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Martha Wilson's avatar

As a fat lady, I felt like I hacked the matrix when I searched for plus size bras and underwear and then started getting ads on my social media all the time. A constant, daily stream of fat ladies in underwear in my feed. It did so much good for my own self image! Using the algorithm for good!

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Sarah's avatar

I was a very tall eighth grade girl-- I hadn't quite hit six feet yet but I was six to eight inches taller than all my friends. This was not cool at the time and believe me no amount of "I wish I were tall like you" will ever erase the daily chorus of 'too tall' from the boys lined up outside the girls locker room before gym class. There is nothing so "flattering" that it will hide that tall. And somehow knowing that gave me the freedom to briefly stop trying for cool. I immediately started "borrowing" my dad's pullovers and flannel shirts. Which were huge on me, but did hide the fact that in addition to being very tall, I had also been recently and decisively mauled by the boob fairy.

Coincidentally it was1994, and grunge was cool, but I didn't really know that (my parents raised me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of NPR commentators and the haziest notion of popular culture).

Which ironically somehow lead to me briefly inspiring a craze in the popular girls for wearing their dad's wool pullovers in earth tones. It was utterly surreal to have several of them sidle up to me and ask where I got the gigantically oversized (my dad is 6'5" and solid) sweaters I wore every day. Mutual incomprehension as I and girls who flew to Seattle to go school shopping both struggled with the realization that I'd accidentally been cool somehow and Nordstrom wasn't involved.

I wish I could claim that this started me on the road to being a proto-influencer and sometime fashion rockstar. It didn't. The popular girls and fashion moved on, and I got taller, and remained bad at dressing myself, but I had learned one indelible lesson, "I can't beat them, I can't join them, but sometimes if I'm are obdurate enough they might join me." And that was helpful for me.

When my partner first described me to his mother he said, "she has clearly realized that she cannot blend in, so she's decided to stand out."

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