Size Twenty Two Jeans

Madilyn. WGSS 466, Fat Studies [Archived]

[al-co-hol-youlater]

Thank You For

All NOT YOU The

Big Love 💕

[sizetwentytwo]

Size Charts and Plus-Size Clothing

Walking into a store, you make your way towards the clothes that suit your body. When you’re fat woman, you drift towards the plus-size section. Very likely is the clothes dispersed into the other clothes. Then you hunt down your size. Are you a size 1, 24, or 2X? These could all be the same size, but stores are calling them different things. Just to mess with you. Just kidding, kinda. In an article by today.com, they talked to the co-founder of True Fit, Jessica Murphy, and discussed with them why clothes (especially women’s) are all over the place. Murphy says that clothes use to follow a systematic charting before big brands decided to make their own sizing charts (Murray). Because of the variance in sizing, picking clothes you assume are in your size and trying them on just to find out they don’t fit can affect a person’s reflection on themselves.

The inconvenience of the sizing is not something that can be fixed by whipping out a measuring tape in the middle of the store and converting them to the stores sizing chart. The sizing charts are often based on the population the clothes are serving. A medium looks different in teen clothes than it does in clothes targeted towards elder women. Now what does this mean for plus-size clothing? Have you tried shopping in a plus-size stores? Take Torrid or Maurices for example. There clothes are ranked from 1-4. Size one is equivalent to 1X or 34-34 inches at waist. It’s the smallest size in Torrid. This size is an especially big size to average stores, with XL being the biggest in most brands. But XL is also different based on styles of shirts; with dress shirts you might need a size bigger than a t-shirt. The fabric also affects the sizes; cotton fits different than polyester and rayon. You go on a scavenger hunt every time you shop.

If shopping wasn’t already stressful, now you have to look for a shirt that fits you in a new size. I’m a size 22 in trousers, XL in shirts at most stores, but a 2 at Torrid and Maurices. But sometimes I’m a large or a size 2X.

Murray, Rheana (2016). It's not you — women's clothing sizes don't make sense. Today. Retrieved from https://www.today.com/style/jeans-don-t-fit-here-s-explanation-inconsistency-wo men-s-t100419

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Thrifting: Plus Size Edition

The aesthetic of thrift shopping is big now. I’m currently in Portland - on Hawthorne St, where all the vintage stores are - and I’m, ya know, browsing the clothes, looking for dresses from the 40s - 60s and I find some that I think fit. I stack up because I only wanna try on clothes once. The dresses are cute and from the outside they look like they could fit. But they don’t. They either are tight on my arms, don’t skip, or are too long/short for my body. I visit three HUGE vintage stores and leave with a skirt that I like. This is usually the norm for me. 

Being fat and thrifting is like a 20:80 bet. You are either going to find the coolest stuff that fit your body or find nothing that barely fits your arms. It’s daunting while thrifting because the majority of things are not in your size. Of it they are, it’s unflattering dresses that make you feel sloppy. I get a little depressed when I don’t find stuff because it’s not like I didn’t find anything cute. I found lots of cute things but none that fit my body in flattering ways. 

I am jealous of the people who fit in a size medium and have a better chance of finding clothes everywhere they go. I’ve gone down a few sizes and still struggle to find clothes at these stores. Being plus-size, when you enter a store you automatically go to the plus size section. There you will find caftans and skirts that were obviously made for tall women, not fat women. But plus-size covers tall and fat. You shove and shove through the clothes and pray you’ll find something that not only fits you, but flatters you. I visited three different vintage/thrift stores over the time in Portland and only found a skirt. I had high hopes of finding a pretty day dress and leaving with the skirt made me feel like the only way I have a chance of finding clothes is to lose weight. I know it’s a shallow way to react, but it weighs on my heart (unintentional pun). 

Thrifting is hard for a fat girl.

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The Trouble With Femininity When It Comes to Fatness

Roxane Gay describes the position of fatness and gender expression brilliantly when she says that when people see her fatness, they see masculinity. “My fat body empowers people to erase my gender… I am called ‘Sir,’ because people look at the bulk of me and ignore my face, my styled hair, my very ample breasts and other curves. It bothers me to have my gender erased, to be unseen in plain sight…, but I am a woman. I deserve to be seen as such” (Gay 256). I have my own experience with it. I used to dress more masculine because the clothes fit me better. I was too big for the cute tops the girls wore in school and I couldn’t afford the clothes that were cute and could fit me. Boys would be friends with me, but never saw me as crush potential - at least not outwardly. I was teased for my weight, not because they found me cute. Traveling in groups of girls it became more obvious. They attracted the boys, who barely blinked an eye at me unless I made a funny joke. This didn’t help me in high school as I took the outward attention I got and made it my confidence (boys treated me as a friend and I hated it, and started hating myself). 

Fatness is sometimes covered in baggy clothes and unisex sweatshirts, and that can cause the femininity of a fat woman to be treated as inferior. This is not my opinion on fat people, but a fact. This is my own experience and others who are fat. The shame of fat bodies is drilled into these people. The layers of clothes, to cover the lumps and rolls, are a form of protection. 

This association with fatness and masculinity hurts so much. It digs deep in your bones. Fat women are described as beasts or animals. Society holds femininity and masculinity at opposite spectrums and fatness is always on the masc. side. And if a fat women dresses girly, it’s pointed out that she is trying too hard. That the bulkiness of fat bodies is synonymous with masculinity, where curves are femininity. Fat women have curves. Just bigger curves. Deeper, covered in stress marks. I feel like the option to be masc. or fem. should be up to the person who is performing it. And bodies shouldn’t define what aura or physicality you put on for the world.

Gay, R. (2017). Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. New York: HarperCollins Publishers

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My Mad Fat Diary Review

My Mad Fat Diary is dark, humorous, and beautiful. It follows Rae, a teen in the 90s, who has just left a rehabilitation center for Bulimia. She’s trying to adjust back into life but sees everything - and everyone - has moved on. When she finds a group she grows attached to, it’s her mind that holds her back. Her history with eating disorders and her fatness is a heavy cloud over her head and it affects how she interacts with the people - boys especially - around her. Though the show is only two seasons, it covers a lot in them. She falls in love with one of her close friends, she realizes that things can’t always stay the same, and little-by-little she learns that she matters to people around her.

Rae’s love story plot is my favorite thing in the world. She falls in love with a boy she didn’t really expect to fall for at first. He helps her realize that people love her because of who she is and aren’t tired of her. He is soft to her bristled edges. Another plot point is her trying to balance her rehab family with her new family. Her rehab friend, Tix, is still struggling at the hospital and feels like Rae has ditched her. And her friend from her old life that is in the new group, Chloe, is a bit toxic for Rae and it takes some time for her to realize what she deserves in terms of friendships and that she shouldn’t settle because of her illness and weight.

What makes Rae’s story so dang amazing is not only that it’s based on a true story - a memoir formed of the author’s teen journals - but it carries with it the realistic problems of a fat teenage girl in the 90s: her clothes don’t fit, she wears a lot of men’s T-shirts (even though she rocks them), her mom doesn’t understand her, her friends like to party, and she’s horny all the time. Ah, puberty is spiteful. Watching Rae and her friends in MMFD made me laugh, cry, and think about my own relationships with the people in my life and my relationship with my own body intersecting with them.

[sizetwentytwo]

Hairspray: The Musical Review - Tracy Is A Fat Protagonist We Deserve

I was watching Hairspray a couple nights ago, watching Tracy dance and sing even though the other dancers - *cough* Amber and her mother, Velma - were witches to her and I fell in love all over again. Tracy Turnblad is a teen in urban Baltimore, who auditions to be on a teen dance show, but is first turned down because of her weight and her views on integration - the producer, Velma, of the show is racist but powerful. However, she wins the attention of the host of the show when he sees her dance at the show’s record hop, which puts her in the spotlight instantly.

What makes me so happy about Tracy is that her story doesn’t end with her losing weight to be liked by the boy, nor having deep shame towards her body. The most she changes is her power in who she is and the highlights in her hair. While her mom has shame in her body - “I haven’t left this house since 1951” - “the neighbors haven’t seen me since I was a size 10” - Tracy carries her confidence in her talent of dancing and singing, her nativity, kindness, and willingness to protect those she loves is what gets her friends. She becomes friends with Seaweed because of her ability to see past the social binaries of race in the early 60s, she claims Link’s heart because of her passion for dancing, singing, and her openness that helped him see everything with a new light. 

What Tracy shows is that fatness should not dictate how likable you are. All that matters is who you are as a person and how you treat those around you.