“I hate it,” my mother says, “take it off.” And then, to the salesperson, “Do you have anything with capped sleeves? Something to hide the fleshiness on her arms.” She whispers the word fleshiness as if, even though I’m standing but two feet away from her, I cannot actually hear her.

“I can hear you,” I say, reaching for the glass of champagne my mother is holding for me, the one given to me when we first arrived at the store. That was back when wedding dress shopping was all air kisses and warm congratulations. Now that our salesperson has agreed with my mother when she called me fat, I could really use something a bit stronger, but I’ll settle for the bubbly.

“Empty calories,” my mother sings, moving the glass away from me and taking a sip. “I’m just trying to find a dress that would make the most of your figure, BB.” I guess I don’t have to mention here that my fifty-two-year-old mother, a petite size six, with a crown of honey-blond hair, looks better in her dress than I do in mine.

“Marilyn Monroe was a size twelve in her heyday,” I say to no one in particular. “And no one ever called her fat. I’m only a size ten.”

“Marilyn was a bit fleshy, dear,” my mother says, admiring herself in the mirror. If I didn’t have to work and could take tennis lessons three times a week like my mother, maybe I would be a size six, too. Although, if I had that much free time, I like to think that instead of tennis lessons and mah-jongg, I’d fill my time with charity work and more important Angelina Jolie-esque type activities. And shopping.

What? You have to get new outfits for all those big important dinners at the UN, don’t you?

“Your figure is perfect,” Vanessa says. Vanessa has to say this because she’s my best friend. It’s in some sort of friendship handbook or something. Come to think of it, I think it may also be in the Code of the Girl Scouts. I’ll have to look that up sometime. But, either way, she has to say that.