Why yes, self. It’s when you have too much iron. It’s like reverse anemia.

Um, I don’t think that’s what it means.

Oh, really. Are you a doctor?

No, but I did take a creative writing class once. That’s not what “irony” means.

If you already know what it means, then why are you asking me?

Well, I thought it would be a cute way to set up a blog entry. I was just playing dumb.

Oh, okay then. Irony is “incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.” For example, say someone has worked two and half years so they would no longer have to shop at Lane Bryant. Then say that the very month that person can finally squeeze into the largest size not sold at Lane Bryant (size 12) and she runs around shopping all weekend looking for jeans is also the very same month Lane Bryant introduces a line of jeans that evidently fit everyone’s body shape. But only if they’re plus-sized. That would be irony.

The big LB introduced Right Fit jeans this month which come in three cuts – straight, curvy and extra curvy. They have a new sizing system which I suspect was brainstormed over a late night Uno card game. Once you get measured you’ll get a new size like Blue 4 or a Red 7 or Yellow 5. Or you can just grab a card out of the Uno deck and hope the matching pants fit. Since women’s sizing makes no sense anyway, I have no problem with LB making up their own system. The early reviews from The Pretty Pear are very positive. Now if only LB would make them in my size…

I did venture out of my apartment in search of the perfect jeans this weekend, and like my search for the perfect man it is still ongoing. I can now say that I have set foot in all of the following stores: The Gap, Banana Republic, Anne Taylor, Anne Taylor Loft, Marshalls, TJ Maxx and Macy’s. I’d already been to Macy’s and TJ Maxx before, but I was able to try on a lot more pants this time. And no one kicked me out of the store! They didn’t even make me spit out my gum. I was surprised to discover there actually were some size 14′s and 16′s at places like The Gap and Banana Republic, but only a couple. It’s nice that they were there, but if I were still a bit bigger it wouldn’t seem worth all the trouble to come out to the mall to try on the four items they had in my size. Also, I think the sales guy at The Gap might have been flirting with me. Either that or he really wanted to sell me a pair of low rise jeans. I can never tell with salespeople. Flirting might just be the way they make commission.

My shopping expedition also made me very class conscious. The mall that has The Gap and Banana Republic and Anne Taylor has as its anchor stores Fifth Avenue Saks and Parisian. I passed a valet parking stand on the way into the mall. Lots of people were wearing their sunglasses as they walked to the door, probably because the floors are so shiny they may temporarily blind you like a vision of the Madonna. While there were certainly a fair share of people in capris and tanks and sweats, there were also people who could have gone to a country club party after purchasing their uniquely shaped glassware at Crate and Barrel. Then I’d head off to places like Marshalls and TJ Maxx which sell off-price, discounted merchandise. I could not see my reflection in the floor and the dressing rooms felt more like a cattle call. The look in some of my fellow shoppers eyes was predatory, like if I were to get in the way between them and the 80% off Elliott Lucca handbag they’d slit my throat with their acrylic nails and leave me to stain the luggage section in blood. Which would then be reduced and marked “as is.” At both places I felt a little out of place.

After I was done shopping for clothes, I went to Target to get kitty litter and realized that the red store is the place I feel most class unconscious. The prices are affordable, but the décor is a little cleaner and prettier than places like Wal-Mart. Whenever I shop at Wal-Mart I feel like I’ve entered communist Russia. The check-out lines are sometimes as long as food ration queues. I feel like part of the down-trodden underclass, a 21st century peasant. I don’t mean to disrespect the existence of Wal-Mart or places like it, at least not on the basis of price and atmosphere. Their business practices and the way they treat employees are up for grabs. I know many people depend on their low prices simply to survive in life. I just know that I’m willing to pay a little extra for the nicer atmosphere at Target. Call me a snob, maybe I am.

Either way, it’s nice to have so many choices now and I look forward to completing further reconnaissance at similar stores. I’ll report back my findings hidden in microdots in the third “i” of my blog entries. Be on alert!

But, they were having a sale on Venezia jeans for only $19.99. I haven’t bought dress pants or skirts from them in a while, but their bootcut jeans have always fit my particular shape well. I stopped by and was happy to find I now fit into their size 16. Funny, since a week earlier I’d tried on size 16′s at their sister store, Fashion Bug, which I could button, but were so tight I would have walked around like C-3PO. If I’m going to dress up like a Star Wars character, he’s not the one I’d choose. Though thankfully Jabba the Hutt isn’t the one I most closly resemble anymore. I bought the jeans, but the next day I realized that they would never have them for a lower price, so I may as well buy the size 14′s as well and make if my official last purchase. Then we could declare 2007 a year free of shopping at the fat girl store.

So I returned to the mall, fighting through crowds like a salmon swimming up stream. I found the jeans and made my purchase. The cashier thanked me and I walked out back into the throngs of humanity. It was all rather anti-climatic actually, just a typical retail transaction, one of thousands that day. But as God is my witness, I shall never shop at Lane Bryant again.

At the park there was a carnival game that fascinated me. It was the “Guess My Weight” game, positioned right by the human walkway over the highway, thus granting it maximum exposure to passers-by. Standing beside the barker was a scale with a circular face as large as Godzilla’s frisbee. The object of the game was to have the barker guess your weight and if he wasn’t within 5 or 10 pounds (can’t remember which) you’d win a prize.

I never played this game. Obviously. While I could still cram my ass between the safety bars on Thunder Run, I wasn’t petite either. Public weigh-ins seemed to be reserved for the sanctity of weight watchers meetings, where you would at least be surrounded by people as fat or fatter than you. I didn’t even know how much I weighed, and I certainly didn’t want to find out in front of packs of teeny-boppers in short-shorts sucking down Diet Coke and Dippin’ Dots ice cream.

However, I was very curious to know how well the barker could guess someone’s weight. This is a skill that people think they are better at doing than they actually are. Mostly this is because it’s hard to get good feedback. You can find out how much you weigh, but finding out what other people actually weigh is difficult since they lie. If we were to estimate how many Americans were fat by what they said they weighed on their driver’s licenses, we’d have the obesity epidemic licked! So even if you do start guessing people’s weights, you can’t know if you’re right or how far off you are to make corrections in the future.

It gets harder if you only see someone on TV because you don’t necessarily have a good sense of scale. If you watch a basketball game, all the players look normal compared to each other. But if you see them walk into the crowd you suddenly realize their shoes could comfortably house a family of puppies and a foster kitten. Recently Kirstie Alley went on Oprah in a bikini and I read one person comment on another blog that she must be lying about her weight. This was because the commenter weighed more than Kirstie but they looked similar. I have no idea what Kirstie Alley really weighs since I’ve never drugged her and hauled her ass onto a scale. (I don’t live in LA, plane seating is cramped and I doubt I could get the chloroform through airport security, so it’s just not worth it.) However, when you factor in height differences, ratio of fat to muscle, and other nonsense like how much sodium they’ve had recently and when their last long trip to the bathroom was, you can’t assume that just because someone on TV looks similar to you that they will weigh the same.

My mom recently showed a picture of me to one of her co-workers who was surprised to hear I weighed about 200 pounds. Granted, it was a shot from the waist up and I carry most of my fat in my bottom half, but this reaffirmed by belief that not only are people bad at guessing someone’s weight, they don’t even know they’re bad at guessing. This woman works in a bridal store too, so she comes in contact with every size and shape of woman there is. She just doesn’t get to weigh them. Perhaps the only people who would be good at guessing weight are nurses, doctors or weight watchers leaders, the only people who do get to weigh lots of people.

People also get scared of guessing above certain scary numbers, like 200 or 300. If you have to rollover the digits into the next group of hundreds, you risk insulting the person. 199 sounds a lot better than 200, just like that $0.99 cent candy bar sound so much cheaper than the $1.00 one. I wonder if the carnival barker would make such adjustments in guessing someone’s weight to avoid being mauled by angry fat people. If he thought someone actually weighed 205, would he round down to 199? It’s also possible that the carnival scale might not have been accurate. This was a carnival game and those carnies are notoriously stingy about giving away their pink teddy bears, employing tricks to keep you from wining games.

Today I would play the “Guess My Weight” game with no shame at all. That happens when you post your weight every week on the Internet. The shame starts to evaporate like the water in your T-shirt after a good soaking on Mile High Falls. Too bad my season pass expired in 1993.