the slack daily

And the Winner Is...

The winner of a new pair of GAP jeans is JQ Brat!

Miz Brat, send me your snail mail addy!

Thanks for playing everyone, and I know return you to your regularly scheduled slack. Like Saturday's BetheMarriage, with special guest Novysan!

GAP: Born to Fit Party!

I was born to do anything but fit.

I've written about it here enough times that I should have neck problems from all my navel-gazing. But my problem wasn't just fitting in with people. It was fitting in clothes.

How do you buy for a six year old with hips? An eight year old who needs a bra?

Early onset puberty made clothes shopping was a nightmare. My body, which had I wanted to use to climb trees and run bases and shoot baskets, became a source of shame and embarrassment. I donned armor in the guise of sweatpants. The weigh piled on and it became something else to worry about. Something else to be ashamed over.

In my late 20s I decided to stop measuring time and happiness by a number on the scale. I'm not always successful, and when I was asked to be a GAP brand ambassador, I was a little nervous. I love clothes, but I hate shopping. Even at 50 pounds lighter each time I step foot in a dressing room I have to remind myself that just because something doesn't look good doesn't make me terrible human being.

With puppies being kicked and wildfires raging out of control and children who don't have access to clean drinking water or health care, my tears in a dressing room are a first-world non-problem. People should be so lucky.

Flash forward and I have the opportunity to invite my blogger friends to a "Born to Fit" party at the GAP pop-up store in Beverly Hills on Robertson.  

The one promise I made to myself is that no one was going to complain that they were fat. No one was going to cry in a dressing room. Even though we were all different shapes and sizes, everyone would go home feeling beautiful. We'd all be born to fit.

Hosting a party is making everyone fall in love with you for thirty seconds at a time, then introducing them to other people and making them fall in love with each other.

At the GAP party, it was mini-matchmaking sans pants.

Everyone went home with a pair of jeans that made them feel like a million bucks.

 

Modeling the "Long and Lean."
Photo by Janet Barnett.

Photos from the party can be found here. Thanks to Kae of Are You Ready to Rock? and Janet Barnett of Barnett Lifestyles Photography for their photos. You can read more accounts of the party by Kae and Julia.

Did you get this far? Good, because I've got a GIFT CERTIFICATE for FREE PAIR GAP JEANS! You can enter THREE times.

1. Leave a comment telling me about your CURRENT favorite pair of jeans.
2. Write a story on your blog about your PAST favorite pair of jeans and leave a link to the blog post in the comments. This MUST be different than the above. I will check!
3. Tweet this contest and leave a comment with a link to your tweet.

You can do ANY ONE of the three. But you MUST leave it in the comments here, or else I won't be able to put you in the drawing. You have until Friday, September 4th at NOON PST.

And the Winner Is...

There were THIRTY-TWO embarrassing clothing stories on this post. (There were more than 32 comments, but I only counted the embarrassing stories.)

And the winner of the $50 gift certificate was chosen by Random.org:

 

That means the winner is...GINA of My Musings! Gina, email me your snail mail addy at slackmistress [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll pop your gift card in the mail.

Thanks for playing along (and sharing your embarrassing clothing stories!) I promise that there are more goodies, including free jeans and another gift card coming your way (as well as a long overdue wrap-up of my own Gap party.)

#GAPborntofit

You've Got One More Day to Post Your Embarrassing Clothing Stories!

You've got until 5pm PST tomorrow to comment on this post with your Most Embarrassing Clothing Story to enter the drawing for a $50 Gap gift card! It must be on this post and this post only!

(Meaning feel free to comment on this post, but it will not enter you in the drawing for the gift certificate.)

Reprinted from the 1998 archives of theslack.com The original piece was titled "Am I Adopted?"

My boss is having an elegant, black-tie required engagement dinner at the end of January. Of course, this means the SlackMistress needs to go out and purchase the required uniform: a gown. Now the SlackMistress hates to shop as a rule, and buying a gown is all the more painful.

We stroll into the Lord and Taylor outlet confident that we'll stroll back out with a purchase in our greedy little hands. This is one thing I have to give my mother credit for: she knows where to buy good stuff, cheap. We head to the back of the store and begin the easy part of the process: picking out gowns to try on. My mother starts at the beginning of the row.

After turning down three or four gowns, I can see we're locked in a battle of wills. I have said the dinner is black-tie required. I think this to be elegant, reminiscent of the charity galas I've seen photographed in Town & Country magazine (which my mother finally stopped subscribing to because she was sick of me asking, month after month, looking at the glossy WASP-y families, "are you sure these aren't my real parents?") My mother's impression of black-tie was stuck somewhere between mother-of-the-groom dresses and "Dynasty." Being neither Alexis Carrington nor a 50-year-old woman, you can only imagine the arguments that ensued.

But finally! We have our loot and parade into the communal dressing room. Women in varying stages of undress speaking at least four different language. I rip off my clothes and my mother begins to unzip gowns. The ones that fit are ugly. The ones that don't I attempt to shrug off as quickly as possible.

However, mom won't give up the battle that easily.

"C'mon...c'mon..."

She tugs at the fabric of the dress. Suddenly, a woman half-clad in a Liz Claiborne suit comes over to assist. "That's it honey! Tug here, it'll make it!" Another woman in bra and panties looks at me disdainfully and says to my mother and the Good Samaritan:

"You'll never fit that dress over her ass."

Suddenly the dressing room is split into two factions: The Dress Will Fit and You've Got To Be Joking. Discussions are being had of juice fasts and tomato soup diets, non-surgical liposuction and girdles. I mumble something about going to the gym and eating healthy before the big event. With one statement I've united the crowd: this will never happen.

I slink out of the dressing room, cloaked in shame. My mother, however, has emerged victorious. She has managed not only to embarrass her daughter publicly but managed to look the sympathetic parents whilst doing it. She exits the dressing room with a slap on the back and a few nice words about putting up with her daughter's "moods."

We did manage to find a gown a few hours later. I actually like it. My mother's already promised me full access to her Dynasty-like collection of large gold earrings.

Oh, goody.

#Gapborntofit

A Gap $50 Gift Card for Your Most Embarrassing Clothing Story...

The following statement can now be found on my About Page:

Full Disclosure: As of July 2009, I am a Gap Brand Enthusiast. This is different than a Gap Band Enthusiast, as I am a fan of the Gap Brand an not the Gap Band. No disrespect to Gap Band fans.As a Gap Brand Enthusiast, I am not paid nor required to blog about Gap merchandise or functions. However, on occasion I do receive free merchandise for my own personal use as well as to give out on my blog. These blog posts will always have the hashtag #gapborntofit and will be categorized as such.

I have been wearing clothes from the Gap since the 70's. The only disclosure statement I have about that is that their jeans make my ass look good, and I will always say that for free.

On Thursday night, I had the pleasure of assembling women for all blogs of life together for a Gap Born to Fit Party at the Gap 1969 Pop-Up Store on Robertson Blvd. It was a night of sangria and laughing and, as I told everyone who walked in the door I invited you to a party where you have to take off your pants. 

We were all different shapes and sizes, as women have a tendency to be, but the one thing we all had in common is that we all left with a pair of 1969 jeans that made us feel like rockstars.

I'll write more about that when the photos come in. Also, if I managed to figure out the technology correctly, I even have a livevlog from the dressing room. It's like BetheMarriage, except pantsless.

Actually, it's exactly like BetheMarriage (which is on tonight at 8pm PST, by the by...)

But thanks to the folks at Gap and Brand About Town, I have a $50 gift certificate to give away! (And there may be more where that comes from, so stay tuned.)

All I want is you Most Embarrassing Clothing Story.

You must post this story in the comments (or you can post it on your blog with the hashtag #gapborntofit) but you MUST return here and comment with the link to the blog. I will be using a random number generator to pick the winner from the comments. This contest closes on Wednesday, August 19 at 5pm PST.

You ARE allowed to post more than one story to enter more than once - you can enter TWICE but they must be separate stories in separate comments! (2x is the cap, though.)

I don't qualify, but here's my Most Embarrassing Clothing Story after the cut.