Spoering My mother had this dress when I was a kid: long, red, and strapless. It ran down the length of her body like a second skin, flaring out at her thighs. The top cupped her breasts like overflowing bowls, and seemed to defy gravity—surely, no dress could contain a body like that. She wore it at least once a month, when she went out. There were probably other dresses, but that’s the one I remember: scarlet, tomato red, fire engine, poppy, the red of blood just as it wells at a cut. The dress that dreams are made of. This was my perception of women, growing up, and this is important, they say. I watched my raven-haired mother with her hourglass body and slow, sly smile, and that dress that screamed sex and power before I knew what either were. I watched her from my bedroom window as she headed out, and anticipated the day that I, too, would wear a dress. Just like that. That day never came. I am not the kind of woman to command a room with my breasts, nor would I ever want to be.
