I know it’s nothing new, but the fashion industry really needs to check their fat-phobias at the door.
I’ll be attending a wedding soon, and the dress code is formal & cocktail.
Now one thing that’ll pop up in people’s minds is the fact I hardly ever, if ever at all, wear dresses or skirts. I’m always in either workout pants, leggings, or jeans. And of course shorts during the warm months.
My reasoning is simple: They’re easy to style, durable, and I can bend and climb and crawl into some tight spaces without fear of flashing whoever’s around me at the time. And believe me when I say I get into those situations an awful lot! That maaay have been encouraged by my father, who was very much a blue-collar working man and loved teaching me how to do things like changing the oil in my car, chopping wood, and digging in the garden.
But can I tell you a secret pleasure?
I love dresses.
They’re just so pretty and flowy! Especially the ballgown ones that make you feel like you’re a princess running through the forests or down the ancient stone hallways. Just imagine all the fantasy daydreams where you’re in a field full of swaying flowers and tall wheat, being greeted by a mysterious (but gentlemanly!) knight in dark armor, while wearing a flowy knee-length dress adorned by fabric petals and embroidered leaves and a matching flower crown. Or you’re striding through torch-lit hallways in the dark of night, determined to set the generals straight and prevent a war while wearing a wide bell-shaped gown that ripples and sways like water in the low light with every step.
It makes my heart sing at the very thought.
But here’s the thing. Well-made dresses for the pleasantly plump are hard to come by. If they exist at all.
I can’t tell you how many stores I’ve gone into where their largest size is a rare 16, followed by a handful of 14’s and even more 12’s. I won’t name the stores outright, as nowadays it would be seen as a personal attack (they rhyme with Lacey’s and Fordstrom). But what I will say is by the time I had gone through every single rack, including the business-formal and clearance, I was disheartened and wondering why I didn’t deserve a nice dress too. It was a slippery slope trying to prevent myself from looking into the mirrors and thinking I looked like I would benefit from one of those crash-diets.
Full disclosure – NO ONE SHOULD EVER GO ON A CRASH DIET. Those kinds of diets are horrific, shame-inducing, and deserve to be buried so deep in the earth that they burn from the core’s heat.
If you’re wondering whether I had found a dress that fit and didn’t make me look like a lumpy sausage, I did. I had to buy it off Amazon. The fabric isn’t as nice as an Oscar de la Renta, or a Calvin Klein, but it’ll do the job in a pinch.
So many high-end fashion brands, as well as designers, think that the highest a women’s body size can, and should, go is a size 14, and that’s giving a generous size.
Why are they so afraid of dressing a plus sized woman? Are fat and extra skin really so scary and nightmare-inducing? What about the women who don’t have the extra jiggles around their middle and do a lot of weightlifting? Or the women whose genes created a real-life Amazon woman, complete with giantess height and strength?
Why is the only acceptable kind of woman the ones who are small, thin, barely any curves, and look like they haven’t had a decent meal with meat and potatoes in the last five years?
The rest of us ladies want to feel pretty too! We want to feel like we’re running through all the stone hallways in a winding castle, waiting for our knight to come home.
The fashion industry needs to do better. They need to be better. They need to know that women come in all shapes and sizes, not a certain skinny cookie-cutter size.
We used to worship plump women in Edwardian times; the countless paintings of chubby goddesses dressed in chiffon drapes, languishing on Victorian chaise chairs reading or sewing prove this.
What happened to that? What happened to looking at a woman who literally has a body like this and thinking “absolutely stunning”?
What happened to having chubby girls feel pretty?
L.J. LaBree 