Does this make me look fat?

“Does this make me look fat?” Emily questioned as she stared, horrified, at herself in the mirror. She turned this way and that way. She tugged and pulled here and there. She sucked in her breath and let it out.

“Well- ” Nick barely managed a reply. He moved slowly from the room as he attempted to find solace in the large walk-in closet.

“Don’t even answer that. It does, doesn’t it? I look like a hippo. No, a water buffalo! Do you think I look like a hippo or a water buffalo?”

“What? I didn’t hear you,” he fibbed as he reemerged from the closet. Clearly it was not a proper sanctuary from the ridicule to come. He loosened his tie.

“Does it?”

“Does it what, dear?”

“Does this dress make me look fat?”

He stared blankly. He wished that, like the commercial, he could “chew it over with Twix.” He only needed a moment, a minute maybe, to escape from her self-obsessed clutches. She interrupted his thoughts.

“I guess it doesn’t,” Emily reassured herself as Nick continued to watch her toy with her figure. The sparkly number barely covered her voluptuousness.

“We’re just going out to dinner, Emily.” He knew immediately that this was not a viable response.

“What are you saying!?”

“That’s the thing, dear” he replied nonchalantly, “I’m not saying anything at all.”

“‘Not saying anything at all?’ But I asked you a straight question. I want a straight answer! Does this make me look fat?”

“You know that you don’t really want a response to that.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let it mean what you want it to mean, because that is all you are going to get out of me. I’m tired of these mind games. And I’m tired of your episodes. We haven’t even gotten to the restaurant yet. I can’t wait until you’ve scarfed down a piece of cheesecake and an entire bottle of wine. Then you will be asking me all sorts of questions: ‘Should I have eaten that?’ ‘What will I look like in the morning?’ ‘If I eat nothing all day tomorrow it will be as if I never ate too much in the first place, right?’”

Emily’s face reddened.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nick responded. “You know it’s true, dear.”

Emily stormed into the closet, muttering to herself as she tore through her wardrobe.

“No. Ugly. Outdated. Ghastly. Horrifying. Too small. NO!” she shouted as she found no suitable alternatives.

“You could always wear a sack,” Nick responded.

“What!?” Emily remarked, turning on him as she stuck her head out of the closet.

“I said you could wear a sack… no! I know! You should wear nothing at all.”

Emily looked prepared to beat her inconsiderate husband with a stick.

“I’m just saying,” he concluded.

“Alright! Fine! I’m only going to ask you one more time and then I will never ask you again! Does this dress make me look fat?”

“Dearest, you are 400 pounds. Every dress makes you look fat.”