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Folks who know me from elsewhere on these big wild internets are familiar with my on-again, off-again photo exploration of my body, loosely termed the Autobiography Photo Project. When I first began this effort early last year, I explained it thusly:
In self portraits I tend to look brittle and afraid, if not guarded and defensive.
I
suspect that this is because I don't trust my ability to see myself
clearly - I don't trust my capacity to accurately (?) reproduce a me
that is either imaginary and existing only in my head, or concrete as
the external world sees me.
Never mind that the external world
no doubt sees me in a thousand different ways, mostly depending on
whether there is any prexisting hatred or disgust toward fat people
present in the mind of the person looking.
Self portraits scare
me a bit because, paradoxically, they represent a loss of control. If
the pictures I take of myself don't look the way I expect, don't match
the self-image in my head, how can I even know what I look like? And is
it important and worrisome if I don't? My life as a fat girl has been
virtually defined by this question - we can't know the things we shouldn't
wear, the way we shouldn't stand or sit, the things that will draw
attention, will make people laugh or be disgusted - we can't avoid
those condemning glances if we don't know what we really look like. How fat we really
are. But this can't be measured in any quantifiable way. I can't ever
know how every last person sees me - I can't control their perspective
and their focus. Not with a thousand photographs, or a decade spent
staring in a mirror.
(I also have issues of vanity wrapped up in
this - are fat people entitled to be vain? Is self-portraiture always
an exercise in vanity?)
So I'm embarking on another photo
project - a pretty difficult one - in which I want to analyze and
illustrate and process my self-portrait fears. This means putting my
body out there. More to the point, though, it means putting my face out
there. Headless fat bodies are a dime a dozen, man - my face, unsure of
it as I am, makes me a person, an individual. Showing my face
frequently, and honestly, and unapologetically, is probably harder than
showing my entire naked body would be. But I'm going to do it anyway.
Though much of the above is still true, it was also a matter of honestly not knowing what 5'9" and 300 pounds looks like. It's a natural inclination, culturally speaking, for folks to lie about their weight, or even fudge the number a bit, but this contributes to the impossibility of knowing how fat a certain person really is, at a given weight. The Illustrated BMI Project being run by Kate Harding of the excellent Shapely Prose provides an excellent example of which bodies "count" as overweight, obese, and morbidly obese, according to medical definitions.
My original project, though only individual in scale compared to the above example, states that, "This is what 5'9" and 300+ pounds looks like." Having recently taken it up again, from a different angle, the new project also says, "This is still what 5'9" and 300+ pounds looks like." Though I began the project to explore some issues of my own, I realized later, though people's responses to it, that the audience's take was very different from mine. And thus it's become a sort of chronicling of what my size looks like, on me.
I am coming to a point here.
My point is: trapeze dresses.
There's not a lot of love out there for trapeze dresses amongst fatties. Call it post-muumuu stress. Call it an unwillingness to part with the hard-won self-confidence to wear clothing that doesn't disguise, obscure, or otherwise hide one's fatness. These are totally understandable positions to take.
However, I love the trapeze dress.
It's shapeless. Some would call it frumpy. It essentially hangs from my shoulders, and it doesn't merely mask my fatness, it totally obliterates the natural shape of my body. I could be hiding a watermelon or several loaves of bread under there, and nobody'd know.
My shape tends toward the apple more than the pear - I have little to offer in the way of a defined waist, and am fattest through my midsection and upper hips. As a result, I've spent years striving to perfect the art of Waist Faking. Wrap dresses work well for this, as do v-necks, as do partly-buttoned jackets and cardigans. I can fake it! I can. But I don't necessarily always want to. Sometimes it'd be nice to feel good in an outfit that works with my body and not against it.
Learning to love the trapeze has been, for me, an short re-education in self-expression. And even a bit of a revelation. I get to control how people see me. Agency! For years this meant I got to decide to wear clothing that fit, that showed the shape of my body. The freedom and confidence to dress to fit one's fat body and not hide it is, absolutely, a revolutionary experience, especially for a girl who lived in jeans and baggy t-shirts for most of her life. But it is equally revolutionary, for me, to choose not to put myself out there as a curvy, slightly more acceptable, fake-voluptuous shape. I ain't voluptuous. And if I don't feel like faking a shape my body doesn't fit, I'm not going to do so. If I want to wear a big voluminous sack of a dress and to feel good and happy and attractive in it, then it is because of fat acceptance that I feel capable of doing so.
It's true that outside observers might see me, a fat person, in a big poofy dress, and think I'm ashamed of my body. I know some folks will always hate the trapeze dress. And some folks find the idea of wearing one themselves unthinkable, because it simply wouldn't work for them. I personally refuse to prescribe the trapeze dress to certain bodies, or shapes, or groups; and I care virtually nothing for broad concepts of what is "flattering", nor do I care what strangers might assume about me based on how I'm dressed. I tend to think if it feels good, I should wear it, regardless of what other folks might read into it.
I wore the above to my birthday dinner this year, and felt fabulous the whole evening.
And I would argue that that's ultimately was good fatshion should do - not fit in with a trend, or meet a cultural expectation - it should simply pass on that feeling of fabulousness.
Readers have left 8 comments. No.1 Untitled
....what I want to know is, being that I am about the same size and shape...Wherefore did thy get the dress?
And consider this an "amen" from the congregation regarding the difficulty of NOT being an hourglass when a lot of the celebration of fuller-figured women has to do with "curves." No.2 Untitled
The dress, believe it or not, was a random find in the Roaman's catalog. Here's a link: http://tinyurl.com/3b4c9c No.3 Untitled
As someone who once posted an OOTD which practically started World War 3, (featuring a non-hourglass-emphasising dress), I have to say totally agree with you on every point you make.
I'm a damned awkward shape to dress, (the unfortunate love child of an apple and an hourglass and incredibly short-waisted with it), and sometimes I just can't be arsed to fake it either. On days like that I just want to slip something over my dodgy proportions that's a fabulous colour or has a brilliant print, accessorise accordingly and just truck on with my day.
I also wanted to make the point that often one's "signature style" can be born as a result from a dearth of choice. The UK is light years behind the US when it comes to plus-size fashion. For many years I didn't have the option of dressing like I currently do. Like you I'm a total dress freak, and the clothing shop that does me proud the most these days didn't cater to my size until a couple of years ago - and, even then, it took them a while to get it right. For many years I was forced to make the best choices I could from a limited selection in a way that vaguely approximated one aspect of my sartorial personality. And because there is a part of me that actually likes 80s-style oversized, unstructured clothing, sometimes I still like to dress that way. I lurked on fatshionista for a year before I first posted because I felt my looser, non-fitted outfits would be mistaken for hiding - and I was proven right on that score. I personally look like crap in a trapeze dress but I love empire-line clothes and am delighted they have both come back into fashion if only because it gives me an opportunity to dress like the skinny folk for a change. No.4 Untitled
Thanks for posting the link! I looked at your flickr links yesterday (after I posted the comment) and saw that it came from Roamans - then spent an hour trying to find it. I didn't see anything with a high neck and long sleeves, so I was all "well, shit, she must have bought it last year". Now that I look more closely at the picture, I can tell you're wearing a shirt underneath. I might have to order one and see how I like it. No.5 Untitled
But it is equally revolutionary, for me, to choose not to put myself out there as a curvy, slightly more acceptable, fake-voluptuous shape.
yes. Yes. YES. YESSSS!!!
this is how i feel about donning layers and brights, and anything else that might be mistaken as "hiding" or "camoflage." i was an inbetweenie for most of my fat life, and since becoming more firmly plus, my shape morphed considerably from its former "hourglass ideal."
when i was more of hourglass, i was troubled with the idea that unless i was "playing up my shape" (read: wearing club wear) i wasn't "doing myself justice." now that i'm pretty much a figure 8, i'm even more loathe to dress in a way that recaptures a shape i never "did justice" in the first place.
speaking of layers... how's that for convoluted? No.6 Untitled
I think you've got way too much style for anyone to be confused enough to think that you are ashamed of/hiding your body. I'm still trying to rework my wardrobe and haven't quite landed on a style per se, but I must tell you you're quite the inspiration, I love your outfits. No.7 Untitled
But it is equally revolutionary, for me, to choose not to put myself out there as a curvy, slightly more acceptable, fake-voluptuous shape.
I'm still coming to terms with this. For now I'm at that stage where more fitted looks are a way of claiming that even my big apple belly can be sexy. But I've been looking at the trapeze dress with interest from afar. Indeed, the last dress I bought and altered, with an empire waistline, seemed to be masking my belly. And while it was flattering, I kept asking myself "why am I hiding my body shape?"
But I like your idea of agency, of controlling how the world sees your body. As someone who also formerly hid behind jogging shirts and long, shapeless clothing - I have a hard time breaking away from the mindset that style of clothing ISN'T just for "hiding". No.8 Untitled
You know, it's weird -- I love your pictures and think you look great in your trapeze dress. I have the same basic body type, but I tried on a trapeze dress the other day at Kohl's and couldn't get the thing off fast enough, lol. I guess I felt like I was wearing a nightgown or something, plus I'm still getting used to dressing my body the way it is, not the way I want it to be, if that makes sense. I love the idea of the trapeze dress, but I haven't been able to get it to work for me, yet.
I also agree that you have too much style for someone to think you're hiding your body. It's obvious that your outfits are put together with thought. |
