Lulu Tells a Story

Gather round, friends, and list unto Lulu Kieran’s tale of woe: the tale of how she Could Not Find a Belt.

This story begins as most great stories do – with Lulu pulling on her Red Engine boyfriend-style jeans and finding that they were suddenly too large for her. Lulu was pleased, for this meant that her halfhearted diet and wholehearted exercise routine had been working. Though Lulu’s trousers were falling from her hips, she rejoiced:

When she came down off of her weightloss high, however, she realized that she looked rather like a prison inmate, what with her underwear exposed, not to mention her bold criminal swagger, and she decided that she would go out and buy a belt. Indeed, Lulu could picture it in her mind: a classic leather cowboy belt, with perhaps a decorative buckle. She sallied forth hopeful, and swept into a nearby boutique with this elegant supplication:

The shopkeep, a stylish lady near Lulu’s years, simply parted her hands mournfully, and replied:

Lulu did not understand meaning of the shopkeep’s gloomy words, and so cast her eyes nervously about, and saw, to her surprise, not a single cowboy belt on display. Rather, this shop offered THIN belts, intended not to keep a slim gal’s trousers up, but to accentuate another slim gal’s waist in a frock. They looked rather like this:

Well! said Lulu to herself. That is unfortunate. But surely this next boutique must carry cowboy belts. So Lulu, unfazed, entered the second boutique, and with a breezy gesture toward her dropping trousers, demanded:

This second shopkeep, a middleaged yogalady, took on a disconcerted look, and, glancing between Lulu’s face and the area to which Lulu had gestured, replied:

Indeed, this shop had NO BELTS AT ALL. Lulu, her nerves grated on by this second misfortune and by the yogalady’s expression, bolted out the door and sought a third boutique. Outside this boutique’s door Lulu halted, suddenly hesitant. Would this quest yield no fruit at all? It was a hard thought to hold. Lulu crept inside, twisting her hands and quivering, and whispered to the shopkeep:

This shopkeep replied to Lulu in a voice so cool and detached that it seemed unsuited to a situation of this gravity. He said:

Lulu went silent; she mouthed wordlessly; she staggered backwards out the door. She fled home, and quaked, and cursed the heavens, and scrabbled about hysterically. Then she had a cup of coffee to collect her nerves, and consulted her latest copy of L’Officiel, and noticed an awful lot of these thin dress belts, both in stories and adverts. Check out THIS LOOK from Akris, for example. Awfully cute, sure, but what of Lulu’s trouser’s? WHAT OF THEM, FRIENDS?

And Lulu’s dream of looking like a cowboy -

- what of that, then? (Incidentally, Lulu has a cowboy whip because Lulu found herself unable to draw a cowboy pistol. And even Lulu’s cowboy whip looks rather like a cowboy stick of dynamite, or a cowboy ketchup bottle spraying a thin line of ketchup out.) Is it too much to ask that Lulu’s pants be kept on her hips, or that she look like a cowboy? Lulu protests this new thin belt ubiquity – surely, in our new world of thin dress belts, there is room for classic belt shapes, time-tested and honored! Lulu shudders indeed to think of a world without cowboy belts for ladies. A cold world it’d be indeed.

These drawings belong to Lulu, and may not be reproduced without her permission.