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!
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."
Y’all, I’ve just learned to sew this year, and it’s absolutely liberating in the exact way ahp is describing! My basic outfit of leggings and hoodies has become MY stuff, and it fits MY body perfectly, and if there aren’t any pockets it’s my own damn fault for skipping them. And the communities! Hobby sewists seem to congregate almost completely on fb, but of course they have instas too. They’re *diverse as fuck.* The pattern and fabric groups I follow are firmly inclusive to all sizes, genders, etc. And once you get past the very basics of how to make a shirt, it’s all SO creative. So many ways to express myself!
"Flattering" as code for "makes you look smaller" is definitely bullshit, but there really are clothes that look better, to each of us, on our own personal bodies, than other clothes do! Smallification is just the wrong criterion.
"Do you like it?" is the right criterion, as AHP says - "trust your own damn self" - but it's possible to break that down and discover *what* you like about a garment. Certain things give me a strong YES! RIGHT! feeling on my body: capri length, miniskirts, deep narrow v necks, high waists, cap sleeves, big hair on top of my head, certain shades of blue and green. Other people seem to agree - maybe because of some universal aesthetic principle (the Golden Mean? complementary colors? here insert the "math lady" meme please), or maybe just because I feel good when I wear those things.
AND ALSO - in clothing sewing, there are specific things about garments which indicate whether or not they were constructed for any particular type of body. This is specifically for conventional western-style clothing and 100% subject to personal veto, but I've found it really helpful to consciously look at this fit language - a language that nearly all of us are aware of on some level, ie we can tell when a garment is or isn't made for our size and shape, even when we fit into it. (Hello, fellow 5'1" people!) This is from Sandra Betzina's book _Fast Fit_:
"Good fit is a combination of two components: A garment must look good and must be comfortable. Although the concept of good fit varies depending on our different shapes and tastes, here are some criteria that can be used as a general guideline to determine whether a garment fits:
- Vertical seams are perpendicular to the floor
- Darts point to an area of fullness, end just before the full area, and have no pouch where they end
- Shoulder seams are positioned at the shoulder joint, allowing a smooth fit over the upper chest
- The garment back has some ease but no horizontal or vertical wrinkles
- Sleeves don't bind or twist and don't have wrinkles that run across the cap or up and down
- Necklines are comfortable. On a jewel neck, the front neckline rides just above the clavicle, and the back neckline is positioned where the clasp of a necklace sits.
- Waistline seams are not too tight or too loose and have no wrinkles under them or under the waistband
- The hemline is even and parallel to the floor
- Center front lines meet, which means that the garment is able to be buttoned without being overfitted
- A dress or very fitted jacket with a high-cut armhole does not rise as the arm is raised. (Because of the ease in a looser-fit jacket or coat, raising the arm will cause the garment to rise as well, which is perfectly acceptible.)
These criteria may seem obvious, but they can sometimes be elusive when we put on a new garment and can't put a finger on why we aren't happy with it."
With rare exception, all of these things are possible to achieve on any body! But it does require skill, knowledge, time and/or money (ie you have to be able to sew/alter your clothes yourself, or pay someone else to do it). Sadly, mainstream ready-to-wear fashion is headed in the opposite direction as quickly as possible - fewer sizes, more stretch fabrics, and absolutely no consideration of the difference between "I fit into this garment" and "this garment fits me."
Mary Lambert just posted a video on Facebook today talking about how, for ostensibly body-positive or fat-positive folks to get over the cognitive dissonance of "all bodies are good bodies but my body has to look this way," they could try thinking about their body the way they did as a little kid and specifically getting dressed like you did as a kid, not looking in the mirror, just picking stuff that you think looks cool or feels good. I don't think this is a universal solution, I know plenty of kids who did not have that experience as youths for one reason or another, but even so, we can try to give ourselves that experience now.
I’m struggling with clothes for the first time in my life. As a teenager, I never felt like I was “pretty” or exceptionally “cool”, but I do feel like I had a very concrete sense of style inspired by Delia’s catalogues and old music videos and album cover art. I remember sewing bell-bottoms into skinny jeans a decade before skinny jeans were available. I remember pairing chokers from Hot Topic with preppy shirts because I thought it was stylishly ironic. I thought, okay I’m not pretty but I feel good about my clothes — and I know this is largely due to the fact that I was thin and I never worried about what looked flattering. This was true for me for years, throughout my 20s and into my early 30s. Over time, I found styles I liked and continued to wear them even if I generally seemed way overdressed compared to my friends (like, bodycon midi dresses and high-waisted skirts).
Now, for the first time in my life, in my mid 30s, all that joy and confidence in clothing has been upended. I *thought* I had mentally progressed past my internal fatphobia but I realize now that in actuality, I was just well-versed in the language from reading the right authors but I hadn’t internalized it. I gave birth earlier this year and making peace with my new body has been TOUGH. If I’m being honest, a huge reason why I stopped breastfeeding is that I didn’t like how large my boobs got because it didn’t feel like “me”. For the first time in my life, getting dressed is stressful. I’m consciously aware that I don’t want to think about what’s flattering but I do and my self-worth is hugely caught up in this. My internal fatphobia runs far deeper than I ever realized and I’m working on it but goddamn, what a trip. Hoping to rediscover my love of getting dressed but it feels very far away. Right now, the best way for me to deal is to just figure that it doesn’t matter at all, that neither size nor my clothing define me. But here’s to hoping I sort through this shit before my baby daughter picks up on it.
I had always been on the bigger end of normal, around a 12. I experienced a lot of pain around how “fat” I was. After marriage , a child, infertility, another child, PPD, and Covid, I’m now a 2X. I have never hated my body more (sorry!) and yet I’m SO grateful there are retailers offering me fashionable clothing now. I ordered a rain jacket from LL Bean recently and almost cried because it fit well and was cute. Being acknowledged as a human woman who wanted to still look good despite being bigger was unnecessarily joyous.
Very interesting article as always! Re: dressing like you did as a kid — I find not owning a full length mirror is very liberating in this regard. I am lucky that a lot of items in my wardrobe go with most other items, according to my own judgment of that, and they serve the uses I need them to serve for different professional/social contexts. As a result, I can then focus instead on how I am or am not physically (and emotionally — some days it’s easier to take fashion risks than others!) comfortable in an outfit in a given moment, and that becomes the primary deciding factor. I’m almost always function over form, and gently ignoring how I look in my clothing helps reinforce that utility.
I moved every few years as a kid, and among the many gifts it gave me was the knowledge that fashion, and judgment of fashion, was HIGHLY location specific. Obvs in the days before instagram and such. I had these amazing outfits from Benetton (living overseas for a while) and then moved back to the Midwest, and was bullied for those same outfits that were cool somewhere else. That did not cure me of wanting to fit in, but it did plant a seed of “all of this is subjective and dumb” in my 6th grade brain.
This is super interesting. I'm also inspired to articulate something I've been thinking for a while: when AHP writes about clothing, it's usually focused on women - which is totally fine and makes perfect sense! I just wish I knew of someone with similar sensibilities who writes stories about men and their relationship to clothing. Does anyone have recommendations?
Between you and Virginia this week...whoa, man. And just want to toss out there that "excessively tall" is another category that I'm feeling all of this in. It's cool/sexy if you're a tall lady, but not if you're *too* tall...I'm taller than most men (6'1" with a 36" inseam), and pants have been hard since forever...but it's slowly, slowly getting easier. Not perfect, but easier.
I am struggling with clothes these days. I really want to throw everything in my closet and dresser away and start over. I am more and more drawn to the idea of just having a small collection of clothes in black and neutral tones to take off the mental load of 'what to wear' every day. While I do enjoy a good 'nice sweater' compliment, I think I'd like to have my clothes be the least noticeable thing about me.
I loved this essay so much, especially as I have been trying to figure out what my own style is as a white woman at age 34! I recently felt myself drawn to this amazingly soft bell-bottom leggings from Walmart and had a bit of an existential crisis over them. My stream of consciousness: "are they finally cool again? will I look stylish or like a mom who is trying too hard? do I like these because I actually like them or because I am feeling nostalgic? Wait...bell-bottoms were popular when I was in middle and high school - did I even like them then or was I only wearing them to be cool!?"
I ended up buying two pairs in my favorite pattern - black covered with flowers in my favorite colors, orange and blue. I first wore them in front of my mom - "huh, bell-bottoms are back" and my response pleasantly surprised me - "I honestly don't know but I really like them!" Later that week, I went back and bought one more pair in each design.
I started wearing them in public and I usually get one of two reactions - universal approval or shock as if I just stepped out of a time capsule from the 1970s! The time capsule thing is funny to me because in the past they were popular as jeans and not leggings, but the approval part has been so positive in a way I can't describe. People of all ages seem to LOVE them on me - even teens! - and I've wondered if its the pants or the confidence I show while wearing them.
Brands need to keep pushing the envelope on inclusivity, but the thing that marveled me about these pants when I found them is that they were Juniors Size XL 15-17. That size didn't exist the last time bell-bottoms came back in style - 1999 - because I have PAINFUL memories of no longer fitting in Juniors size 13 and my mom shrugging it off because "I could just go over to the woman's section" because there was nothing higher in Juniors. This was when my disordered eating began - I NEEDED to fit in size 13 if I wanted to even try to blend it and not look as much of a nerd as I was. Yet, here in 2021 I could not only buy size 15-17 but they also had an XXL 19-21 option!!! Again, these sizes should not be the top, but I am thankful that progress is starting to happen.
One last thing regarding sizes - you mentioned about tailoring, and this was another realization I came to recently. My mom (who has a small chest) was looking at some Homecoming photos of her friend's daughter and complained about how "all of the girls are hanging out of their dresses". When I (a woman with G cups) looked, what I saw was completely different - large chested white girls who had been taught by white society that they could either have a dress that fit in the chest or in the waist but not both - the story of my life - because tailoring was never considered to be an option!
The most ridiculous thing about this is that my mother used to make her own clothing in her teens and 20s, so she KNEW how to do it, yet never thought to pass this knowledge onto me. She wasn't an amateur, either - she even created her own bridesmaids' dresses for her sisters' weddings! But In her mind, fast fashion eliminated the need to create your own clothes and/or tailor clothes...which for her, a taller than average, thin all over white woman, may have been true, but was definitely not true for her average height, large chested daughter. When I was over here trying to squeeze myself into size 13 dresses, she never once considered if there were places I could go to get larger but still stylish dresses that she could help me alter.
It blew my mind when I recently learned that mass production of clothing was not meant to completely eliminate tailoring but to be used as just a shortcut so that you don't have to make the entire article of clothing from scratch. The only time I've really seen this is with wedding clothing, but even then, there's this weird sense of pride surrounding finding dresses that don't need too many alterations. I realize a lot of that has to do with cost, but still, it is seen as embarrassing if someone's dress needs a bunch of alterations (or, at least that was how I've seen the salespeople at David's Bridal approach it.)
This may be an unpopular opinion, but beauty is also a skill set. Yes, it can reinforce all kinds of gender/class/ethnicity norms, but it's also a product of practice. And I've read that it's hard to get people to de-skill. As a teen/young woman, you thought you understood the rules and worked very hard to perform them, and then people are coming along telling you that your rules are not just wrong but perhaps unethical. We do need to change our ideas of beauty and power (Tressie's blog post on AOC power and beauty is So Good btw). But is there room for everyone? I used to ask students what if we think of all gender performance as drag? Isn't that more fun?
Now, I had anorexia in high school and have spent so much valuable time on looking a certain way--much of it hating myself. But I also enjoyed much of it--shopping for clothes, (even though I didn't have a lot of money--I worked a lot in high school, ) makeup, hair, jewelry. I didn't have much in my poor southern rural town, but I had fashion sense. I had a skill that could partially take me out of there, I felt. I don't know, I guess this is all to say that it's complicated, at least for me.
I loved this essay, especially your contrast between what we wore in elementary school and in middle school. At the start of seventh grade, I learned the hard way that my favorite outfit—a t-shirt with a picture of a basset hound on it and jeans with a basset hound patch on the back pocket—was not cool. My best friend monitored my clothes, checking that I didn’t repeat an article of clothing more than once every two weeks. (Lucky for me, my parents had the money to buy me enough clothes; other girls weren’t so fortunate.)
I haven’t quite returned to the days of clothes with basset hounds on them, but as a knitter, I now take great pride in wearing my own creations. And I also have embraced frugality, wearing the jeans my son has grown out of (they have real pockets!) and my teenaged daughter’s cast-off shirts.
Finally, after years of injuring my size-11 feet by trying to squeeze them into smaller, more stylish shoes, I absolutely refuse ever again to wear uncomfortable shoes. I’d much rather stride freely on hikes in the Alps (I live in Switzerland) than hobble in heels.
I loved this! I got out of a very long relationship two years ago, and only now I feel like I've finally started dressing for myself, for the first time since I was a kid, remembering what it was like to see clothing as play and to fall in love with pieces because I wanted to, not because they were what everyone else was wearing or what influencers were wearing or whatever. Raiding my grandmother's closet for funky stuff and not worrying, as I did in middle school, whether my hand-me-down Aeropostale sufficiently resembled the cool girls' Abercrombie. I live in NYC now and I'm grateful for all the weird, wonderful people I see every day who wear what they want and how they want to. Like the influencers AHP mentions, they give me a little bit of permission every day to dress a little more like myself––less constrained by gender, by the male gaze, by the markets.
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!
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."
Y’all, I’ve just learned to sew this year, and it’s absolutely liberating in the exact way ahp is describing! My basic outfit of leggings and hoodies has become MY stuff, and it fits MY body perfectly, and if there aren’t any pockets it’s my own damn fault for skipping them. And the communities! Hobby sewists seem to congregate almost completely on fb, but of course they have instas too. They’re *diverse as fuck.* The pattern and fabric groups I follow are firmly inclusive to all sizes, genders, etc. And once you get past the very basics of how to make a shirt, it’s all SO creative. So many ways to express myself!
"Flattering" as code for "makes you look smaller" is definitely bullshit, but there really are clothes that look better, to each of us, on our own personal bodies, than other clothes do! Smallification is just the wrong criterion.
"Do you like it?" is the right criterion, as AHP says - "trust your own damn self" - but it's possible to break that down and discover *what* you like about a garment. Certain things give me a strong YES! RIGHT! feeling on my body: capri length, miniskirts, deep narrow v necks, high waists, cap sleeves, big hair on top of my head, certain shades of blue and green. Other people seem to agree - maybe because of some universal aesthetic principle (the Golden Mean? complementary colors? here insert the "math lady" meme please), or maybe just because I feel good when I wear those things.
AND ALSO - in clothing sewing, there are specific things about garments which indicate whether or not they were constructed for any particular type of body. This is specifically for conventional western-style clothing and 100% subject to personal veto, but I've found it really helpful to consciously look at this fit language - a language that nearly all of us are aware of on some level, ie we can tell when a garment is or isn't made for our size and shape, even when we fit into it. (Hello, fellow 5'1" people!) This is from Sandra Betzina's book _Fast Fit_:
"Good fit is a combination of two components: A garment must look good and must be comfortable. Although the concept of good fit varies depending on our different shapes and tastes, here are some criteria that can be used as a general guideline to determine whether a garment fits:
- Vertical seams are perpendicular to the floor
- Darts point to an area of fullness, end just before the full area, and have no pouch where they end
- Shoulder seams are positioned at the shoulder joint, allowing a smooth fit over the upper chest
- The garment back has some ease but no horizontal or vertical wrinkles
- Sleeves don't bind or twist and don't have wrinkles that run across the cap or up and down
- Necklines are comfortable. On a jewel neck, the front neckline rides just above the clavicle, and the back neckline is positioned where the clasp of a necklace sits.
- Waistline seams are not too tight or too loose and have no wrinkles under them or under the waistband
- The hemline is even and parallel to the floor
- Center front lines meet, which means that the garment is able to be buttoned without being overfitted
- A dress or very fitted jacket with a high-cut armhole does not rise as the arm is raised. (Because of the ease in a looser-fit jacket or coat, raising the arm will cause the garment to rise as well, which is perfectly acceptible.)
These criteria may seem obvious, but they can sometimes be elusive when we put on a new garment and can't put a finger on why we aren't happy with it."
With rare exception, all of these things are possible to achieve on any body! But it does require skill, knowledge, time and/or money (ie you have to be able to sew/alter your clothes yourself, or pay someone else to do it). Sadly, mainstream ready-to-wear fashion is headed in the opposite direction as quickly as possible - fewer sizes, more stretch fabrics, and absolutely no consideration of the difference between "I fit into this garment" and "this garment fits me."
Mary Lambert just posted a video on Facebook today talking about how, for ostensibly body-positive or fat-positive folks to get over the cognitive dissonance of "all bodies are good bodies but my body has to look this way," they could try thinking about their body the way they did as a little kid and specifically getting dressed like you did as a kid, not looking in the mirror, just picking stuff that you think looks cool or feels good. I don't think this is a universal solution, I know plenty of kids who did not have that experience as youths for one reason or another, but even so, we can try to give ourselves that experience now.
https://fb.watch/8VzO_TzyCk/
I’m struggling with clothes for the first time in my life. As a teenager, I never felt like I was “pretty” or exceptionally “cool”, but I do feel like I had a very concrete sense of style inspired by Delia’s catalogues and old music videos and album cover art. I remember sewing bell-bottoms into skinny jeans a decade before skinny jeans were available. I remember pairing chokers from Hot Topic with preppy shirts because I thought it was stylishly ironic. I thought, okay I’m not pretty but I feel good about my clothes — and I know this is largely due to the fact that I was thin and I never worried about what looked flattering. This was true for me for years, throughout my 20s and into my early 30s. Over time, I found styles I liked and continued to wear them even if I generally seemed way overdressed compared to my friends (like, bodycon midi dresses and high-waisted skirts).
Now, for the first time in my life, in my mid 30s, all that joy and confidence in clothing has been upended. I *thought* I had mentally progressed past my internal fatphobia but I realize now that in actuality, I was just well-versed in the language from reading the right authors but I hadn’t internalized it. I gave birth earlier this year and making peace with my new body has been TOUGH. If I’m being honest, a huge reason why I stopped breastfeeding is that I didn’t like how large my boobs got because it didn’t feel like “me”. For the first time in my life, getting dressed is stressful. I’m consciously aware that I don’t want to think about what’s flattering but I do and my self-worth is hugely caught up in this. My internal fatphobia runs far deeper than I ever realized and I’m working on it but goddamn, what a trip. Hoping to rediscover my love of getting dressed but it feels very far away. Right now, the best way for me to deal is to just figure that it doesn’t matter at all, that neither size nor my clothing define me. But here’s to hoping I sort through this shit before my baby daughter picks up on it.
I had always been on the bigger end of normal, around a 12. I experienced a lot of pain around how “fat” I was. After marriage , a child, infertility, another child, PPD, and Covid, I’m now a 2X. I have never hated my body more (sorry!) and yet I’m SO grateful there are retailers offering me fashionable clothing now. I ordered a rain jacket from LL Bean recently and almost cried because it fit well and was cute. Being acknowledged as a human woman who wanted to still look good despite being bigger was unnecessarily joyous.
Very interesting article as always! Re: dressing like you did as a kid — I find not owning a full length mirror is very liberating in this regard. I am lucky that a lot of items in my wardrobe go with most other items, according to my own judgment of that, and they serve the uses I need them to serve for different professional/social contexts. As a result, I can then focus instead on how I am or am not physically (and emotionally — some days it’s easier to take fashion risks than others!) comfortable in an outfit in a given moment, and that becomes the primary deciding factor. I’m almost always function over form, and gently ignoring how I look in my clothing helps reinforce that utility.
I moved every few years as a kid, and among the many gifts it gave me was the knowledge that fashion, and judgment of fashion, was HIGHLY location specific. Obvs in the days before instagram and such. I had these amazing outfits from Benetton (living overseas for a while) and then moved back to the Midwest, and was bullied for those same outfits that were cool somewhere else. That did not cure me of wanting to fit in, but it did plant a seed of “all of this is subjective and dumb” in my 6th grade brain.
This is super interesting. I'm also inspired to articulate something I've been thinking for a while: when AHP writes about clothing, it's usually focused on women - which is totally fine and makes perfect sense! I just wish I knew of someone with similar sensibilities who writes stories about men and their relationship to clothing. Does anyone have recommendations?
Between you and Virginia this week...whoa, man. And just want to toss out there that "excessively tall" is another category that I'm feeling all of this in. It's cool/sexy if you're a tall lady, but not if you're *too* tall...I'm taller than most men (6'1" with a 36" inseam), and pants have been hard since forever...but it's slowly, slowly getting easier. Not perfect, but easier.
I am struggling with clothes these days. I really want to throw everything in my closet and dresser away and start over. I am more and more drawn to the idea of just having a small collection of clothes in black and neutral tones to take off the mental load of 'what to wear' every day. While I do enjoy a good 'nice sweater' compliment, I think I'd like to have my clothes be the least noticeable thing about me.
I loved this essay so much, especially as I have been trying to figure out what my own style is as a white woman at age 34! I recently felt myself drawn to this amazingly soft bell-bottom leggings from Walmart and had a bit of an existential crisis over them. My stream of consciousness: "are they finally cool again? will I look stylish or like a mom who is trying too hard? do I like these because I actually like them or because I am feeling nostalgic? Wait...bell-bottoms were popular when I was in middle and high school - did I even like them then or was I only wearing them to be cool!?"
I ended up buying two pairs in my favorite pattern - black covered with flowers in my favorite colors, orange and blue. I first wore them in front of my mom - "huh, bell-bottoms are back" and my response pleasantly surprised me - "I honestly don't know but I really like them!" Later that week, I went back and bought one more pair in each design.
I started wearing them in public and I usually get one of two reactions - universal approval or shock as if I just stepped out of a time capsule from the 1970s! The time capsule thing is funny to me because in the past they were popular as jeans and not leggings, but the approval part has been so positive in a way I can't describe. People of all ages seem to LOVE them on me - even teens! - and I've wondered if its the pants or the confidence I show while wearing them.
Brands need to keep pushing the envelope on inclusivity, but the thing that marveled me about these pants when I found them is that they were Juniors Size XL 15-17. That size didn't exist the last time bell-bottoms came back in style - 1999 - because I have PAINFUL memories of no longer fitting in Juniors size 13 and my mom shrugging it off because "I could just go over to the woman's section" because there was nothing higher in Juniors. This was when my disordered eating began - I NEEDED to fit in size 13 if I wanted to even try to blend it and not look as much of a nerd as I was. Yet, here in 2021 I could not only buy size 15-17 but they also had an XXL 19-21 option!!! Again, these sizes should not be the top, but I am thankful that progress is starting to happen.
One last thing regarding sizes - you mentioned about tailoring, and this was another realization I came to recently. My mom (who has a small chest) was looking at some Homecoming photos of her friend's daughter and complained about how "all of the girls are hanging out of their dresses". When I (a woman with G cups) looked, what I saw was completely different - large chested white girls who had been taught by white society that they could either have a dress that fit in the chest or in the waist but not both - the story of my life - because tailoring was never considered to be an option!
The most ridiculous thing about this is that my mother used to make her own clothing in her teens and 20s, so she KNEW how to do it, yet never thought to pass this knowledge onto me. She wasn't an amateur, either - she even created her own bridesmaids' dresses for her sisters' weddings! But In her mind, fast fashion eliminated the need to create your own clothes and/or tailor clothes...which for her, a taller than average, thin all over white woman, may have been true, but was definitely not true for her average height, large chested daughter. When I was over here trying to squeeze myself into size 13 dresses, she never once considered if there were places I could go to get larger but still stylish dresses that she could help me alter.
It blew my mind when I recently learned that mass production of clothing was not meant to completely eliminate tailoring but to be used as just a shortcut so that you don't have to make the entire article of clothing from scratch. The only time I've really seen this is with wedding clothing, but even then, there's this weird sense of pride surrounding finding dresses that don't need too many alterations. I realize a lot of that has to do with cost, but still, it is seen as embarrassing if someone's dress needs a bunch of alterations (or, at least that was how I've seen the salespeople at David's Bridal approach it.)
This may be an unpopular opinion, but beauty is also a skill set. Yes, it can reinforce all kinds of gender/class/ethnicity norms, but it's also a product of practice. And I've read that it's hard to get people to de-skill. As a teen/young woman, you thought you understood the rules and worked very hard to perform them, and then people are coming along telling you that your rules are not just wrong but perhaps unethical. We do need to change our ideas of beauty and power (Tressie's blog post on AOC power and beauty is So Good btw). But is there room for everyone? I used to ask students what if we think of all gender performance as drag? Isn't that more fun?
Now, I had anorexia in high school and have spent so much valuable time on looking a certain way--much of it hating myself. But I also enjoyed much of it--shopping for clothes, (even though I didn't have a lot of money--I worked a lot in high school, ) makeup, hair, jewelry. I didn't have much in my poor southern rural town, but I had fashion sense. I had a skill that could partially take me out of there, I felt. I don't know, I guess this is all to say that it's complicated, at least for me.
I loved this essay, especially your contrast between what we wore in elementary school and in middle school. At the start of seventh grade, I learned the hard way that my favorite outfit—a t-shirt with a picture of a basset hound on it and jeans with a basset hound patch on the back pocket—was not cool. My best friend monitored my clothes, checking that I didn’t repeat an article of clothing more than once every two weeks. (Lucky for me, my parents had the money to buy me enough clothes; other girls weren’t so fortunate.)
I haven’t quite returned to the days of clothes with basset hounds on them, but as a knitter, I now take great pride in wearing my own creations. And I also have embraced frugality, wearing the jeans my son has grown out of (they have real pockets!) and my teenaged daughter’s cast-off shirts.
Finally, after years of injuring my size-11 feet by trying to squeeze them into smaller, more stylish shoes, I absolutely refuse ever again to wear uncomfortable shoes. I’d much rather stride freely on hikes in the Alps (I live in Switzerland) than hobble in heels.
I loved this! I got out of a very long relationship two years ago, and only now I feel like I've finally started dressing for myself, for the first time since I was a kid, remembering what it was like to see clothing as play and to fall in love with pieces because I wanted to, not because they were what everyone else was wearing or what influencers were wearing or whatever. Raiding my grandmother's closet for funky stuff and not worrying, as I did in middle school, whether my hand-me-down Aeropostale sufficiently resembled the cool girls' Abercrombie. I live in NYC now and I'm grateful for all the weird, wonderful people I see every day who wear what they want and how they want to. Like the influencers AHP mentions, they give me a little bit of permission every day to dress a little more like myself––less constrained by gender, by the male gaze, by the markets.