Maxi dresses. I love them, and each summer I spend hours looking at them longingly. I’m not so fashion stupid (shut up) that I don’t know that maxi-length things and my body type go together like Jägerbombs and Tuesday night – it may SEEM like an excellent idea, but the harsh reality in the light of the day is a cruel slap in the face of otherwise. Don’t get me wrong; maxi dresses look amazing on the right body type: tall, slender, willowy bitches look great in that shit. However, I’m the anthropomorphic embodiment of an upside down pear – nothing looks good on me, let alone long clingy elegant dresses.

Of course, knowing that I look like a little kid playing dress up in mommy’s closet doesn’t stop me from wearing things that I really should have left on the rack. I want to wear a maxi dress, and no force in the universe can stop me! Unfortunately, as my entire person is infused with an aura of ridiculous, I’ve got additional problems besides looking like a festive holiday sausage. For one, I’m short. I’m barely over three apples high. I don’t believe in hemming, so anything meant to be ankle length on me is actually beyond perilous – it hits the floor and puddles around my feet. I’ve got dresses so long that I have to hike them up in my fists to walk, a move so sexy I’m surprised people don’t fling themselves at my hidden feet and compare my glory to the sun and stars above. This is problematic for multiple reasons, but none more so than when I forget to lift up my skirts to expose my ankles like the sinful whore I am: I trip on my own skirts. I’ve fallen up stairs, down stairs, off curbs, out of chairs (don’t ask), all because my dresses are way, way too long. Embarrassing, yes, but that’s not even the worst part.

All my maxi dresses are strapless.

When you pull down on a strapless top, boobs will appear.

While Newton’s Law of Gravity has never been so sexy, it’s incredibly awkward to unintentionally flash all of downtown Vancouver. Ironically, I don’t wear maxi dresses often – not because of the inherent danger of tripping over myself with every step I take, but because the shirred style of the dress gives very little opportunity for cleavage. Shirred fabric is the crinkly elastic stuff that stays up by itself, but can’t really be cut into a V or U or be anything but a straight band stretched across your tracts of land (great or otherwise). Unless I yank the whole thing down to just over nipple height (which makes the dress even longer), I’m all covered up and positively oozing with demure respectability. I have no need for this (except for maybe when we go to Harrods in London), but sometimes I want to mix things up a little, and that’s when my less obscene clothing comes out of the closet. These dresses are tucked way in the back, and every once in a while I pull them out and think “man, why don’t I wear this more often”? .. and it isn’t until I’ve tripped over my hem in public and had the entire dress pull down below my breasts, exposing my naked (well, bra’d) rack to the world that I remember why I don’t dress like this.

Sorry, Dunsmuir Street. If I had known you were about to become intimately familiar with my wares, I’d have worn a nicer bra.

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