loose and poofy when viewed from the outside, a constricting inner lining seemed stretched to the breaking point every time I attempted to rest my feet. I finally ended up half sitting, half leaning on the arm of Michael’s chair. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to rest my bum, but I needed a break from all of the standing and mingling.

  My mom came up and asked me if I felt all right. “I hate to tell you this, but one of your bra cups is showing again,” she began. “It’s coming out near your armpit this time!”

  After a deep sigh, I said out loud what we’d both been thinking: “This dress isn’t working, is it? Tell me the truth.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey, but it really isn’t,” she confirmed. “It looks nice enough when you’re standing completely still, but whenever you move it fights you. It’s just too tight, and those bra cups are causing more problems than they’re solving. You know what they say: You should wear the dress, and not the other way around, no?”