Second Floor, Ladies Apparel *Ding*

I never noticed until we started talking about mannequins in class today, but you seldom *see* mannequins in stores anymore. I mean, yeah, sure, the window displays at the Gap or at Express use torso-shaped objects to display their clothes on. But when’s the last time you wandered through the aisles of Macy’s or Kaufmann’s or Dillard’s and saw the awkwardly posed wooden figure of a lady, all decked out in the season’s latest fashion, blank eyes staring straight ahead at Better Sportswear, small chips in the paint on her fingers—which are, of course, molded together into one mitten-like paw with carved contours giving the impression of individual fingers when viewed at a distance?

I can distinctly remember being fascinated by the mannequins at McAlpin’s Department Store as a child, the monotony of rack after rack of grown-up clothes relieved by a close examination of the way the mannequin was posed, the way the feet were bolted to the pedestal, the fact that the face on the “lady” wearing the blue dress was exactly the same as the “lady” wearing the floppy hat.

Would the movie Mannequin make any sense to a child born today? As much as Mannequin made sense to anyone, anyway. Ah, Andrew McCarthy, whatever happened to your loveable floundering around?

Were mannequins back then as anorexic as the torsos in today’s window displays? I was too young to have noticed one way or the other back then. But it irritates the holy crap out of me when I go to a store and the display torsos are draped in a size 2 shirt that has been pulled and pinned together in the back so that a) the shirt is being displayed in a way that it will never, ever drape in real life (i.e., it looks like a tapered, tailored blouse, but when you put it on, it looks like a tent) and b) the image being presented as desirable is literally smaller than the smallest clothes offered in the store—no one could ever live up to it. I have a real problem with that. The last thing this society needs is to further distort our image of what a woman (or a man—this is one area where the narrowing of the gender gap is a negative development) should be.