Okay, maybe this is just a “guys don’t get it” thing, but why is she so horrified that everybody at work knows she wears size 10 pants. Was she passing as an 8 or something?
Her reaction seems (to me) more appropriate to Arlo telling her she had a split seam and everybody at work could see her panties all day (even then hiding in the closet now seems odd, but I could chalk that up to artistic license).
Comics I Don't Understand 
Way back when I wore a “Medium” in polo shirts, I once missed removing a little plastic circle with a big “M” printed on it, sort of above the chest pocket. I was momentarily embarrassed, then decided it could have passed as a monogram.
You are someone who always sees the bright side of negative events. If I wore a hat, I’d doff it to you.
Heh… I once missed removing the sticky cellophane tag that indicated the size of my jeans. It was about eight inches long and ran down the back of a pant leg. I was at a magic show (right before it started) with a date when someone pointed that out to me.
Yes, she was passing as 8 (or something smaller than 10, at any rate).
Even if she didn’t say it out loud, she was acting that way, and now she discovers that people knew she was being deceitful the whole time.
Her normally wholesome character has been caught in a lie. And she’s finding it hard to live down.
She was acting like a size 8? How does one do that?
She thought the pants made her look slimmer than she normally felt. The visible size negated that effect since everyone was able to know the actual size of the pants.
Sigh. I’d be so happy to be a size 10.
THAT was MY first thought, too.
Yes, it’s illogical and delusional, but it is completely natural. She is embarrassed about her size and doesn’t want anyone to know it. No, she doesn’t think she is pulling things off or deluding them, but as long as she isn’t outright announcing “Hey, I’m a size 10!” she is imagining a harmless delusional fantasy that that it isn’t as well known as it obviously is.
To add to Janis’s angst, if she is concerned about her actual size, the strip advertising her pants size was located in an area were she probably didn’t want to anymore attention drawn to in the first place.
@ J-L – I also wore an eight inch long cellophane sticky tag of sizes (a series of 34″ waist sizes, I think) on one leg of my trousers, all the way from the West of England by train into London, then on the tube, and walking through the streets, and right to my friend’s house, where she pointed it out. I did feel rather like a country bumpkin who had only just managed to prise off his cowpat-encrusted coveralls and grease down his hair for the Big City only to find out I had failed step 1 of pulling off an elegant metropolitan look.
I was at a computer user group meeting, and while waiting for a shot at the coffee area I noticed a size sticker on the sweater of the guy in front of me. I discreetly mentioned it to him: he said he knew, he left it on there in case he decided to return the sweater.
I was speechless.
I’d be more embarrassed by the fact that I’d been walking around all day with a sticker on my clothing (never actually done that; but I was at a party once and my sister-in-law pulled me aside and said “Do you know your shirt’s on inside-out?” “Well,” I said, “clearly I did not.”)
” I’d been walking around all day with a sticker on my clothing ” That happened to me once. It was kind of embarrassing because I felt like a klutz.
But I can understand Janice. It’s not logical. I know my weight will exist whether I stand on a scale or not and my refusal to stand on a scale or let anyone see the scale when I stand on it won’t make the disparaging truth of my weight not exist and I know that whether I acknowledge that I have a weight or not and whatever steps I take to make it so noone else can know my weight or not will not in anyway change what I *look* like and what people can guess what they think my weight is. But I still go through the delusion that I fell better and safer if no-one *knows*. And if somehow a print out of a doctors physical got out. … I’d be embarrassed.
I think my attitude is very common.
And I think that explains Arlos reaction. It’s not logical and *sheesh* I’m not fooling *anyone*…..
At least Arlo enjoyed peeling off the sticker.
May not be related to the size. Perhaps her embarrassment comes from thinking that others would consider her stupid for not knowing to remove the tag before wearing the pants.
And of course, since all clothing should be washed (or otherwise cleaned) before wearing to remove the chemicals from their processing – if she had done so, chances are the sticker would be stuck inside her washing machine.