can I please be fat without fashion?
I feel like I’ve read different versions of the same article approximately 10 thousand times — and honestly, I’ve probably written at least two dozen of them over the years. Theses include, but are not limited to:
“New York Fashion Week was not inclusive.”
“Fashion hates fat people.”
“The fashion industry lacks size representation.”
“Designers don’t care about dressing different bodies.”
“When are we going to see real change?”
All of these points we made/are making/will likely continue to make are valid and true, though around, oh, article #2437, I suspect our arguments took a sharp left from fresh/radical/well-made and went straight into echo chamber territory. It’s not our fault; for a long time, yelling about fashion’s overt size exclusion* felt like a worthwhile endeavor — I even got paid a salary to do so. Even if I hadn’t, it all felt so personal and raw, like we were finally being given a platform to say something we’d been thinking our entire lives. Shouting about it hasn’t been totally futile, either: I can name several occasions when making a bunch of racket about brands lacking inclusive sizing actually yielded results — or at the very least, a solid marketing campaign promising results.
But lately, when I read articles or have conversations like this, I’m uncharacteristically unmoved. At this point, I personally feel like talking about the fashion industry’s stance on fatness is the critical thought equivalent of battling a rusty old faucet, desperately tugging and turning the son of a bitch until, finally, water starts sputtering out. It feels like a major win for a second, but then you just stand there and watch the water circle the drain.
Despite the well-intentioned talk of “revolutionizing the industry” and “resisting and fighting back” happening (though I’ve always found it bizarre we use the language of activism to describe what it’s going to take for a fashion brand to create a pair of size 32 pants), I’m starting to feel like pointing out the fashion industry’s flaws isn’t leading anywhere, particularly since brands seem to have all but moved on from the frantic, desperate attempts at using inclusivity as a marketing tool. While we lament that pause or backslide in progress, I also wonder how far the industry has actually come, and what it actually means for fat people trying to get dressed. How much did/does the endless discourse about fashion’s many failures had/have a tangible impact — did fashion ever care? For me, the boundaries between one argument and the next have become increasingly blurred and redundant. Instead, it’s just a bunch of fat people saying the same thing to each other while the fashion industry, whoever she is, continues to offer us next to nothing. As far as I can tell, a fat person could at this very moment walk into the majority of clothing stores in America and still find absolutely nothing to wear.
Honestly, it’s boring. Are you bored? I’m bored.
I certainly don’t have it in me to praise another brand for expanding sizing, to feel grateful for a multi-million dollar company’s decision to put someone that looks like me in a marketing campaign. I also can’t shake my head in disapproval and have another conversation about the fashion industry’s failures with regards to inclusivity, or an explanation of how things have changed for the worse and what needs to happen to make it better. Fashion knows what it needs to do, fashion just doesn’t want to do it — and dangling its to-do list in front of our noses for the last several years doesn’t count.
Of course despite my exasperation with it all, I can’t let go of fashion altogether, for purely tactical reasons. At the end of the day — or at the beginning, really — I have to get dressed. No matter how liberated I want to feel from the fashion industry’s Lex Luger chokehold on my self-worth, for me, clothing will never just be clothing. Everything I put on my body sends me a message — about myself, about how the world sees me, about what I’m allowed to do.These messages can be negative
Fashion week wasn’t inclusive because I’m not included.
Brands don’t make my size because they don’t want me in the store.
Models don’t look like me because if they looked like me they wouldn’t be models
or positive
This designer used a model my size, therefore my size is beautiful
This brand makes my size and that means I’m not different
As a fat person, the fashion industry’s wins and failures feel like a reminder of my own, and the process of disentangling this dark, twisty double helix isn’t linear. In fact, the psychic wounds imparted by the fashion industry onto my tendy soul stay in the gummy, soft stage of healing at all times.
Ultimately though, I’m tired of all of it. A piece of clothing shouldn’t be the foremost way I evaluate my own acceptability. I don’t want a dress that fits me to be the metric by which I decide how to feel about myself. A designer sending a fat model down a runway is not the permission I require to exist. An industry that’s failed me on countless occasions, to varying degrees of chaos and horror, doesn’t deserve to be a part of my salvation, nor does it deserve one more well-articulated shout into the void. Resisting leads me to more questions, of course, but they surely have more interesting, less predictable answers than “Why didn’t I see more fat people at fashion week?” Without fashion, what are we talking about? How do fat people get to see ourselves? And most importantly, where the fuck do we shop?
"Fashion knows what it needs to do, fashion just doesn’t want to do it" YESSSS THIS EXACTLY
that's so interesting. before reading this i had never thought of how much we equate fat acceptance with fashion and nothing else. great stuff!