leupagus

So the other day, I was cruising around tumblr, like you do, and I came across an essay written by inkdot. I am cut'n'pasting on the theory that it's a slightly more work-intensive way of reblogging:


***

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

***

I read this and was like, holy shit. Because I'd never really thought about it before -- or rather, I'd kind assumed any variety in my sizes (I go from about a 12 to a 16, or from an XL to a 3XL, depending on what bizarre measuring system is used) was because I was just... you know, fat. I've self-identified as overweight my entire life, and aside from a brief time in high school where I strived (and failed) to get under 150 lbs, I've made a choice every day to not let it bother me. My other health indicators are fine, I can run further (if not faster) than many of my friends, I eat healthy, yadda yadda yadda yadda.

But with all my body acceptance, I've never really dressed up, because, as I've said before, dressing up shows you at your best and I've never wanted to show anyone my best, in case it wasn't good enough. I think I look fine -- but I have had insults and commentary and opinions thrown at me on a consistent if not constant basis, and I'm very much aware that most of American society views me as unacceptable, no matter what I'm wearing. And when I dress nicely and still have those insults thrown at me, it makes the whole effort seem pretty pointless.

Because another thing this whole dress-up adventure is teaching me is that what I've been battling all this time, and what people have been insulting me about all this time, isn't really the fact that I'm overweight, or fat , or whatever -- it's that I take up so much room. I'm extra large, in every sense of the word: I fill up the seat on an airplane with my behind; when I turn sideways to get by someone in a narrow corridor, I don't actually reduce my width by all that much; in pictures with my more slender friends, I am bigger than they are. And that's something I've been told (by society, by my mother, by my own inner voice) is unfeminine and undesirable. Women are supposed to be small, not because we should be slender, but because we should take up as little space as possible and we should certainly never be bigger than the smallest, skinniest man out there. And a fat woman violates that rule just by existing.

So on the principle of "haters to the left," I've been buying pretty new clothes and lots of dresses (because I really do love dresses) and buying them in the size that fits me without castigating me about what that label says. Most of the clothes have fit me (although everyone who recommended Modcloth to me gets a stinkeye, because let me tell you I bought like ten things from there and NONE of them were even remotely big enough) and by and large I'm enjoying this new sartorial adventure. So I decided to put inkspot's theory to the test; I found a nifty place here in LA that will make a dress custom-made for you, using your measurements and taking multple fittings to ensure a perfect fit. The shop owner was also the person who made my dress, and we chatted about Libya and London during the riots while NPR played softly in the background (I really don't know why more stores don't have NPR on; there's nothing more soothing than Michelle Norris and Robert Siegel taking you patiently through the news of the day) and I got to pick out the fabric I wanted (a dark green cotton blend, very pretty) and yesterday, I got the completed dress.

It's nice. I look fine.

What I don't look? Thin. Sexy. Pretty. Or even particularly attractive, really. I looked at myself in the mirror while the lady made sure the fit was perfect (it was) and came to the slow realization that this was, in fact, as good as it was possible for me to look. I thanked the lady, took off the dress, and drove around for about an hour trying to figure out why I wasn't crying with disappointment. After all, the magic bullet - getting something custom-made for your shape - hadn't magic-bullet-ly made me look like someone in Vogue magazine. But even though I hadn't worn the dress out the door full of confidence and le sexie, I was feeling pretty good, which was... weird. And twenty-four hours later, I think I've come up with a reason why.

It's because my best, in fact, isn't good enough - the exact thing I've been afraid of for all these years - and I don't care. My best will never look like a model or a movie star or a fitness guru, and while there's nothing wrong with that, I think there's something deeply fucked up with wanting that. Someone once said "It's not my job to visually please you," and I think I've finally come to terms with that idea. It's a pleasure to visually please myself - I have this one dress from Heartbreaker Fashions that I wear all the time and I love how it looks and how it feels - but it's something I do if I want to. I don't know how to articulate my thought process any better than this -- basically, I'm realizing that it's okay for me to look however I want to look, whatever size that is. Because you know what? Every pound and every cubic inch of me is fucking awesome.

And right now, I'm totally wearing that dress. I don't look great - but I feel fantastic.

cherrybina, you should totally come out here so we can go shoe-shopping.