I have a significant love/hate relationship with the plus size catalogs. I speak here of the old standards, the Redcats Brigade (Roamans, Woman Within [though the title makes me gag], Jessica London, Chadwicks, et al); the seemingly indestructible Lane Bryant Catalog; Silhouettes, that catalog of items that frequently (and magically) look amazing on the page but are inevitably disappointing in person; Newport News, which never quite makes it out of the early 1990s, no matter how much time has passed.
I love the catalogs for the rare find. As is no doubt obvious by now, I strongly favor dresses for my everyday wear, and thus most of my shopping habits are shaped by the question of where I can find dresses, in my fatty size, all year round. Catalogs are pretty good for dresses, insofar as carrying them all the time. Whether they're the kind of dresses I'd like to wear is another matter. Though ultimately some of my very favorite pieces (the previously extolled trapeze dress, for instance) were discovered as a result of scavenging through these often unfortunately-fashioned catalogs, for the most part, my catalog patrols simply serve to remind me of how dreadful a lot of plus-size apparel really is. And I have the good fortune to live in a country and a metropolitan area in which my options are fairly broad (Fatshionista.com Pun #477489, right there) - I can remember my teenage miseries, before they really made cute, youthful plus-size clothes, all too well. Said miseries involved jamming myself (literally, painfully) into size 18 jeans from Lerner's. Because there was nowhere else to go for a fat fourteen-year-old.
I swear, I partly keep my catalog surveys up to remind myself of those days. So you can imagine my surprise today when Jessica London yielded a couple of possible winners.
The catalog calls this one the Polka-Dot Crepe Dress. I should note that I am heavily partial to non-stretch, non-jersey fabrics. Jersey looks wonderful on some folks, but it's particularly unflattering on me, because it has a tendency to highlight my middle-fat (in case folks weren't already bored with hearing about my apple-pear hybrid shape). It also feels very casual to me, and if it's not already obvious, I have issues with complusive overdressing. But I digress.
My point is, I'm seriously digging this dress, at least in the picture on the website. It's fitted, it's non-stretch, and the big-dots print is mesmerizing. One of my personal pet peeves is prints that are out of scale with me - cutesy little calico-printed summer dresses look ridiculously disproportionate and downright unbalanced on my size-26 body, no matter how much I like the idea of dressing up like Laura Ingalls Wilder (who was, truthfully, one of my childhood idols). Bigger prints fit me better. Thus, the dress drew my eye immediately based on that alone.
Add to that the surplice front, which flatters almost everyone, and the vaguely retro ruching on the sleeves, and I'm sold, just about. Catalogs like Jessica London tend to play to women who dress more conservatively - this is partly why I have such a time finding things I like in them, but it also means that occasionally, the more conservative cuts and styles wind up looking faintly retro, yet in a simple and modern (i.e. non-costumey) way.
Possibly-Cute Dress Number Two, inventively called the JL Studio Tucked-Front Dress by the catalog, owes a pretty obvious debt to the Project Runway Bitten dress, subject of frequent discussion on the Fatshionista LiveJournal community. Okay, maybe less frequent than I imagine, but they're discussions I've paid attention to, as I was wondering if, given the dress's generous cut, I might be able to cram my fat self into the XXL version.
I think I may prefer this Jessica London option, though. For one, the bust is fitted. Yes, I love swingy trapeze cuts, but I love a good empire line too. For another, it's a bit longer. Yes, I usually favor dangerously short dresses, but it's also nice to have the option of going without tights or leggings in warmer temperatures, without having to worry about showing my ass every time I bend over or sit down. I also like the color, partial to browns and neutrals as I am. The Bitten dress comes in burgundy and black, and it may be that they very last thing on earth I need is yet another burgundy or black dress.
Shifting gears, I also wanted to take a moment here to wax indignant on a personal fatshion Don't: the need some designers and manufacturers have to take a
perfectly serviceable, even lovely dress in a delightful print and then
violate it with totally unnecessary and superfluous SEQUINS.
I hate sequins - actually I hate sparkly embellishments of all kinds. It's just one of my things. So when I first saw the obviously-named JL Studio™ Print Dress, I was enraptured. The colors! The neckline! The print! If ever a dress had my name on it, this was the one.
Until I read the description, which reads, in part: "Flattering flutter-sleeve print dress with a sprinkling of sequins down the front."
A SPRINKLING of SEQUINS, down the FRONT. Like the wearer was eating a sequin-enhanced dinner roll, which left attractive crumbs down the front of her garment as a delightful and sparkly reminder of the meal (I'm not the only fatass this happens to, am I? I mean with ordinary dinner rolls, not sequin-enhanced ones).
The zoom view on the Jessica London website does indeed confirm the existence of the sprinkled sequins. Horror. I would adore this dress if not for that. Honestly, LOOK at it. Look at the PRINT. It doesn't need embellishing, and it certainly doesn't need sprinkling.
Superfluous sequins aside, this particular catalog has done well, even by my high standards. And this just further proves to me that I am justified in stubbornly investigating even the unlikeliest places for quirky fatty fashion.
It's partly the challenge that draws me, I think. Can I find the one decent item in this Catalog Wasteland? YES I CAN.
Recently, producers of a popular television quiz program got in contact with my work, and asked my boss to submit the name of a potential participant from our office. Being a bit of a trivia nerd, I was put forward, and so I’ve been sent an application form to fill out. The form includes a space to attach a photo, so I’ve been going through my collection trying to figure out which one would be most appropriate.
Because I’d be representing my organization, I would likely be appearing in uniform—not exactly the most fatshionable of garments, although I’ve taken pains over the years to ensure that I have one that is in good shape and fits me properly. I decided that it would be best to use a photo of me in uniform, which really limits the photos I can choose from.
A couple of months ago, there was a great photo and interview spread of me, in uniform, in the local paper, talking about my work. My boss, and just about everyone else I’ve spoken with, has been encouraging me to use that photo. And it is a nice photo of me: the composition of it is excellent, and it’s a pretty accurate representation.
The reason I felt reluctant to use it shames me, deeply—so much so that I was really hesitant to make this post.
See, I made the mistake of looking at the quiz show’s website and checking out photos of their past participants. While they weren’t exactly models and rock stars, I can’t find a single person in that photo gallery who is fat.
The photo of me in the paper is a relatively flattering one, but it’s also a photo in which I am very evidently Fat with a capital F. The photographer who snapped the picture is apparently the only person in the business who hasn’t heard of the Fat Girl Angle.
It doesn’t bother me that I’m fat. It didn’t bother me that everyone who buys the paper in the town where I work knows I’m fat. But it bothered me that I might be excluded from a really cool opportunity based on the fact that I’m fat—and it bothered me enough that I considered doing a FGA photo shoot in an effort to get my fat little foot in the door. I rationalized, thusly: if I did succeed and was chosen, then they would have no choice but to put my fat ass on television, which would be a victory not just for me, but for fatties everywhere. Also, I thought, it wasn’t fair that I could be turned down for being fat. I should have the same opportunity as anyone else. So if I had the capacity to hide my fatness, why shouldn’t I take it?
Recently, more than few fat bloggers that I am proud to call friends have been in the news (because apparently the light from the Fatosphere has finally travelled the necessary number of light years to be visible from Earth). And it reminds me that what we’ve worked at for so long is the opportunity to be seen, and heard, and enjoyed for the fantastic individuals we are.
I recognize that there are a million other reasons why I could be turned down—all other things being equal, I’m not what you would call “TV pretty” (a fact that has never particularly bothered me as it hasn’t impacted my quality of life in any way). And don’t get me wrong, it pisses me right off that I could miss out on a cool opportunity, and always be left wondering if it was because of The Fat.
But it pisses me off even more that something as inane as a television show could have the power to make me feel as though hiding or disguising my fat body was the right decision, even for a moment. Because that is how they get you. That is how the system works on you from inside yourself, wearing you down until one day you find your self-esteem being drop-kicked in the junk by a Weight Watchers ad and you wonder, how did I get here?
No more, though. I'm going to send in my fat photo and I'm going to be, as ABC would put it, "bloated and gloating." And I guess we'll see what happens next.
The bitch about thrifting as a fat girl is that nothing fits.
Well, maybe that's a bit of a generalization. It's true that some fat
folk do score mightily on the thrift-shop battlefield - that rare breed
of vintage-committed fatty, possessed of the courage and persistence to
dig, dig, dig, refusing to abandon the fray without a bloodied,
hard-won trophy clutched in hir hand.
The extended metaphor is a bit much, but you get the idea of how I
personally feel about thrifting. I hate it. I hated it less when I
was less fat - in my first couple of years of college, when I was a few
sizes smaller and subsisting primarily on tightly-rationed top ramen
and breakfast cereal, I used to regularly visit the fabled and fabulous
Garment District in Cambridge, MA. The plus options were sorely limited,
but they were there, at least if you were a broke-ass student willing
to spend hours on a weekday morning engaged in the aforementioned
digging and digging and digging. My Best Garment District Score Ever
was a 1960s-era taffeta party dress, complete with crinoline, in white
with big black egg-shaped polka dots all over. It fit me like a
glove. It was GLORIOUS. Of course, I wasn't into dresses back then. I
would go so far as to say I was vigorously opposed to dresses at the
time. Hated them, even. So I bought this remarkable dress, took it
back to my dorm, and immediately "altered" it. For "altered," in the
last sentence, read "butchered". I think I was trying to make a skirt,
but I only succeeded in murdering this beautiful, innocent, pristine
vintage shiny-taffeta creature. These days I think of it on a level
with stumbling unawares upon a lone, happy unicorn on a walk through a
forest, and responding to the beautiful and unique experience by
slaughtering the thing. Unforgiveable.
The point I am coming to is about scarcity.
Stylish,
high-quality, well-fitting, affordable plus-size apparel is a scarce
resource. That may well be an understatement - the fact is it's often
damn near impossible to find, and the difficulty is directly related to
the size of the person looking. Scarcity, I would argue, is probably
the primary guiding principle of most fat-girl shopping.
Depending on the garment, the fabric, the fit, and the
manufacturer, I generally wear sizes between 22 and 28 on the standard
US plus-size spectrum, most often landing in the middle of that range,
in a 24 or 26. I cannot drop into trendy misses-sized stores and find
something that fits by happy accident - Forever 21, Urban,
Anthropologie, and H&M can supply me with shoes and accessories,
sometimes, but that's it. Thus, when I do find something in my size,
that I like, my tendency is to buy it in multiples. I find a cute
dress, I'll buy it in two or three colors. I do this because I am
literally haunted by the certainty that I Will Never Find A Cute Dress
Again. Much of my shopping is ruled by my complete understanding that
any day now, my options could be ripped away, damning me to a
miserable, suffocating, antifashionable (of course, in the eye of the
beholder) polyester hell. That I am, essentially, at the mercy of the
handful of plus-size manufacturers that create these clothes - should
they decide ponchos are all the rage, as they did a few years back,
then I am doomed for a season, as in a poncho I look like a sad, fat
donkey unexpectedly transported from hauling goods on a mountain trail
and plunked down in the midst of the bustling streets of Boston, and
their tidily-attired inhabitants. It's not attractive.
I'm sure there's plenty of fat folks less concerned with scarcity
than
I am. I likewise acknowledge that there's plenty of fat folks who
think this sort of Strategic Shopping is a waste of time and energy,
not to mention money, as there are certainly better ways of spending
one's cash, if one is in the eviable position of having the disposable
income to blow. And it probably says something about me as a good
little consumer that I have, on occasion, actually been kept awake at
night thinking about that dress I didn't buy, The One That Got Away.
Nevertheless, in my ever-vigilant efforts to offset the inevitable dry
season, the one in which the big trends are in catastrophic opposition
to my own personal sense of style, I employ a hunter-gatherer model and
stock up on multiples of the things I like. I also frequently buy
things on impulse, because I can never be sure they'll still be there
should I resist the purchase and then later change my mind. Sometimes
this is a smart move, as I actually work through any garment backlog
over time. More often this results in an oft-ridiculous surplus, and I
am compelled to offload my excess. Which leads into my forthcoming
Survival Tip #3. Tags: survival tipsthrifting for plus sizescrimes against vintagescarcitystocking up for the fat apocalypse
When I was 6 years old I started to gain weight. Maybe it’s because I
realized a new love for nectarines and vanilla ice cream, but either
way my little girl thighs started to strut their stuff on the
playground thicker than before. I wasn’t concerned, I never cared much
for my thighs or stomach anyway, I was too worried about the plight of
dirt or the safety of earthworms in the sandbox. And anyway, I liked
the shape of my hips under my pink flowered bathing suit and the red
burn my thick thighs took on after too many hours saving earthworms in
the sun.
Thighs: in-between, thick, strong, my strength,
joints, balls, connects and buffers, my connection to my center,
protection and defense, my protection, my power and me
This morning, I walked into the bathroom shared with my roommate to find this:
And now I get to wake up every morning to the words THINNER. Ugh.
I imagine there was an actual meeting to discuss what to name the scale company and a consensus that the word "THINNER" would be great motivation for us.
I spent the majority of my teenage and young adult years associating
with the goth and punk subcultures, and dressing accordingly.
Wearing
floor-length black velvet on the MBTA on a sunny day in July will get you
some strange looks if you're alone; and if you're with a group it'll
get you some strange comments too. Likewise with torn fishnets,
miniskirts and visible garters, and any other clothing whose material
integrity is maintained only by hundreds of safety pins. I'd heard it
all before long. Halloween jokes. "Hey, you've got a run in your
stockings!" It wasn't always directed at me - I wasn't particularly
over the top in my style choices, by subcultural standards, and
typically the harrassment I got had to do with being fat as much as my
efforts at visually highlighting my outsider status. But I
had friends who were very over the top. And I got to bear witness to
how they dealt with it.
Seeing these harrassment-management skills in action was profoundly educational for me, since for the most part, I
and my friends responded to this rudeness and harrassment with
undisguised rage and disgust. Nobody took it lying down. Nobody slunk
away, chastened, embarrassed. We yelled back. We jumped up and down
and shrieked "Boo!", threatened to consume people's brains, and the
like.
As a result, in my adulthood, there is very little that
strangers can say to me about my stylistic choices that will get under
my skin. Not that it happens often, but no matter the unsubtle stare
or the shout from a moving car, it rolls off me. Because all I think
is, "I've been called a zombie/freak/prostitute in dulcimer screams by
packs of drunken frat boys! I've been followed down dark empty streets at
2AM!" It's difficult for me to be upset or hurt by relatively mild
criticism in adulthood, after that sort of thing. Frankly, it's
difficult for me to do anything in the face of it except laugh.
My choices then and my choices now are still built on one principle.
That principle being my unwillingness to be invisible.
In
my teens I really had no fat "awareness", so to speak, except the
standard awareness that told me I was fat (actually, if we want to get
particular about it, it told me I was "overweight"), and that I had a
responsibility to do everything I could to not be fat. It's true that
subcultures are often more forgiving of bodies that would be otherwise
problematic in mainstream culture. A million fat girls in corsets know
this and are grateful for it. It's true that I felt less an outsider
surrounded by other self-appointed outsiders. But I also think that a
part of the appeal for me was that my subcultural association enabled
me to resist the smothering by the impulse to just live on, comfortably
invisible, an invisible fat girl, of whom no one expects anything, who
can be easily ignored (unless singled out, unless teased, though it's
over soon enough), blending silently into a foggy background, filling
space faceless in a crowd.
Even now there are moments when I wish I could drag that
invisibility over my head like a blanket and disappear. Like, at a
party. Or a work-related function. But I don't indulge them. I no
longer know how. I've spent my entire adult life striving to stand
out, willfully drawing the attention of people around me, refusing to
sit down and be quiet, refusing to vanish. Drawing attention does not
mean I get to choose what kind of attention I get. If it's negative, I
have to take it. And I honestly wouldn't change that.
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About
Fatshionista is a full-fat and diet-free blog dealing with body politics and cultural criticism. It is mostly written by Lesley Kinzel, who can be reached via email at lesley@fatshionista.com. More info on Lesley and the occasional contributors can be found here. Until we have a formal FAQ page, some questions and answers can be found here.
The catalog calls this one the 
The extended metaphor is a bit much, but you get the idea of how I
personally feel about thrifting. I hate it. I hated it less when I
was less fat - in my first couple of years of college, when I was a few
sizes smaller and subsisting primarily on tightly-rationed top ramen
and breakfast cereal, I used to regularly visit the fabled and fabulous
I spent the majority of my teenage and young adult years associating
with the goth and punk subcultures, and dressing accordingly.
