Extended Weekend

Today is the first day of my four-day weekend. I slept in until 8 this morning. It felt great. I made coffee this morning, but it didn't taste great. I think my coffee might be bad. But that's all right - I know how to deal with that.

I think I'm already on my way to making myself feel better all-around. I haven't really been myself lately, and I think taking this extra day to relax will be good for me in the end. You know - getting myself back on track and all that.

And what would the real me do right now? Talk about what I watched on TV last night, of course.

If you haven't watched last night's Project Runway yet, do not read any more of this post. There will be spoilers. You have been warned.

I'm totally addicted to Project Runway. I love it. This season is amazing. Not because of the fashion - in fact, I think the fashion has been particularly awful, but I don't "get" fashion. They always love what I hate and they hate what I love. But that's not what the show is really about. It's about the drama surrounding the people and the game - and boy has this year brought drama.

Anyway, even after that lead, I'm not really going to talk about the drama. I'm going to talk about a dress.

I've said season after season (since I started watching - this is only about the 3rd season I've seen) that they need to do a plus-size challenge on Project Runway - where they need to make something fashionable and flattering to women who wear large sizes. Enough with the stick-skinny models already. Bring on the girls with some meat on their bones. These are the women that your viewers can relate to.

This week wasn't exactly what I hoped for. It was a challenge where a bunch of women came out in their bridesmaid's dresses that they had to wear for their friends, and the designers had to take those dresses and turn them into something that the women could actually wear again - therefore, the women who owned these dresses were the models for the challenge. Some of the women were thin enough to be models. Some of these women were average-sized. One woman - the last one picked, in a bright magenta dress, was big. Maybe not as big as me, but she was big. I was excited to see where they were going to go with this.

The designer, Michael D., was ready for the challenge. Unfortunately, he had no experience designing for a plus-sized woman. He took an ugly color, and just tried to cover it up. He shortened the dress, but didn't help its shape. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't much of an improvement. The model was pleased with it, though. The judges, however, were not.

Michael D. was not going to win this challenge. He didn't deserve to win.

But that doesn't mean his look was the worst. I think there were at least two other dresses that were worse. (Gretchen, I'm looking at you).

Naturally, due to the judges' hatred for the look, he ended up in the bottom three.

All I wanted was for him to be safe. I don't particularly like Michael D. - he's not one of my favorites this season, but I also don't hate him. But I didn't want the one person who had to make a plus-sized dress to go home for it. For some reason, that just didn't sit well with me.

Maybe it's because I'm sometimes an optimist, and I want to believe that there's a chance that nice, cute clothes can be designed for fat girls. I wanted some sort of confirmation that it can be done. And sending home the designer who tried to make something good for a big girl was the exact opposite of the message I wanted to send.

In the end, Michael D. did not go home. He was safe, but only barely. I was relieved (and sad to see Peach go, because she was entertaining).

I'm still hoping for an entire runway full of plus-sized designs on Project Runway, but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon.

I feel like I had an actual point to this post. But I lost it. Took me too long to write it. Extended writing, like my weekend.

... maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.