Small problems, no big deal, thin complaints, short temper
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010I just want you to know that even though having weighed the fact that I’m not belittling anyone, or insulting anyone, or demanding anything and that hearing someone say that they also have these problems would have meant something to me when I was younger (or now, actually) - and the encouragement to bite the bullet from my honey and some of my fine twitter peeps - posting this makes me feel very very guilty. Because.. the stereotype goes, women are supposed to ‘want’ to be ‘thin’? Because being ‘a thin person’ I have, like, the metaphorical official celebrity/body image media seal of potential approval? Because of fucked up insecurity-sells ingrained societal bullshit, basically. I would never, ever, ever post this unsolicited in size acceptance forums. I’m not including demonstrative pictures because I’m wary of becoming ‘thinspiration’. If I sound like a major jackass? Please, tell me. Right. Here goes.
Let’s talk again about how I hate summer clothes, shall we? Because they don’t fit me? Good. That will be fun.
I am never going to try to convince anybody that people individually and ‘the fashion industry’ at large treat thin people (or genetically average short people) worse than fat people*, or people with bodies that otherwise differ from the so-called norm. That would be ridiculous and cruel. I’m not suggesting that my problems are worse than anyone’s. But since this here is my space, I do get to tell you about how it sucks to be too small to find clothes that fit. You can listen or not, as you please. Please beware of triggers if you’re susceptible; female body image stuff can be volatile.
The gist of it is: it sucks to be too small to be able to find clothes that don’t say to your body “Oi oi, fellas, you’re not quite right here. I think I’ll swamp you and drag you, and make you feel like you’re treading water in your own garments.”
Going on clothes alone - the societal judgement aspects can probably wait for another day, I am way to zoned out to dip my toes in that acidic pool just yet - I’m pretty sure we can all relate to not being able to find an item of clothing that fits. You know, that doesn’t restrict or choke you, doesn’t bunch up in uncomfortable places or blouse out where it would feel and look better to cling, doesn’t need to be tugged down or hitched up, doesn’t get in the way of your other clothes, doesn’t ride up/down/around.. clothes that work for your body and your psyche, not against them.
It’s hard for an industry to predict, of course - people are of all different dimensions. And it’s probably hard for most people a lot of the time- truly, I don’t forget that.
But I’m talking about me, and I know for a fact that it’s hard, for me! Very almost ALL of the time! So quit rolling your eyes and let me vent, OK?
No matter how much I like and enjoy and feel lucky and thankful to be in the body that I have - and believe me, I do - the fact remains that mainstream, highstreet clothes (or.. any clothes I have ever found when I say a thing “fits perfectly” I mean “it doesn’t cause me extreme irritation the minute I put it on” aren’t made for me. It’s worst in summer, because nothing is as stretchy and forgiving as a knitted sweater (FUCK T-SHIRTS and their rigid ways!). And that pisses me off! Not that I feel personally slighted, exactly - I know it’s not done specifically to defy me. Nevertheless, it does defy me, and puts me out, and like any thwarted warlord that makes me shout.
When I was in the first few years of high school, it was just that I was littler than the average range of women and teens, so to find clothes that didn’t make people mistake me for an actual nine year old - I also look young in the face, yay you may think this would be flattering or whatever but when you are twenty two and multiple (multiple!) people TELL YOU they mistook you for twelve, well, get back to me on that, and try not to look sour) - I mostly wore tops designed for kids aged four to six, so that they were tight and my belly showed. “Like a teenager”, 1998 - 2001. That just.. didn’t feel good, you know? When all your friends are talking about their bras and buying things from the shops in J17 spreads and saying “I feel so fat” like it’s a badge of grown-up womanhood’s honour.. “Hey, look at me, I’m a tiny stunted juvenile weirdo”. Only I didn’t HAVE to say look at me, because people were already saying “you’re so small, wowww!” and “she’s so thin, look” and “God, you’re so skinny, it’s not fair”, and “whisper whisper whisper *point*”.
No, it isn’t fair - I can’t do anything about it any more than you can. It’s not my fault and it doesn’t get me anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t hear the adverts saying “you could be slimmer!” or that you don’t have to teach yourself not to think “I look bulgy” or “I should be more streamlined” - because literally every healthy body has some skin or fat on it that can form folds no matter how small, and folds, sez lying traitorous ladymedia, R BAD. You get quotes from Gwyneth Paltrow** or Eva Mendez*** about how “even I feel fat sometimes” and people become so scathing - yeah, I am a little too, because that’s a cack-eyed harmful way to say it when you’re in the public eye (and lauded as being so beautiful). But I understand - the current capitalist world is built to make everyone feel like they aren’t good enough, that every bloat is death fat, that if you fail at meeting these mad stats of perfection for even a second then you fail forever. I remember thinking that way. There’s no haven for thin people in the world of celebrity diet judging; every one of us needs to work honestly at making our own republic of heaven.
The only times I heard about those paragons of thinness, professional models, back then in school, was when people (real people, TV, magazines) talked about what a bad influence they were what with their attractiveness and necessary eating disorders and all - because people can’t naturally be that thin!
Hearing that your natural body essentially enforces the patriarchy and apparently causes your peers to feel inescapably inferior and that you’re unnatural and freakish is, actually, not all that fun. FYI.
Now I am big enough that I can wear clothes designed for average-range adults, by which I mean that they will not actually fall off of me if I put them on (and tall enough that I’m only an inch or so below the upper height requirement for ‘petite’). And that’s pretty nice! But it would be nicer if every shop carried ‘my size’ (they don’t; it’s nice (SARCASM) to know I’m still small enough to be weird), and hey, let’s go crazy - it would be SUPER nice if ‘my size’ fitted my lumpen protrusions in so that I could WEAR ‘my size’ instead of a size up which leaves me swimming and feeling like goblins are grasping my shadow. The back width, the arm circumference, the waist; when these are too wide, the excess fabric gets in the way and grinds. And honestly, to avoid that.. I’d really rather not wear an item that fits in the places I have bones but otherwise makes me look like I’m trying to spill my fleshy privacy all over your desk. Comparatively small stature’d people can have lumps and bumps and shapes of variety too, y’know? Bravissimo’s band sizes go down to twenty-eight, if you get what I’m saying.
Look, I’m not saying that this is the worst problem ever. That there are such things as the concept of “fit” and “clothing sizes” at all tells me I’m not capriciously making a mountain out of a molehill, though - you can feel it when something doesn’t fit you. It irritates all day in little ways.
Here’s some trivia: my Primary School nickname was “Titch”. Being small - but not medically small, because that would be a different matter altogether - is an unremovable part of my public identity nowadays; it goes without saying for me. Still not for other people, natch, but for me. It’s drummed in. I’m normal enough that I really can’t reasonably complain (berate me), but I’m too small for people I don’t know not to remark upon it. And for clothes to fit me! That’s what I’m talking about, right, right.
I guess by this point the being used to it works against me - I bring it (some of it) on myself: being a short person I should be buying from the racks marked “Petite”. My shoulder to waist measurement is fifteen inches. According to the internet, that’s shoulder to underboob on your average lady. Normal-people clothes are too long and shape-moulded in the wrong places, I really can’t deny that. But I have never bought anything from the short-person selection.
You see, even when they’re in evidence I have never taken Petite ranges seriously, because I have never passed a Petite rack or section that didn’t make me think “but I am not a forty-two year old physically graceful life-long academic with shoulder length honey brown hair who was born in Italy and is now married to an English (or, possibly, Welsh) policeman!”.
This lady that I see also wears minimal pink lipstick, and those necklaces made of coloured thread with small rock beads tied in various places; multiple-strand. She’s kind but stern, and speaks softy but with force, wears moccasins, and sometimes a headband. She’s middle-class rich and was a “bohemian” in her university years. I like her fine. She is nothing like me.
That is a trouble. I need to look harder if I want the right to rail against injustice knowledgably. I suppose I need to buckle down and do some in-depth research. It looks like Topshop has a short people range.. that’s made up mostly of tops.. which also feature in the normal-sized people ‘cropped’ range. Nice. Are they cheating by using the same garments for both(cropped for normal people, normal-length for short torsos?), or do they have a version that is petite-cropped too? Of course, either way, the size chart lines up crazy, they charge a minimum £18 for t-shirts embellished with old-t-shirt fake wear&tear, and everything I have bought from Topshop has gotten (non-purposeful) holes in quick smart. I wonder how easy it is to find petite stuff second-hand?
Wull, ’til I win the job lottery, guess I’d better get used to chopping the bottoms off of and sewing elastic into the back of my shirts.
That’ll look nice.
Fuckin’ clothes. What are they good for?
**I use the term “fat people” because that’s favoured by a lot of the pluz-sized size acceptance advocates that I read the most.
**This one from years ago I particularly, clearly remember, because I could see something wrong about it but I wasn’t sure what, and I compared my body to hers in the mirror afterwards
***I am actually not 100% sure on this. I like Eva Mendez, she seems a fun person. She was good in Hitch.
