I've talked before about how my mom made me go to Diet Watchers meetings (not Weight Watchers, Diet Watchers; I think the copyright police caught up with them shortly after my mom and I reached goal weight). I went. And I quite enjoyed the meetings, which were led by a nice Jewish grandmother with a sense of humor, who wore embroidered bell-bottoms and tight tops, to show off her slim figure. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.
Who I didn't want to be like, was all the other ones: Flabby middle-aged ladies, like Divine without the attitude, they wore short-sleeved muumuus, and their upper arm flab used to hang out from the sleeves and wave around whenever they moved their hands. I was scarred for life by those ladies. I didn't want to be fat like them. And I didn't want to own a muumuu.
And I wasn't fat. In fact I weighed practically the same thing, from the time I was 14 to the time I was 20: 155 pounds, of which most of it was muscle, because I used to walk everywhere, miles and miles, and for hours and hours, however far I needed to go, to get where I was going. I used to drop about 10 pounds every year or so, when my mom's guilting started to get to me, and then put it back on again as soon as I started eating normally again. I lived in a perpetual state of tight waistbands, and was constantly cycling blouses in and out of my wardrobe, depending on if I could get the buttons to close down the front or not. -- I had this one size twelve red print dress that I never wore, because I could never get down to wearing a size twelve for long enough, and it finally went out of style at the back of my wardrobe. -- Here's me when I was 18:
I was 32 years old when I finally went to a Lane Bryant for the first time, after having discovered the hard way that if you eat everything you're hungry for when you're pregnant, you might have some trouble getting back to pre-pregnancy weight afterward, even if you do breastfeed. By that time in 1994 though, and by that time the days of Omar-the-tentmaker were long gone. I've read horror stories about young plus-sized girls growing up in the 50's and 60's, who would go to stores like that and find rows and rows of dark colored, badly cut clothing, that looked like it was designed for their grandmothers. That wasn't my experience. By the time I went, the styles were cute, and the models were cute; it was like shopping in any other clothing store, except that the clothes had all been sized upward, so for a change I was at the low end of the size-spectrum.
Here's a picture of me from shortly after my younger son was born, when I was in my mid-thirties:
I was wearing something large and loose, but that was okay because the style at the time was for clothes to be large and loose. Even slim people were wearing large, loose clothes, and big, ugly prints, in bright colors. I had a wardrobe full of elastic-waisted knit pants and floaty chiffon things, which were practically the muumuus that scarred me as a child, and I've got a book from the time, Life Is Not A Dress Size, which alternates between liberating messages about accepting yourself, and pictures of eye-hurting prints and disturbing combinations of colors that will probably make you throw up if you have anything to drink before you look at them.
I'm only going to share one picture, because I don't want to be cruel. I loved the book when I read it in the 90's. It was liberating as all hell. And besides, everyone was dressing like that back then, and large women at least looked better in all those big prints than the slim ones did. Don't laugh too much, girls, someday your clothes are going to look just as ridiculous.
...Okay, I lied. But I'm not writing to talk about how ugly styles were in the 1990's. I'm writing to talk about fat clothes, how over the course of my lifetime, heavy girls have gone from being restricted to the Chubby department in the department store, and strict rules like "No Horizontal Stripes" and "Always Wear Dark Colors", to the modern era when there's a whole Full Figure Fashion Week, and instead of hiding their bodies in dark clothes and muumuus, plus-sized models pose in next to nothing, looking as glamorous as anyone else.
It's a good change. And believe it or not, it didn't start because of the rising obesity rates. Fat Acceptance actually got its start in the late 60's, at a time when obesity rates in the United States hovered around 10-15%. It was an offshoot of other civil rights movements of the time, pressing for equal rights for black people, gays, and women. The NAAFA, the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Americans, was founded in 1969, the same year as Llewellyn Louderback published Fat Power, which was sort of the manifesto of the movement.
I remember reading that book in the late 70's, and it was inspiring. It was actually written by a man who was a Fat Admirer, or in other words, someone who preferred to date women who were above average in weight, rather than by someone who was obese himself, but it made a statement that I'd never heard anyplace else before in my life: That people had a right to respect based on who they were, not on how much they weighed. Later on Great Big Beautiful Doll, published in 1977, reinforced the same message:
Written by self-described GBBD Stella Jolles Reichman, Great Big Beautiful Doll recalled the glories of growing up in Austria, at a time when girls were sent to health farms to gain weight rather than to lose it. It also gave grooming advice (Although shampoo your pubes is the only bit I remember), and style hints, and featured this centerfold section of styles Ms. Reichman thought would look attractive on a heavy woman:
I remember wondering where she got the hourglass corset to wear under those, when I read the book in the '70's. I'd shopped the foundation section of the local department store (to try and keep my mom from noticing that my jeans were getting too tight), and the main things I'd found were super-ugly, butt-covering things, that felt like hell while you were wearing them, and never squashed my thighs as flat as I wanted them to.
The Fat Acceptance movement took off in the early 80's, when there were still only eight states with obesity rates above 10%. Big Beautiful Woman got its start as a magazine at that time, and it was a liberating read, with fashion spreads featuring plus-sized clothes, on real plus-sized models, and personal ads by and for heavy women. Later on it was joined by Mode Magazine, and by Radiance, which catered to the large end of the plus-sized audience.
As the 1980's moved into the 1990's, fashion began to catch up with the movement. Emme, who weighed 190 pounds at the height of her career (but looked slimmer, because so much of it was muscle) was the first plus-sized model to achieve widespread fame. Lane Bryant, which had started out taking its customers for granted, marketing dowdy, middle-aged fashions, for "Stout Women and Misses" -- And for Juniors with "Plenty", as you see here:
(Can you imagine being at a slumber party, and having your friends see that tag?) -- started evolving toward the trendy shop it tries to be today.
Later, other companies took notice of large women and started marketing to them. Ulla Popkin sells a nice selection of elegant, classic styles, while Torrid, an offshoot of Hot Topic, directs itself toward the plus-size teen market. Plus-size fashion blogs and plus-size models abound (and are quite popular with the gentlemen, or so Ask Men says). The days of girls being scarred at the sight of heavy women in muumuus look like they are gone forever (not to mention muumuus seem to be all the rage again right now). It doesn't seem appropriate even to talk about "fat clothes" any more, so I guess it's time to save that term for the extra-loose pants most of us keep in our closets for Thanksgiving, or days when we're feeling especially premenstrual.
HyperSmash
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