I walked into a commonly-loathed fatshion store and tried on the 2 bras offered to me. They came in black and beige with polyester all over. Struggling to squish my tits into one, then the other cup was like playing chicken with the fat kid on top. It just so happened that of the two options available to me, only one option fit somewhat acceptable and so I walked out with a beige monstrosity big enough to fit on a toddler’s head.
I have been fighting with the bra industry for acceptable support since I started developing torpedo tits in the fourth grade. Back then it was ‘fuck it I’ll wear a t-shirt” and the occasional check-in from a classmate. Ever had an older kid try to snap a bra strap you didn’t have? It’s actually more embarrassing than later when I got snapped by an actual bra strap on my back. Granted this is steeped in misogyny and gender expectations that are screwed up and worthless as-is, I still felt the pressure to holster up and get my tits further up my body than gravity allowed.
By high school I was what I thought to be a DDD cup. This lasted through several bouts of anorexia and bulimia causing my front end to topple over my wasting bottom end more than once. I had an aching back, an aching butt, an aching body. Then I gained weight and everything balanced out. I went to college, went to my professional life, bought some femme attire and started hunting for a good bra fitting that told me how to properly hoist the flab in front to make me look like Wonder Woman. That’s when I found out I was a 42 F/G/H depending on the brand.
Cool.
Damn.
I’m fucking huge, no? Then I found out lots of boob-toting folk have some crazy alphabet number on their body. Except the bra industry says SUCK IT and gives us A-DDD. Except Lane Bryant who says here, have 2 options in F-H. Not sufficient I say, not sufficient. So I had a low point. I hit bottom. I wanted pretty.
We sure had an awesome conversation in comments to my post of yesterday on my discomfort with the concept of intuitive eating. Turns out there really are as many definitions for intuitive eating as there are folks practicing it, which makes sense in the larger scheme of things. The discussion really helped me pinpoint exactly where my wariness of intuitive eating comes from, and it may be a total non-surprise that it’s wrapped up in language.
I know there are people using the term in a way I find troubling — people who hope to use it as cryptodieting (i.e. “once I commit to intuitive eating I will magically only want carrots and cabbage and will lose weight”), and a smaller number who use it as cryptobinging (”but I want to eat one million Oreos, so it must be good for me”). But this reads to me more like a rejection of disordered versions of IE than a rejection of IE.
…I guess part of the problem is that whenever you put a term to something, you risk people taking it up as a banner but in a way you can’t countenance.
It’s precisely this sort of diet-but-not-a-diet thinking that has made up the majority of the intuitive-eating conversations I’ve read recently, and that explains my desire to reject this faulty logic right away. The potential to use “intuitive eating” as code for for an old-fashioned “lifestyle change” diet makes me twitchy. Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone who practices intuitive eating is participating in a dieting fakeout, not by a long shot — but the capacity of the concept, and the language it uses, to be so flexible is a problem for me. (As an aside, be warned I may start using the term “cryptodieting” ALL THE DAMN TIME now.)
Lucie, the owner of a new online plus boutique LucieLu approached me about trying a couple of pieces from her line. I took a long gander at her wares and was pleasantly surprised to find many of things she has in stock–lots of fresh prints, unexpected details, punchy colour– are relevant to my fatshion interests, and so was happy to test out a couple of things and report on my findings.
For reference purposes, I am 5′3, about 260 pounds and wear anything from a 16 to 20 on top and 20 to 24 on the bottom. My measurements (last I checked) are 47.5-43-55 (less hip and more profound derriere).
The first item I tried was the zipper tee & I am quite happy with it. I like my basics to have some chutzpah so the puffed sleeves and unexpected zipper rosette are big selling points for me. It’s got that whole “gritty meets pretty” vibe that the Unremarkable Guy with Hipster Glasses on this season of Project Runway keeps going on about, and I can imagine it working with a wide variety of skirts, tucked and untucked.
It’s slate grey and made from a soft, stretchy rayon/poly blend. It has enough weight/structure that it doesn’t bunch or wrinkle–tees tend to roll up over my belly but this one, i’m happy to report, did not stray from its assigned post. As you can see from the untucked photo below, it’s a decent length, and cut to be fairly fitted all the way down. Definitely long enough that I’d feel comfortable wearing it with jeans (that is, if I had any that weren’t utterly mediocre, but that’s not Lucie’s fault). I ordered the 2x which I found true to size. This particular shirt goes up to a 5x (30) and I expect that the length/stretchiness would allow for it to be worn (albeit on the snugger side) by mid-to-moderately busty 32s as well.
EDIT: Some folks in comments are suggesting that what I describe here IS intuitive eating, so possibly this post would be better framed as my own re/definition of the concept. My reading on the subject over the past few months has left a sour taste in my mouth, so I’m feeling reactionary about it, but it could be that intuitive eating is just one of those approaches that has no single definition, even if some sources make it sound otherwise (or that intuitive eating requires a wholesale rejection of any eating “rules” whatsoever). At any rate, on to the original post.
I had a question a couple weeks ago about why I’m not a huge proponent of intuitive eating as a solution to a troubled relationship with food. First, I want to make it abundantly clear that this is my opinion only. I am not disparaging intuitive eating if it works for you; I think everyone should find their own way of feeding themselves and relating to food, and, if necessary, healing that broken connection with the whole process of eating. Reality dictates that different bodies and different people respond differently to different stimuli, so if intuitive eating has served you, then you go on intuiting, friend. However, both philosophically and practically, it does not so much work for me. I think intuitive eating actually complicates something that should be very simple, and it can outright fail some of us as a strategy for eating healthfully. I’ll illustrate, as is my wont, with a personal example.
I don’t have a gallbladder. Not anymore; not for several years. I have written about this, with both humor and rage, before. When I was 23, my gallbladder and I found ourselves at a standoff, victims of irreconcilable differences. I won the battle, obviously, and my gallbladder and I would part ways forever. No, this is unfair; I didn’t hate my gallbladder, nor was I at war with it. Indeed, the injury I caused it was purely accidental and if the intervening years have taught me anything, I would much rather go through life with a functional, intact, normal gallbladder than without one. But, the divide occurred, and one of us had to go, and accepting that, swallowing the reality that I was losing an organ, was a long and difficult process.
For reasons relating to the obscene miseries of health insurance, I had to put off my gallbladder’s removal for several months after being diagnosed. At the time I was just squeaking out my final years on my father’s health insurance, which would only pay for such a surgery if it took place in-network, the “network” being mostly located in Florida with my father and my childhood home. I was also in my final semester of my first Master’s degree, and a Boston resident of several years, and, well, if you know me at all you’ll know it is very much against my nature to take a leave of absence from school in order to tend to a health problem that was unlikely to kill me in a hurry. So, I faced a period of almost four months in which my gallbladder and I had to maintain a shared household, which was a bit like spending four months with a sleeping pufferfish in your abdomen. You really don’t want to disturb the pufferfish, so living in a way that eliminated possible disruptions seemed my most logical option. Surviving those four months without pain would require a major change in eating patterns.
Hey kids, it’s Friday! It’s also my personal annual Get An Extremely Private Medical Exam That Causes Me A Fair Bit Of Anxiety Day. But no matter, you’re getting some fluff, whether you like it, or not.
Fluff the first comes from a Formspring questioner (SURPRISED?), who inquires: I’ve been reading fatshionista for a long time, and maybe this was covered at some point that I missed, but what happened to it being a group blog? I think you’re fabulous, I’m just confused by the structure of the blog now.
Good question! I did not, in fact, formally note this slight shift out here in the internets, though I always meant to. I am bad with the housekeeping posts.
My vision for fatshionista.com was always that it would be a group blog with a diversity of perspectives, and for the first year, pretty reliably, it was. And it was great! However, in the year since, most of the other bloggers dropped off (for various totally understandable and drama-free reasons). Eventually it became overwhelmingly just me writing, with posts from other authors maybe a couple times a month, if that.
Thus, in late 2009 I quietly shifted the structure a bit, as it seemed disingenuous to keep promoting this as a “group blog” when it had really become a blog I write, with occasional contributions from others. It just seemed confusing and inaccurate to not reflect the format change. So I made some new post tags, reorganized the author groups in the backend, and now it’s Mostly Lesley’s Blog, With Posts By Amazing Occasional Contributors When They Have Time To Participate (Or If Lesley Sees Them Post Something Awesome On LJ And Asks Them To Crosspost It To Fats.com).
Blogging is a weird hobby and/or compulsion, and one that is insanely time-consuming, so unfortunately not everyone has the ability (or is as willing to forgo sleep) to participate on a regular schedule. I get that, completely. Nevertheless, I maintain an open-door policy with regard to guest posting from any of the original bloggers at any time. Is this is ideal scenario I’d envisioned when I began this thing in 2007? Nope, not by a long shot. But, it’s how things have gone. I expect this space will always be changing — for example, stitchtowhere and I have been discussing a tag-team advice column since LONG before I started my illustrious Formspring career, and we still have plans of making that happen. I try to just keep in step with how things are now and let the river run, as the song says. Working Girl, anyone? Anyone? Come on.
THAT’S RIGHT.
Fluff the second is a bit of backstage nonsense that I am only sharing because I am, as I have oft mentioned the past few days, operating on not much sleep. Were I running at full capacity I would probably think better of this, and as it stands I may later be terrifically embarrassed by it.
See, I have a crap commute. I go in and out of Boston every single day for work. There is a lot of traffic. The one up side to this is that it gives me enforced time to do lots of meandering, unstructured thinking. When ideas I want to remember hit me, I record them as voice memos on my iPhone. Most of these are dull mumblings in sentence fragments, since I don’t record them with the intention that anyone but me will ever hear them, but occasionally they verge on coherence.
Yesterday I was thinking about a comment made by Eve to this post, in which she mentions that she and a friend had recently agreed that I should host a fatty-makeover show meant to teach fat folks “how to dress their best and be fabulous in their own way.” I love this idea! I do. I think it would be awesome and if I had any power at all in the media universe I would be trying to pitch that idea all over.
But while I was thinking about it in the car last night, my mind began to wander — as it does — and it occurred to me that it would also be fun to have another show as well… a different… show.
You can listen to my half-conceived and fully-unscripted insanity, as spewed over the steering wheel of my car in real time, using the Quicktime gadget below. (If that doesn’t work for you and you’re burning with desire, you can also download it here, though you are not missing much.) Oh yeah, and it’s probably not worksafe, as I say “fuck” a few times.
BRING IT ON, BRAVO. You know this would be a huge hit. Pun very much intended.
My loves, I am sorry. I am all apologies and excuses. I’ve been briefly out of town. I had the norovirus. (”There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!”) I am also doing badly with time management at present. My email is piling up so large that I fear it will shortly evolve sentience and threaten my life for being so neglectful. I have multiple half-finished blog posts that are currently doing nothing so much as standing by my locker smirking and making vague threats about dumping my books after school.
So, until I get my shit back together, I am sharing a few more of my favorite recent questions and answers that you may have missed from Formspring, which is also becoming unmanageable given that over the weekend my to-be-answered queue has ballooned to 49 questions. That said, I welcome you to add to the lumbering horror by asking a question of your own. I will get there. And I promise there will be fresh content, sweet and shining as a spring morning, very soon. Someday… somewhere… we’ll find a new way of living.
(This is what happens, kids, when I am sleep-deprived and overstimulated. You get an abundance of old movie references.)
Q. I think some of the questions asked on here are a bit rude. Yet you still answer so graciously, what is your secret to being so gracious and kind?
A. In every anonymous internet exchange, I’ve made it a habit of assuming everyone’s best intentions. Constantly assuming the worst will eat away at you slowly from the inside like a poison, and that’s how activists get burnt out.
That said, I’m also aware that people who ask rude questions usually do so in order to get a particular reaction. They’re looking for me (or whomever they’re trying to incite) to get angry or act stupid or betray some hurted feewings. Answering graciously, as you put it, effectively defuses that attempt.
If I were capable of taking the rudeness personally, I might find it more difficult to deal with. But the rude people aren’t really speaking to me; they’re speaking to fat people as a monolith, or they’re speaking to the fat family member that disgusts them, or they’re speaking to the fat coworker that they hate, or they’re speaking to the anonymous fat guy who sat next to them on the bus this morning. As a public fatass I’m just a conduit for that, and I accept that it goes with the territory. It isn’t about me, it’s about what I represent: that is, fat people refusing to buy into shame and self-loathing.
Confidentially, I find the rudest questions are often the most fun and challenging to answer in a polite and thoughtful way. If I couldn’t take a punch — or if part of me didn’t dig getting under people’s skin enough to make them take a swing at me — I wouldn’t have been able to do this for as long as I have.
And thanks for the grand compliment.
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And with that, two of the aforementioned potentially-rude (or potentially-not, I can never tell and try to err on the side of optimism) questions are answered after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »
This has been a slow blogging week for me for a few reasons, and unfortunately I’ve yet to finish the part two of the “Dealing With Parents” post about dealing with kids, with a side of constructive criticism of the drumbeats leading up to the war on childhood OMGbesity, i.e. fat kids are easy targets! (Actual post title will probably be shorter.) Nevertheless, I’ve been trying to keep up with my Formspring questions, so for those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, this should be new content. As an aside, there are a few questions currently in my queue that are a week or two old, because I’m still working on answers to them, so if you’re waiting… I’m sorry you have to wait some more.
Q. I’m confused about your anti weight-loss views. Are you also anti weight-gain for people who are underweight? What about muscle gain for athletes in training? What is so bad about purposefully changing your body’s weight or shape in a healthy way?
A. You are correct! You ARE confused!
Body changes are inevitable. I am quite in favor of changes in one’s body, though I admit this is because opposing them is automatically and perpetually a losing battle. We all age; we have accidents and injuries; hormones shift; so does flesh. No getting around that, no matter how many cosmetic surgeries a body may have — change is unavoidable and plentiful. I am not opposed to change, because it’d be like opposing the sunrise.
I am, rather, opposed to a $40 billion dollar industry of diet and weight loss products that promise health and happiness for a price and consistently fail to deliver. I’m opposed to a culture that sets forth one narrow standard for an acceptable body and refuses to acknowledge or represent alternatives. I’m opposed to a health care environment that candidly and blatantly places more emphasis on sheer poundage than on the overall health and wellness of each unique individual. And I’m opposed to a world in which abusing, harassing, bullying, demeaning, humiliating, and hating fat people exclusively because they are fat is considered an A-OK way of life.
My loves, I am sorry. I am all apologies and excuses. I’ve been briefly out of town. I had the norovirus. (”There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!”) I am also doing badly with time management at present. My email is piling up so large that I fear it will shortly evolve sentience and threaten my life for being so neglectful. I have multiple half-finished blog posts that are currently doing nothing so much as standing by my locker smirking and making vague threats about dumping my books after school.
