Fabuloso

A month or two ago, we got a new accounts payable chick, who is a total hot shit and has fabulous style...sort of a retro feel, but also very modern and put together, and maybe the best short (i.e. very slightly longer than chin length) bob I've ever seen. She just came down to drop off a bunch of assorted mail, and told me that I had "the cutest clothes."

I feel like pulling an Elle Woods, standing in the hallway all "...ME!"

I have such a hard time with fashion because I adore it...love looking at it, love talking about it, love fantasizing about blowing a mint on entire wardrobes. And yet I fall squarely in the midst of Plus Size Town, which is where fashion so often goes to die.

I would like to swear, here, in a public forum, that if I ever meet the idiot who told the fashion industry that big people want to wear sacks and sequins, I will kill them dead. This goes DOUBLE for whoever told the shoe people that people with big feet want hideous, cornea-melting shoes.

Whenever I go shopping, I find myself looking not for the most fabulous new looks I can try, but instead wading through scores of mysteriously tapered pants, tentlike shirts, horrendous dresses...of all the approaches that designers could have taken, how did they come up with this? I can only imagine how the brainstorming session went. "Let's see. I'm not really sure about how to deal with someone who weighs more than 100 pounds, so I guess we should just make a large fabric sack with no shape, which will make them completely spherical and thus avoid the problem." Yeah, all right.

This would bother me far less if I had not had many of the same issues at a size 14 or so. The smallest I have ever been was a size 8, and let me tell you, there is no planet on which my frame is supposed to be a size 8. I am overweight now. There is no argument about this. It's why I work out and eat right and am trying to get into better shape. However, I once sat with my fellow member of the Fabulous Redhead Club (from which I am now retired but feel I can declare myself an honorary member) and paged through my senior yearbook, and she told me she wanted to feed my photographed self a sandwich. I do not now, nor have I ever wanted pictures of me to prompt that thought. I think I was at my own personal hotness apex at around a size 12, where no one wanted to forcefeed me, nor did they want to take food away from me. I had the misfortune, however, to be this weight as a teenager, which of course meant I thought I was a giant burgeoning heifer. I look at pictures now from that time period and I would seriously shank near relatives to look like that again.

But even at a 12, half the time I would have to shop in the plus size sections! Why in the hell would that happen? Do they keep these designers in Undisclosed Locations, far far away from everyone who would WEAR CLOTHING? Because when I look around, it's not me against the supermodels out there. It's me and a bunch of people skinnier than me, and a bunch of people bigger than me. And remarkably, everyone is wearing clothes! I know this is surprising, but apparently I am some kind of observer savant, because the Fashion Establishment seems to forget that people larger than a size 6 need clothing too, and presumably would like it to LOOK GOOD.

Since reaching my current weight, I have learned some tricks...I shop online and experiment with different looks, but still I find myself working very hard to find stuff that I am happy with. It just always surprises me to find such crazy things in the plus size departments of the world. I'm not really sure who would want tapered pants in ANY situation, but let me tell you, the Fashion People want big people to have them. Tapered pants are STALKING me. And yet, all they do is emphasize your hips, which presumably your average plus size woman already is well stocked with. Same with these giant drapey shirts and dresses...larger women HAVE volume. Adding more is not going to help, it's going to make us look MORE round, and with roundness comes bloatiness, and that way ABSOLUTE MADNESS LIES.

A couple nights ago I was looking for pants, because 40 lost pounds later, the perfectly fitting pants I bought no longer fit so perfectly. Oh, the aggravation. Speed reacted to my meltdown by asking when my period was due...he was doing this in a manner that involved actual concern and desire to avoid crying, rather than in a "oh women are crazy, what with their EMOTIONS and BLEEDING" tone, but ugh, I'm sorry, Men of the World, but you'll never know the agony of women's pants. Not only is the sizing system in general a complete farce, but there are also all kinds of lengths and waists and other things waiting for you to pull them off the shelf so they can proceed to make your body look TERRIFYING. I once pulled all of my dresses out and put them on the bed, lining up the waists and shoulders...all generally the same, what with having bought them to fit my body, but then I looked at the tags. 10. 8. 10. 12. 12. 13/14. 10. WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE? It does not help that once you leave the relative safe haven of dresses you enter the demonic level of separates, in which I wear a different top than I do bottom. AWESOME. I looked at roughly 100 pairs of pants online and NONE of them looked to be both the right length and the right waist.





SO, when the Rockin' Accounts Payable Chick told me I had cute clothes, I just about wet my pants out of joy because I work SO HARD to find great stuff that looks good, and having that effort recognized is straight up euphoria. Thanks, PAPC!