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essay by Heather Hummel
44H
In college, I dreamed of finding a little piece of land with a meadow and building my own cabin. I thought I’d spend my days writing and dinking around in a canoe with a bull dog named Hemingway. I was a twenty-year old Luddite: I sewed my own clothes, canned homemade preserves and forgot where I parked my car for long stretches of time. My dream included an unidentifiable, brawny, outdoorsy man and although I often doubted he would come along, the meadow filled with sunlight, and a cozy little cabin seemed perfectly reasonable. A few years and a string of jobs later, my biggest goal was simply to save up enough cash to move out of mom and dad’s house. Again.
Consequently, I took a third job, a seasonal gig selling lingerie at Nordstrom’s department store. Instead of actualizing my woodsy back-to-nature-girl dream, I somehow ended up in someone else’s fantasy world—probably a teenage boy’s.
When I shared the job news with my family the responses were enthusiastic.
My dad: “Wow, that’d be a great job. I’d love to do that all day.”
My boyfriend: “Um, will you be bringing any of that lingerie home?”
My brother: “Damn, too bad you’re not a lesbian.”
For training, I learned how to identify the new colors on the fashion palette: latte, crème freche, iced lilac. I learned enthusiastic ways to highlight selling points: “This robe is just yummy, isn’t it?” There’s no way to disagree with the yumminess of something, especially if that something is the color of “whipped berry.”
Then I learned to fit women for bras. As an example, I was fit for a bra. I went into the training as a comfortable, modest, 34B. I left wearing a bra demurely categorized in the “petite” section—a 32AA. One tiny notch up from a training bra.
So, armed with a pink measuring tape, I walked the floor all day, in steady figure eights when it was slow, as requested by management (there is nothing so inconducive to capitalism as the appearance of idle store clerks) and hurried circles when it was busy. I was chipper. I was cheery. I was enthusiastically, materialistically nubile. I worked for commission only. This meant that on the days I was not working, I actually went in the hole if people made returns. Customers always returned: it was Nordstrom’s after all, the store known for accepting any kind of return. Legend has it that a car tire had once been returned to Nordstrom’s: they accepted it.
Women came up to me throughout the day, glanced furtively around the busy department and then flashed me their bosoms, asking, “Have you got this in my size?” (My dad would hear these stories over dinner, gawp incredulously, and say, “You get PAID for this?”) They often expected me to be able to size them up with one glance and hand them a perfect fit. I felt like gesturing to my “petite” frame and saying, “Woman, have you looked at me? I didn’t know breasts really looked like that.”
Even when I wasn’t on the job, people would solicit my “fit-certified” help. My mother’s friends would show me their favorite, albeit worn-out brazier while we were in yoga class or out to dinner, and want to know if that particular style would be going on sale anytime soon.
In the work lunchroom, the other sales clerks would watch the Oprah Winfrey show and cry at the heart-wrenching life stories while they munched on carrot sticks and diet soda and rubbed their tired feet. I watched the store clerks watching television and felt like Billy Pilgrim stuck in the zoo on the planet Trafalgar: people watched people, unsure who was alien, unsure why there was a topless woman, like Montana Wildhack lounging nearby.
My hairdresser, a woman that has been cutting my hair since I was in sixth grade, looked at me one day, clicked her scissors together decisively and exclaimed, “Heather, you are a Granola!” In southern California, in her line of work, she doesn’t come across “granolas” very often, if ever.
In the dressing rooms, I flitted from one half naked lady to another, cheerily spouting the selling-point that clinches the sale every time: “This one here is Oprah’s favorite bra. Now honey—it looks like a Volkswagon? Yes, but it is a divine fit. She loves it. You’ll love it too.” And they did. Oprah can give the final word on foundation wear and literature; she says the word and the traffic on the freeway actually begins to visibly divert—ribbons of cars uncurl at 70 miles per hour toward the malls to buy her favorite things. I rang up Oprah’s much loved bra on the cash register, handed the package to the happy customer and made note to send Oprah a copy of my first published book: she could make it or break it.
My days were measured with numbers: on a good day, I would sell over two thousand dollars worth of panties, slipper socks, and various accoutrements—anti-panties (little circles of fabric that stick to the crotch of your pants so that you can eliminate all pesky panty-lines), water filled inserts for you bra to give extra oomph and ooh-la-la, other little circles of fabric that stick to the underarms of you blouses to eliminate any (eek!) sweat discoloration, and yet more little flower shaped pieces of fabric that stick to your nipples for when it’s a bit nippley out and you left Oprah’s favorite bra at home.
On a bad day, I’d arrive at work owing Nordstrom’s my commission for $500 worth of returns and couldn’t break even until an hour before my shift ended.
Occasionally, I’d see breasts bigger than I’d ever imagined: 44H. Those women came in cheery and bumptious and looking for some support damn it, and I’d help them rustle through the racks to find the best slim-liner on the market. Silently, I thanked God for my AA boobies, because I love jogging too much to sacrifice it for a goddess figure and then I thanked God again that there are butt men as well as breast men, because I’d be one lonely girl otherwise.
Sometimes, we work to pay the bills, and live hoping that something we might possibly engage in intellectually or passionately will come along soon. Sometimes, we work with the odd knowledge that never, ever again will we have the opportunity to be incognito with a back-stage pass to a strange and bizarre corner of the universe. That holiday season, I was a poet, disguised as a sales clerk, helping women in need of undergarments. Oddly, it was probably, the most voluptuous (and capitalistic) month of my life. In some ways, walking those infinite figure eights on the selling floor (while wearing heels) was a glimpse into wage-earning hell. In other ways, it was, well, yummy.
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