It occurs to me that one of the biggest things I miss about not having a sufficiently close female friend/relative whose schedule jibes with mine is not having someone to go clothes-shopping with me.

I do have female friends here, I just don't feel that same level of closeness where I would feel OK calling them up and going, "I'm going to Kohl's, can you come and help me?" (Or maybe I do have friends who would be willing to do that, I just feel funny asking)

Because it's more fun to shop for clothes with another person. (That's the only kind of shopping I find more fun with another person). With another person along, if you grabbed the wrong size, you can ask them to go and get the next size smaller or larger while you stay in the dressing room. And a GOOD friend (or a relative you get on well will) will be honest and will either tell you when something really doesn't flatter you (or as is more common in my case, reassure me that it really does look okay on me and I am not the hot mess I believe myself to be sometimes). And then you can do the same for them while they shop. Or you can grab something off the rack and go, "This wouldn't look good on me but it would be so good for you!" (if you're shopping with someone with a different body type and/or coloring)

And also, if it's someone with similar taste, it's fun to laugh over the hideous clothes. (Which, in any given season, can be 80% of what a store has on offer).

I enjoy shopping for craft supplies and books alone. I actually prefer antiquing alone. I (most of the time) tolerate-to-enjoy grocery shopping alone.

But clothes shopping alone often leaves me kind of depressed - the one place where I am really fragile is in my body image, and so often the stuff on offer at stores doesn't work well with it, or I can't find just what I think I want, or (as happened at the Kohl's last fall) I try on a blouse putatively marked "XL" and find that I can't button it over my seemingly-now-Dolly-Parton-esque bosom, and it won't fit my big beefy arms. And then I just feel all horrible and sad and want to sit down on the grody floor of the dressing room and cry a little bit once again over why I had to grow up to be a big woman instead of the little sylphlike thing I really wanted to be.

(Even if it is really very likely the blouse was mismarked as to size. My critical thinking skills don't always work when clothes shopping.)

But having another person along helps. Even if they're not the super-vocal supportive cheerleader type - I feel like with another person along I can't quite descend into the same depths of appearance-self-loathing that I do when I shop alone. I don't know why; it's probably the same reason that I will practically bite off my own tongue rather than cry in front of another person, and yet I cry fairly freely and easily when I am alone.