Oh! Oh! Oh! I SO want to respond to this at length, but not today!
These little blips from my brain:
Because classic, well-fitting tailored clothes are almost impossible to find if you’re a fat woman;
Because when you do find them, they’re not classic but frumpy;
Because manufacturers of clothing for fat women seem to think that we need horrid, nasty embellishments all over the place (fringe, mullet hems, stripes of glitter, bedazzled butts on our jeans, etc.);
Because the aforementioned belief is based partially on racist and classist assumptions about who is fat and what kind of style they prefer;
Because the expression “sloppy fat” is an expression, while “sloppy thin” is not;
Because fat women are fair game for degradation and discrimination in this culture and can’t “get away” with looking sloppy because being fat is already broadly considered as being sloppy in one’s very body and being;
Because because because because…
All that said, there are many ways to dress comfortably and simply as a person of any size, shape or color. It just requires extra effort to find garments that work, and to have them tailored so that they fit properly.
Extra effort? That’s putting it mildly. I live an hour away from town, and that town has very little in the way of things that look good on me. I’m tall (5’10”) and heavy, with really big feet, and I find myself ordering stuff online because it seems I have no other options. But then, I get it in the mail, and it fits odd, or the color doesn’t look like it did on the screen/in the catalog. One of these days, I’ll have a wardrobe I really like. I hope.
In the meantime, thank you for your encouragement. Reading you gives me hope that I’ll eventually get there, if I keep trying. And maybe if I can find someone who can alter the stuff I get in the mail, it’ll be sooner than later.
Bless you my friend. It can be hard, but it’s so worth the effort. And it’s ok to make mistakes; sometimes you think something fits one way and it looks totally different.
There was a question posted on the Scandal twitter page that asked the question about what article of Olivia’s clothing we would most want. I sent a note to my friend that I just wish all of the designers whose clothes end up on the show would do clothes in plus-sizes. It’s like they think that there would be something wrong if they expanded their market.
(sorry I’m just now replying to this, but I’ve been sick and barely lucid for about 10 days).