Give us your money, your hulking asses can stay at home tho
Boy oh boy my burbies it has been a hot minute since I took to the tubes to kvetch about something or other. Not that I don't have complaints, I do, but I have mostly been shouting them into the vast expanse of an empty Ben and Jerrys container and not mustering up the energy to flip open my laptop lid.
Well that is over for now. It's 2020 and I resolve to make complaining great again. At least, until the last season of Schitt's Creek is available on Netflix because that schitt isn't going to watch itself.
Let's kick off the year right and bitch about fashun!
It was not until I moved to NYC that I had any awareness of fashion trends. Even now, I would not consider myself at all fashionable, but I read The Cut like once a week and my continued existence on Twitter means I am getting at least one Refinery29 listicle about how many pairs of snakeskin boots I need to be taken seriously in the workplace so I would say I have at least leveled up. Not that the bar was particularly high - the extent of my fashion taste in the midwest was what was available at Target. And not woke Target either - this was pre-Mizrahi pre Who What Wear Target when they made a gray dress in straight sizes called "dark gray" and the same dress in plus size was called "manatee" because they wanted to make it clear that they hated you as much as you hated yourself.
Today I own a few designer pieces and make a half assed attempt to cobble together outfits by googling "how to style this jacquard skirt" or "what to wear with cream overalls." Much to my own detriment I also got a Nordstrom credit card. And much to my chagrin it turns out I kind of enjoy fashion and makeup and outfits and shit. But it has not been an easy task to acquire pieces that are both on time fashion-wise and fit my body right. What's a ho gotta do to spend her rent money on dresses these days?!
Now, I have never been a skinny girl, but I have lived as a straight-sized girl for a part of my life. Even then, of course, I was miserable and cruel to myself, angry that I had gone from a size 8 to a size 10. And then to a 12. And then a 14. And a 16. And now, at a size 18, I actually love myself more than I did all those sizes ago. That shit was a journey that I will explore at a later time. As it turns out I have curves that I LIKE. I like my sloping shoulders and my round hips and my hard-fought underbutt and yes, even my soft paunch. I don't want to hide my body under paisley couch fabric, I want to celebrate it. I want to develop my own taste and splash that all over my jiggly jugglies. I want to be able to be sexy and professional and causal and slouchy and do it all with my expression laced throughout. And I want to dress my body in cool clothes. In designer clothes. In professional clothes. And thanks to a growing movement of loud ass unapologetic fat women like Tess Holliday and Hunter McGrady and Ashley Graham stomping up to the fashion world and demanding clothes for all bodies, those options are becoming more available to me. Slowly. Too slowly.
But first, a brief history of plus-sized clothing and the self-hating cycle they perpetuated:
When I was in high school I was terrified of getting fat, not least of all because the plus-size clothing options were all square boxes of paisley print with high necklines and no definition whatsoever. Pants had elastic waistbands and pleats and sagged in the ass and drooped in the leg. It was like once the people who made clothes got beyond the straight sizes they were like I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO JUST MAKE IT WIDE! WIDER! I CAN'T LOOK AT THESE LAND WHALES COVER THEM UP OH MY GOD! MAKE THEM BLEND INTO THE COUCHES AND THE WALLPAPER SO I DON'T HAVE TO SEE THEM THE HORROR THE HORRORRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!! BUT ALSO MAKE EVERYTHING BRIGHTLY COLORED AND GARISH!
And I heard that message loud and clear. It took me a long time to acclimate to the body positive movement. I was repulsed by it at first, regurgitating to myself all the negative things American society had told me about women's bodies and how they "should" look. As my weight fluctuated wildly - from 160 pounds to 200 to 175 to 210 to 180 and all over in between I felt I was failing at the only thing I, as a woman, was SUPPOSED to do - be thin. It was Dorothy Perkins and ASOS that first opened my eyes to the fact that there were options for plus-sized women that were not the giant-mammal-named dresses in the "women's" section at Target (the fact that they have juniors-normal clothes-women's sections is telling). I told myself the problem was me. The boxy unflattering clothes were my punishment for a disobedient body, and if I wanted to wear pretty clothes again I needed to get my body in line.
A beacon from across the pond:
Then, the Brits came in. It doesn't come as a surprise that British brands were the first to accommodate a plus-size purchaser - the "ideal" size in Britain is a size 10. In America it is a size 4. Brits love a fat ass, and I was right up in there converting my dollars to GBP and paying shipping so I could get my sausage fingers on something resembling fashion. There were a solid few years where nearly everything I owned came from Dorothy Perkins or ASOS because they were literally the only retailers catering to bodies like mine. Nothing feels as good as buying a dress and having it just zip because it was made to fit a body like yours.
The US rubs the crust from its eyes aka capitalism beats body shame:
Slowly, the US market came to realize that there are a lot of women outside the "straight" size market who had both bodies and money to spend on them. The average size for women in the US is a 14. That meant that clothing retailers were deliberately icing out half of its potential consumer base,. Billions of dollars going to outside markets and retailers - so much so that within 2 years of it making it's wares available outside Great Britain ASOS was a market dominator for plus-sized clothing. US brands began running "extended sizing."
Ok you can have a little plus sized clothing, as a treat:
Forever 21 was one of the first major retailers to get on board, and even then they carried most of the extended sizes exclusively online, and the few storefronts that did carry the bigger sizes shoved all the fat girl clothes to a small back corner, corralling us away from the windows lest the sight of us deter the thinner customers from coming in. I haven't been inside a Forever 21 in about 6 years but I'd hazard a guess that they aren't putting the plus sizes on mannequins in the windows.
H&M jumped on board next, but for the roughly 4 trillion storefronts they have in NYC only the Herald Square location carries anything over a 14, and both of my visits there revealed a messy, neglected section of boring shapeless clothing. Again, their extended sizes are available only online. And this has become the trend. Brands like Madewell and Mango and Everlane are giving themselves a pat on the back for including 14 and up sizing, raising a glass of champagne to inclusiveness and body positivity. Yet they don't carry the sizes in their stores. I imagine they think they have struck the perfect balance of increasing revenue with our fat girl money without sacrificing their image with our fat girl bodies in their actual stores.
I just want to dress like Eldin from Murphy Brown forever:
I admit I was overjoyed when Madewell released their first limited run of extended sizing on some of its denim. Madewell is exactly my femme-tomboy aesthetic, so much so that I have been asked for help by customers when shopping there. I often perused their Soho store after work, though finding nothing in my size I only bought shoes and scarves. So to learn that I, too, would have access to their overpriced, ass-masking mom jeans was a revolution for me. Tragically, though, not a single Madewell store carried the additional sizes. All fat transactions had to be conducted online. Another message of "we want your money but not your body." And the smugness of the salespeople there and elsewhere with online-only plus sizes seemed to say, "you should be happy with what you've got. We made the fat jeans ok? What more do you want? You fatties are so greedy it's probably why you're fat."
Ok, maybe not ALL of that was conveyed with the snotty "THOSE sizes are online only," but the message was clear. You can have this as long as you keep it out of sight. Even plus size stalwarts like Loft, the fashion coward's more affordable Ann Taylor, who always carried at least to a size 16 in their stores had considered revamping their model, concentrating all the plus sizes in a
"Loft Plus" store and keeping the "Loft" brand to a straight-size store. I was fortunate to be able to participate in a focus group with the brand as the size 16 model and told the group of (notably all thin) women (and a few men) what it was like to be able to go into a store and just have clothes that fit, how degrading a "plus size" section of the exact same clothes feels, and how it often feels like the clothing industry is happy to take our money but pretends we don't exist by not catering to us in their stores. This was echoed by the size 18 model next to me. Now, I am not taking credit for this, but Loft did a 180 and is integrating their full range of sizes on the racks, from 0-26. And recently I went into the Madewell in Williamsburg (I know but the neighborhood is over so whatever) and found that they carried up to an XXL in tops and their extended line in like 2 of the 70 pairs of jeans they offer in the store. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
By Us For Us:
There has been a boom in plus-size only brands like Eloquii over the past few years. I have tried some pieces from Eloquii and they definitely understand how to cut clothes for a plus size body and create beautiful, albeit expensive, pieces for work and high-end events. These retailers mostly operate online only, with only a few storefronts in major metropolitan areas. Having the option is great, but I won't be satisfied until every store has plus sizes and those sizes are just called sizes and live with all the "regular" clothes and everything is just called clothes. You know, like they do in men's stores.
The Kids are Alright:
Brands have often made the excuse that catering to a size 14 and up isn't "aspirational." That seeing a fat body in a store would deter the brand's more "desirable" customers. For a long time I believed that. That the women who were shopping in these stores were side-eyeing the fatties, disgusted at our presence and feeling superior in their obedient bodies. And I was really, really wrong about that. The reality is that women are overwhelming supportive of one another. I find this evident as my peers are raising their kids. The Gen Z kids rise up with their own wave of feminism and it is increasingly clear that it is the retailer that is writing that narrative, not the consumer. I see young women of all sizes in the fight to stop fat-shaming and demanding clothes for everyone.
Indeed, every time I have been trying clothes in a store that carries my size I have had interactions with women of all sizes that have been overwhelmingly positive. "That looks good on you!" or "That doesn't fit your titties right but damn your tittes are great!" I have found more camaraderie in women's dressing rooms in NYC than I ever did in the Target back home. And even so, Target now carries entire lines of plus-sized clothing that are actually made for human bodies.
I am glad to see the availability of more and more clothes that fit my body, but until there is parody for everyone I will continue to give my clicks, my views, and my dollars to the retailers who are willing to step up, and hopefully leave the others *cough cough Abercrombie* in my fat ass dust.
Well that is over for now. It's 2020 and I resolve to make complaining great again. At least, until the last season of Schitt's Creek is available on Netflix because that schitt isn't going to watch itself.
Let's kick off the year right and bitch about fashun!
It was not until I moved to NYC that I had any awareness of fashion trends. Even now, I would not consider myself at all fashionable, but I read The Cut like once a week and my continued existence on Twitter means I am getting at least one Refinery29 listicle about how many pairs of snakeskin boots I need to be taken seriously in the workplace so I would say I have at least leveled up. Not that the bar was particularly high - the extent of my fashion taste in the midwest was what was available at Target. And not woke Target either - this was pre-Mizrahi pre Who What Wear Target when they made a gray dress in straight sizes called "dark gray" and the same dress in plus size was called "manatee" because they wanted to make it clear that they hated you as much as you hated yourself.
Today I own a few designer pieces and make a half assed attempt to cobble together outfits by googling "how to style this jacquard skirt" or "what to wear with cream overalls." Much to my own detriment I also got a Nordstrom credit card. And much to my chagrin it turns out I kind of enjoy fashion and makeup and outfits and shit. But it has not been an easy task to acquire pieces that are both on time fashion-wise and fit my body right. What's a ho gotta do to spend her rent money on dresses these days?!
Now, I have never been a skinny girl, but I have lived as a straight-sized girl for a part of my life. Even then, of course, I was miserable and cruel to myself, angry that I had gone from a size 8 to a size 10. And then to a 12. And then a 14. And a 16. And now, at a size 18, I actually love myself more than I did all those sizes ago. That shit was a journey that I will explore at a later time. As it turns out I have curves that I LIKE. I like my sloping shoulders and my round hips and my hard-fought underbutt and yes, even my soft paunch. I don't want to hide my body under paisley couch fabric, I want to celebrate it. I want to develop my own taste and splash that all over my jiggly jugglies. I want to be able to be sexy and professional and causal and slouchy and do it all with my expression laced throughout. And I want to dress my body in cool clothes. In designer clothes. In professional clothes. And thanks to a growing movement of loud ass unapologetic fat women like Tess Holliday and Hunter McGrady and Ashley Graham stomping up to the fashion world and demanding clothes for all bodies, those options are becoming more available to me. Slowly. Too slowly.
Embracing my curves in body con clothes. Also it was August in NYC. Sweaty.
But first, a brief history of plus-sized clothing and the self-hating cycle they perpetuated:
When I was in high school I was terrified of getting fat, not least of all because the plus-size clothing options were all square boxes of paisley print with high necklines and no definition whatsoever. Pants had elastic waistbands and pleats and sagged in the ass and drooped in the leg. It was like once the people who made clothes got beyond the straight sizes they were like I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO JUST MAKE IT WIDE! WIDER! I CAN'T LOOK AT THESE LAND WHALES COVER THEM UP OH MY GOD! MAKE THEM BLEND INTO THE COUCHES AND THE WALLPAPER SO I DON'T HAVE TO SEE THEM THE HORROR THE HORRORRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!! BUT ALSO MAKE EVERYTHING BRIGHTLY COLORED AND GARISH!
Literally no one is happy this exists
And I heard that message loud and clear. It took me a long time to acclimate to the body positive movement. I was repulsed by it at first, regurgitating to myself all the negative things American society had told me about women's bodies and how they "should" look. As my weight fluctuated wildly - from 160 pounds to 200 to 175 to 210 to 180 and all over in between I felt I was failing at the only thing I, as a woman, was SUPPOSED to do - be thin. It was Dorothy Perkins and ASOS that first opened my eyes to the fact that there were options for plus-sized women that were not the giant-mammal-named dresses in the "women's" section at Target (the fact that they have juniors-normal clothes-women's sections is telling). I told myself the problem was me. The boxy unflattering clothes were my punishment for a disobedient body, and if I wanted to wear pretty clothes again I needed to get my body in line.
A beacon from across the pond:
Then, the Brits came in. It doesn't come as a surprise that British brands were the first to accommodate a plus-size purchaser - the "ideal" size in Britain is a size 10. In America it is a size 4. Brits love a fat ass, and I was right up in there converting my dollars to GBP and paying shipping so I could get my sausage fingers on something resembling fashion. There were a solid few years where nearly everything I owned came from Dorothy Perkins or ASOS because they were literally the only retailers catering to bodies like mine. Nothing feels as good as buying a dress and having it just zip because it was made to fit a body like yours.
ASOS head to toe. Well the douchey hat came from Chinatown. Photo Credit: Emily Mueller
Slowly, the US market came to realize that there are a lot of women outside the "straight" size market who had both bodies and money to spend on them. The average size for women in the US is a 14. That meant that clothing retailers were deliberately icing out half of its potential consumer base,. Billions of dollars going to outside markets and retailers - so much so that within 2 years of it making it's wares available outside Great Britain ASOS was a market dominator for plus-sized clothing. US brands began running "extended sizing."
Ok you can have a little plus sized clothing, as a treat:
If you know you know
H&M jumped on board next, but for the roughly 4 trillion storefronts they have in NYC only the Herald Square location carries anything over a 14, and both of my visits there revealed a messy, neglected section of boring shapeless clothing. Again, their extended sizes are available only online. And this has become the trend. Brands like Madewell and Mango and Everlane are giving themselves a pat on the back for including 14 and up sizing, raising a glass of champagne to inclusiveness and body positivity. Yet they don't carry the sizes in their stores. I imagine they think they have struck the perfect balance of increasing revenue with our fat girl money without sacrificing their image with our fat girl bodies in their actual stores.
I just want to dress like Eldin from Murphy Brown forever:
Fashion Icon
Ok, maybe not ALL of that was conveyed with the snotty "THOSE sizes are online only," but the message was clear. You can have this as long as you keep it out of sight. Even plus size stalwarts like Loft, the fashion coward's more affordable Ann Taylor, who always carried at least to a size 16 in their stores had considered revamping their model, concentrating all the plus sizes in a
"Loft Plus" store and keeping the "Loft" brand to a straight-size store. I was fortunate to be able to participate in a focus group with the brand as the size 16 model and told the group of (notably all thin) women (and a few men) what it was like to be able to go into a store and just have clothes that fit, how degrading a "plus size" section of the exact same clothes feels, and how it often feels like the clothing industry is happy to take our money but pretends we don't exist by not catering to us in their stores. This was echoed by the size 18 model next to me. Now, I am not taking credit for this, but Loft did a 180 and is integrating their full range of sizes on the racks, from 0-26. And recently I went into the Madewell in Williamsburg (I know but the neighborhood is over so whatever) and found that they carried up to an XXL in tops and their extended line in like 2 of the 70 pairs of jeans they offer in the store. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
By Us For Us:
There has been a boom in plus-size only brands like Eloquii over the past few years. I have tried some pieces from Eloquii and they definitely understand how to cut clothes for a plus size body and create beautiful, albeit expensive, pieces for work and high-end events. These retailers mostly operate online only, with only a few storefronts in major metropolitan areas. Having the option is great, but I won't be satisfied until every store has plus sizes and those sizes are just called sizes and live with all the "regular" clothes and everything is just called clothes. You know, like they do in men's stores.
The Kids are Alright:
Brands have often made the excuse that catering to a size 14 and up isn't "aspirational." That seeing a fat body in a store would deter the brand's more "desirable" customers. For a long time I believed that. That the women who were shopping in these stores were side-eyeing the fatties, disgusted at our presence and feeling superior in their obedient bodies. And I was really, really wrong about that. The reality is that women are overwhelming supportive of one another. I find this evident as my peers are raising their kids. The Gen Z kids rise up with their own wave of feminism and it is increasingly clear that it is the retailer that is writing that narrative, not the consumer. I see young women of all sizes in the fight to stop fat-shaming and demanding clothes for everyone.
This is very different than the Teen Vogue I grew up with
Indeed, every time I have been trying clothes in a store that carries my size I have had interactions with women of all sizes that have been overwhelmingly positive. "That looks good on you!" or "That doesn't fit your titties right but damn your tittes are great!" I have found more camaraderie in women's dressing rooms in NYC than I ever did in the Target back home. And even so, Target now carries entire lines of plus-sized clothing that are actually made for human bodies.
I am glad to see the availability of more and more clothes that fit my body, but until there is parody for everyone I will continue to give my clicks, my views, and my dollars to the retailers who are willing to step up, and hopefully leave the others *cough cough Abercrombie* in my fat ass dust.
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