ooc: Sorry I'm being a bad mun and not working on drafts, but my mother and I were talking about possibly going to NYCC again this year and she's agreed to cosplay. (Because even though she drives me nuts sometimes, at least she's cool enough to do this with me) But my mom is not a skinny lady and she would feel more comfortable cosplaying in her body type, so we were looking up ideas for her. It's gonna get rant-y (and kinda personal) so you can read it if you really want to. (In case you're curious, Mom's decided she wants to be Ursula from the Little Mermaid)
In our searching though so many characters being labelled as "plus-size" are just busty, and women being labelled "plus size cosplayers" have flatter stomachs than I do. That's ridiculous. Following this standard, I'd be a plus size cosplayer because of my bust, even though I wear size 6 pants. Lemme tell you a thing. Even if you sucked every ounce of fat off my body, I'd still be a size 6. And the fact that I'm labelled as "plus size" kills me.
I used to be extremely self-conscious about my size (like if I didn't have an over-attentive sister, I probably would've been anorexic) because I wore a "curvy fit" size 8 and my older sister was 6 feet tall in a size four. I dropped 20 lbs in a year (albeit not exactly in a healthy way. I'd get distracted and forget to eat sometimes, so I'd only eat maybe 1 meal a day over the summer) But even though I'm skinnier now, I still poke at my stomach sometimes, and I still cringe whenever I go swimming because I forced myself to buy a bikini.
Now that there's a little background, here's the thing that kills me. If you rewind time to the good-old 1950's, I'd have the body time that women craved. I have an hourglass body-type, with a ten inch difference between my bust and waist. Now, I'm what the average guy describes when they say they like "big women." Now there is nothing wrong with being a plus size girl. But this is that shitty beauty standard. By calling me a plus size girl, there are teens who now hate their body because the fashion world considers a six fat.
But then it gets worse. In the fashion world, I'm "too big to model" but in the real world I'm being called things like "real" and "healthy." My sister was healthy as a size four. She was all muscle, but people were accusing her of being sick and having an eating disorder.
So the skinny girls are sick, the curvy girls are fat, and those girls who rock it in a size 20 are being treated like dirt.
But here's the thing. When Mom and I go shopping, and we go into Catherine's ( which is a store for plus sized women) I get glared at by the customers and the associates alike. Sometimes it gets to the point I would wait outside. But I also can't go into Aeropostale or Hollister or any of those stupid stores, I get dirty looks from the girls who are 00s because I "don't belong there".
So I'm too fat to be skinny and too skinny to be fat.
And now the actual point of this rant. Is the fact that these goddamn "beauty standards" stretches into the cosplay world too. Jesus we're nerds in costumes who the flying fucknugget cares about what size the nerd is.
