CW: some body size and IWL talk in this one. Also: boob talk, so if you prefer to not be reminded that I have boobs, skip this one!
When you are someone who lives in a larger body, you become highly attuned to all of the ways that dressing that body can be challenging. There is the perilous combination of large breasts and button down shirts, where getting a shirt that fits the rest of your upper body means having buttons that are fighting for their lives. You always know you are one deep exhale away from a button popping off entirely and taking someone’s eye out. There is the frustration of finding jeans that fit both a smaller curved waist and thicker thighs or a bigger FUPA and a smaller butt. There is the resignation of knowing that all jeans, no matter how expensive they are, will eventually need to be replaced as the fabric on the inner thighs wears away. Thrift shopping is almost always a dude, unless your jam is looking like a 75 year old church organ player1. Boot shopping is an almost entirely online experience because wide calf boots are so rarely found in stores.
We won’t even dive into the hopelessness that is strapless bras for those of us who hang out in the middle section of the alphabet, cup wise.
While the plus size clothing options have certainly gotten better in the last two decades (especially in terms of workout apparel and in via online shopping), I’d guess most larger body people would still hesitate to say that finding good quality clothing that aligns with their preferred style aesthetics is an EASY task.
(I recognize that maybe this is true for non-plus size women too… though I still think it has to be somewhat easier. Or maybe I just don’t want to accept the idea that it all just sucks all around for everyone.)
Around seven or eight years ago, I started to really accept the idea that my body wasn’t a problem that needed to be solved and that all evidence (both scientific and lived experience) pointed to the fact that I was almost certainly going to be living in a larger body for the rest of my (hopefully long and healthy) life. I was done having babies and my clothing size stopped changing from year to year and so I decided to finally start investing in buying clothing that I liked, that was colorful, and that made me feel confident in my ability to look pulled together at work. I still don’t have fancy taste when it comes to clothes, but it would be fair to say that I upgraded from Target and Lane Bryant clearance racks to brands like Eloquii, Athleta, and a whole shit ton of cute workout sets from Peloton (their Cadent fabric leggings are my absolute favorite leggings for working out, available in up to a size 3X).
Rolling into my 40s, I finally felt like I had a wardrobe that ensured I had the ability to look as cute or comfy or professional as I needed to on any given day. I spent more on individual pieces, but was shopping less overall and keeping the things I had for longer. My biggest clothing issue continued to be the fact that the closets in my 1926 house were not designed for a modern wardrobe2.
And then my body changed again.
When I had my breast reduction in September, I realized that, duh, I’d have to replace all of my stupidly expensive bras afterwards. That was, after all, kind of the entire point. Immediately after the surgery, I was so swollen and had such limited range of motion in my arms that I lived in oversized shirts and pajamas for a few weeks. By the time I was out of bandages and into compression bras, it was getting cold in Minnesota and I transitioned to my winter wardrobe of cozy sweaters, lots of tank top and cardigan combos (I’m a forever fan of Athleta’s pranayama wrap cardigans) which are flowy and pretty size flexible.
Over the course of the winter and into the spring, I finished healing from the surgery and also adjusted to a new medicine to treat my PCOS. That adjustment included dealing with some occasionally frustrating side effects and watching with some surprise as my weight started dropping for the first time in well over a decade.
For several months, my weight loss has been basically invisible. My winter clothes still fit. I’m still a tall, larger body person. I’m still definitely in plus size clothing. The number on the scale when I weighed myself felt like more of an abstraction than anything else.
And then summer finally arrived.
With summer has come a growing pile of clothing that doesn’t fit me right now. The swimsuit that is gaping at the neckline. The favorite wrap dress that now looks frumpy because it isn’t meant to be baggy. The sleeveless jumpsuit that is too big in the arms now, so my bra shows too much to be comfortable wearing it to work.
I keep wearing things and wondering why they don’t look as cute on me. I’ve spent a lifetime being keenly aware of when things are too small and I think I’ve forgotten that things can be too big as well. I still look the same to myself as I did last summer so it feels like a bit of clothing related cognitive dissonance to expect my clothes to fit me a certain way and to discover they don’t.
There is a cultural story we tell when a fat person losses weight. The weight loss is a victory, a cause for celebration, a source of pride. New clothes are a reward, a prize for winning the battle against your own body, old jeans gleefully cast aside in favor of a slinky new dress. How many commercials have we all seen where someone stands inside their fat pants and vows to never go back to that size ever again?
But what happens if you liked your fat pants?
The last time I wrote about weight stuff, I described myself as ambivalent about all of it and I think I still am. I’ve lost weight because of trying a few medications until we found one that is helping regulate some hormones. I’m not dieting. I was already working out. I’m just…losing weight3. I’m not better or more virtuous or proud of it. I’m still fat by any measure4. I’m still cute as a button. And I’m kind of sad that some of the really great outfits I’ve collected over time are now sitting in a bag on the floor of my closet.
I’m also feeling really reluctant to shop for new stuff. While the current plan is that I’ll be on the new medication forever… what if I’m not? What if the weight loss is temporary? It always has been before. I feel like buying new clothes in a new size might make me become attached to the idea of actually being a new size. I’ve worked so hard to be at peace with the size I was.
When it comes to having peace, will I have to do all that work again if something changes and the weight comes back as casually as it drifted off this year?
I suspect I also just don’t want to put in the work of figuring out what size I actually am at the moment. I know what sizes in which brands worked for me before. I also know that I am pretty terrible at returning online purchases so I need to actually go to the store and try stuff on and I just … don’t wanna.
I should note that I’m not looking for advice here. I’ll figure it out because I have to (I’m starting to run low on pants that I can wear to work) but I feel like I’m doing weight loss wrong because I’m just not excited about it.
I feel like I’m seeing my body as temporary and that feels unsettling in a way I didn’t expect.
Maybe I should just hit the thrift store and embrace dressing like my Minnesota queen, Rose Nylund
With my height and broad shoulders, I suspect I might end up being a Dorothy Zbornak instead. There are worse fates, I suppose.
I think the plus size sections of thrift stores are grim both because fat people are more likely to hang on to the cute stuff that fits them and because the overall selection and quality of plus size clothing used to be fully terrible, so there is a lot of ugly shit out there.
My husband might point out that all of his stuff fits in his side of the closest just fine. But this isn’t his Substack, so just go with me that this is a closet problem and not a “Wendy has too many clothes” problem, okay?
And sometimes dealing with some gnarly medication side effects, so it hasn’t all been easy.
I’m purposely avoiding talking about actual numbers here for a variety of reasons. I’m comfortable with noting that I would have fit into the “mid fat” section of the fat spectrum and am now probably closer to the “small fat” section.
Do you follow Katie Sturino on any social media? If not, she’s a larger bodied person (and founder of Mega Babe products) and she goes into well-known stores to see if she can find her size in store. It’s frustrating to see how rarely she can find her size.
To your point about changing sizes, three years ago I lost 30 pounds and I had to buy new clothes and now I’ve gained about 12 of them back and some of those clothes don’t fit anymore and I am having feelings about it. I am blaming menopause on all of it, but I still need to work through these feelings.
i hear you and man, the struggle is real.