whoever let me leave the house with those eyebrows from 2015-2017, i’m gonna kick your arse
getting to know myself again through clothes
Remember when I said sunday scaries would have a consistent biweekly update schedule? I lied...sorry! (Ok, not lied, but I def jinxed myself)
This week, I talk about bodies *scream*, clinging to femininity as a defense mechanism, and why girlfriend collective is taking all of my money.
hope you enjoy!! be back in “two” weeks !!
The mee-maw mirror moment (i don’t call my grandma mee-maw i swear)
Last week, I was at my grandmother’s apartment helping her with a virtual doctor’s appointment. I’m pretty sure that sleeping for 9 hours a night keeps me from being a wretched human being, so my 5:55AM alarm forcing me out of peaceful slumber did warrant complaints, but it’s not like I had anything else to do, so.
Aside from being awake at the buttcrack of dawn, the appointment was uneventful, and I was happy to help out my mom, who would’ve had to interrupt her workday to assist if I wasn’t available. (child of the year award goes to....)
My grandma recently moved to the Bronx from Fl*rida, where she’d been living for as long as I can remember, tbh. Having lived in NYC prior to her relocation down south over a decade (i think) ago, the territory is familiar to her, but much has changed. We’re all much older, obviously, and she’s got a lot more health problems, unfortunately. I saw her a couple of times in Florida on family vacations, but I can’t say I remember much of those trips. They were short and always felt like little reprieves from “real life,” not really allowing me to cultivate the relationship that I’d had with my other grandparents. I don’t really fault anyone with this; distance was hard, and there were other factors and family dynamics that I can only presume made things difficult, as well.
I’ve been spending more time with her since she’s come back to the city, though, taking her to appointments with my mom, painting with her when she comes over, and looking at old photos together that ended up in my house after her move. It feels nice to have this adult relationship with her where I can both acknowledge the novelty of our relationship, while knowing that there’s still a lot of love there. It’s also a kind of balancing act between my relationship with her and her relationship with my mom - I know there’s a lot of past and present pain there. Maybe balancing act isn’t the right word; I don’t feel like I have to choose or prioritize in any way, but I think I just hold the realities of each relationship with a lot of weight.
having a brain is kinda…ridiculously exhausting sometimes
But, this week’s newsletter isn’t really about motherly relationships. That’s a can of worms I’m saving for the special mother’s day edition of sunday scaries ;)
This week is about taking the time to intentionally get to know yourself after years of feeling meh, or not really feeling much at all, about yourself.
I begin with my grandmother, because, when I was with her for the appointment, I had been monitoring her while she got ready for the day. Ensuring that she didn’t fall or need any help from my spot on the couch, I realized that she has the same body as me. Like. Aside from the characteristics that 51 years’ difference in age make very distinct, for the most part, we share the same angles and curves and shapes.
It was so strange, but also comforting, and a little sad (I’ll get to that later) to see so much of myself in her.
I then immediately thought of a moment from YEARS ago, when my grandmother’s mom (maternal great-gram) was living in a long term care facility in New York - she was in her mid-eighties with some health issues. While my grandma was still in Florida, my mom and her sister were the ones frequently checking in on her and caring for her - sometimes this included bathing her. I had gone with my mom on a few occasions, and on the way home one of the days my mom had given her a bath, she remarked that she noticed how nanny (my great grandma) had the same body as her. When I’d told my mom about what I’d noticed about my grandmother, she mentioned this memory, again.
It felt so profoundly special to be connected in this way, but it also kind of sent me into a spiral. For the rest of that day, I thought a lot about the really, really shitty relationship I have to my body. The lifelong inability to just be at peace by myself, and the acceptance (numbness) to the fact that maybe I never will. Our insidiously fat-hating society has made sure of that.
But it also made me feel bad to think about how I’d felt so connected with her in that moment through my body - a source of so much of my own pain, guilt, and confusion.
What horrible things to think of myself when I am so carefully created in the image of my mother, grandmother, great grandmother and who knows how many others.
What horrible things to think of myself, when such gentle acts of care and love have been what enlightened me to these deep connections in our genes.
Do I not just owe it to myself, but my family, to be kinder to my body?
I don’t really want to get into my complex (bad) feelings about my body. Vulnerability isn’t much of an issue for me - i do love talking about myself AND a good overshare- but I’m not feeling like I can be vulnerable in a way that publicizes my own pain. It feels too exposing. Too much like an invitation for pity, which, frankly, makes me really uncomfortable. I don’t want to be seen as needing comfort from it.
Anyway...It’s not the time for my public therapy session. If it was, my first order of business would be to figure out if it’s normal to go full calendar years without crying. (This, i’ll take feedback in the comments on). Being that living in this body has been the focal point of many of my lived experiences, I will probably definitely be going into the brain rot that having this wretched corporeal form has caused. (wretched because having a body is ridiculous and bad, not because my OWN body is ridiculous, or bad).
Today, right now, it feels easier to talk about how I’m trying to heal, rather than what I’m trying to heal from. But, maybe both of those things are intertwined.
AP Lang and Comp as a site of intense self-reckoning
I think I peaked junior year of high school. Not really, cause, like, ew...but I do remember it being a good year. Socially, I felt like I was really coming into myself. I was a giant try-hard-goody-two-shoes in high school, but I also think I was pretty well liked by a lot of different people. I also had a solid friend group that I felt very comfortable being myself with (for reference, see last sunday scaries).
Junior year, I was also figuring out a lot of bigger, social issues around body image. The stigma of fatness that bled into medical, housing, and workforce discrimination. I didn’t know the term “desirability politics” as actual social-justice vocabulary, but I certainly understood it personally. And, I think as I learned more about fatness as a political identity, I wanted other people to get it, too - regardless of their own body type.
In AP Language and Composition (APLAC) that year, one of our final assignments in the spring was to write a speech. For those unfamiliar, and if I’m remembering correctly, APLAC had an emphasis on learning more persuasive-style communication skills. Learning how to argue, 101. The speech topic, “This I Believe,” was a vague direction to stand up in front of the class and be passionate about something.
I remember our teacher (mr. sheppard hive assemble) telling us after we’d all gone, that it was a lot more emotional in our year than it had been in others. People were really vulnerable. They talked about very intimate, very personal things - and I think it genuinely strengthened the speeches. People are passionate about what they know - and what do you know better than yourself, your life, and the difficult things that you’ve been forced to withstand. It made “This I Believe,” not some abstract argument, but a deeply profound cry to grow beyond things that have hurt us.
I went back and forth on what I wanted to write my own speech on, but ultimately decided that I had to go with what I knew best - my challenging relationship to body, and myself. I wrote about the anxiety of growing up and coming to expect that at least one person was going to insult me, or make an offhand comment about my weight. I wrote about feeling like a failure for being so disconnected to the body positivity movement. I argued that despite these issues that had followed me for as long as I could remember, and that might follow me for the rest of my days, I deserved to feel good about myself. My voice shook the entire time I stood at the podium reciting my three page speech, but I felt so proud of myself after I finished. I made a few people cry. And I got an A, duh.
Looking back at the speech now, aside from cringing HARD about how 16 year old me wrote, I can recognize that I’ve come farther than I thought I would at the time. I was gonna include a lil excerpt, but I can’t get past a single line without my eye twitching.
I still don’t particularly LIKE my body even with the reckoning I’ve made with how fatness is politicized. Having that social-justice-y lens has definitely helped a lot in me understanding that me having shitty body image isn’t my fault, but that we just...live in a society. I don’t hate my body either, though, which is definitely an improvement from 6 years ago - and that just feels nice, tbh. I don’t really think body neutrality describes how I feel either. It feels...more complex than just neutral.
I just like...have a bigger body. And I have to live with it, I guess. Maybe that is body neutrality...but my feelings aren’t really neutral at all. At least, that’s not really how i’d categorize them.
“body ?” (emphasis on the ?) is probably the most accurate descriptor of how I feel. let’s try THAT movement.
Plato, Socrates, Aubrey Drake Graham
Despite all of those ~feelings~ I will say that I think I’m entering a new phase where I’m working with my body, and not necessarily in spite of her. I’m trying to internalize that my difficulty with ms. body can’t stop me from living my life. Not to be like YOLO, but also like...Drake was literally right. you DO only live once.
There are things I feel much more comfortable “working with my body” in than others. I’m not TOUCHING my issues around desirability right now, and I’m going to need around 7-10 months of mental preparation be able to feel ready to enter a dance class (even though most of my maladaptive (?) daydreaming has to do with joining a dance troupe and performing). Clothing, and dressing how I want, though? That feels okay. It feels easy. Accessible. Like a good first step.
Due to the absolutely abysmal conditions of plus size fashion until like...now (and it’s still pretty bad), I was forced to enter my business casual era MUCH too young. I was always a lil chunkster, but where kids can just kinda get away with wearing clothes for older children, there came a point in pre-teen/teenhood where I, and other bigger gals, got lost in the cracks.
I was a pretty “girly-girl” growing up (stereotypically speaking). My room was hot pink and Zebra print. I always painted my nails with glitter. My pink hello kitty radio was a lifeline. I was excited to be able to start wearing makeup, one day. I loved the mall and shopping- until, I didn’t.
I have a lot of memories of myself crying in the mall around age 12, because I couldn’t understand why the jeans just wouldn’t freakin’ fit. Or why I had to shop in the same section as my mom - collared shirts, boring, sweaters, and no rhinestones or funky prints. Even though I know now that what was trendy in 2011 would be laughable now, I look at old photos of myself and just feel sad because I knew I felt left out not getting to wear those things. Shopping became a source of fear, anxiety, and disappointment, and I abandoned that part of myself. I don’t think shopping itself was that important to my identity, but it was a big blow to my confidence, and a hurdle in my developing relationship to my body.
I wasn’t bullied for my fashion sense or anything, which I definitely think has a lot to do with the material privileges of growing up in an upper/middle class household. While I couldn’t fit into whatever was fashionable at the time, my clothes were still new and good quality. I just felt so crushed walking past the juniors section at all of the vibrant clothing and knowing I’d have to settle for the most “young-looking” items in the women’s section.
As I got a little older, and the fashion landscape changed (hello Torrid), shopping became more pleasant, but still not really enjoyable. I was trying to understand the niche (ugly) plus size fashion being thrown in my face, but I didn’t like it. There’s only so much peplum, flower and animal prints, and cold shoulder tops a 16 year old can take. So, I settled and took what I could. Walking to the corner of Forever 21 to get to the plus size section was insulting, but at least the sparkly mesh shirt was fun! Even though American Eagle only had my jean size in-store if someone had returned them from an online order, at least they were finally skinny jeans. It was a compromise - but an improvement, nonetheless.
Being able to kind of wear similar clothes to my peers didn’t do much for my body-image, which had already taken some critical hits. Which, looking back at pictures of high-school me, is pretty evident. I wore basics - solid colors, no loud patterns or prints. No frills, nothing super tight, or super short. I was clearly most comfortable in dark wash jeans and a t-shirt. I feared that sweatpants would make me look not put together. I was afraid to wear “loud” clothing and call attention to the thing I’d internalized was shameful. The fit above was probably the most eye-catching thing I wore around 14/15 - the loose, flowiness of the clothes made it feel ok.
Enter: Anastasia Beverly Hills.
Actually, enter great lash mascara, which was the first makeup I regularly started wearing in seventh grade (and got in trouble for, oops).
A few weeks before 9th grade, my mom asked me if I wanted to start wearing makeup to school, after noticing that I’d begun more than just playing around with it. I told her that my poison of choice was eyeliner and mascara, and some lip gloss - maybe a tint if I was feeling crazy- and she agreed.
Every single day of freshman and sophomore year of high school, a (sometimes too) thick line of black eyeliner accompanied me. At the risk of sounding vain, it kinda became a defining characteristic. Eyeliner and mascara turned into eyebrow pencil and TOO MUCH plucking !!!! (rip my eyebrow tail 1999-2015). That turned into powder foundation and lip gloss. Then liquid foundation, blush, and highlighter. I was doing a full face of makeup by the second half of junior year, and didn’t go a single day without it.
Waking up earlier than necessary to beat my face wasn’t all that great, but I couldn’t not do it. It was comfortable for me. It was fun and almost de-stressing to paint my face with such practiced care in the mornings, and it was nice that people noticed when I put on purple eyeshadow.
Hidden behind the purely teenage fun of learning to do my own makeup, however, there was something much deeper than just habit. What I considered comfort at the time was really a crutch with deep roots in social ideas about fatness and fat women specifically. The fear that I would wake up late one day and not have time for the full routine wasn’t normal, but it had a bigger context that I wouldn’t know until later in college, especially in its connection to my struggles with clothing.
There isn’t really a way to sugarcoat it - fat women are expected to, in a way, compensate for their bodies through hyper-femininity. Because fatness doesn’t fit within the dominant stereotypical notions of womanhood - dainty, thin, small, invisible- clinging to femininity in other places is deemed necessary.
“The level of femininity fat girls have to perform to not be seen as ugly or weird is phenomenal,” plus size style and beauty blogger Stephanie Yeboah recently tweeted, and she’s not wrong. It’s an often unspoken (once in a while, spoken) fact that fat women will be better received by society at large if they somehow make recompense for their fatness. If we post daily gym selfies, at least people will know we move about. If we share clips of the salad we’re eating for lunch, maybe they’ll recognise that we are ‘health-conscious.’ If we exude a kind of hyper-femininity at all times, at least we’ll be slightly more palatable. We’ll remind people that not only are we worthy of our womanhood, but of our basic humanity, too.”
— Marie Southard Ospina, Dazed Magazine1
I look back at high school, college, and even present-day me, to an extent, and feel completely exposed by this idea. Makeup was what I chose to “compensate” for not being thing. Leaving the house, or dorm, even for a short trip to the grocery store, or to sit in the library studying all day was impossible unless my makeup was perfect. If my face was polished and perfect, contoured and blended, no one would pay attention to the rest of me. As if I was a floating head or something.
It was a protection also granted by other privileges. Let’s be very clear - with skin color, hair texture, and facial features deemed palatable/acceptable by our anti-black society and its privileging of eurocentric characteristics, it was easier for me to chase and adhere to the standard. These things don’t exist in a vacuum, so to pretend like makeup was/is the only thing protecting me from worse treatment- institutionally, socially, interpersonally- is really just disingenuous.
Knowing now that achieving hyper-femininity through makeup, was a defense, for me, is as confusing as it is angering. I resent that fat women live in a world where we have to excuse our bodies through other parts of us- things that we may not want, or care for- to be treated better. I resent that fat Black, brown, disabled, queer women have to do it at a magnified level.
I resent that I wasted so much of my youth trying to be palatable instead of figuring out how I really wanted to express myself.
They call me ranch, cause I be dressing
I don’t think there’s justice in having to persevere through pain.
I don’t think there’s any fairness in people with marginalized identities having to find solace despite intense suffering.
I don’t consider my own healing from such foundational body image issues a beautiful process - it is difficult and I feel angry and sad that my younger self was filled with such pain because of a deeply hateful society.
I am trying, however, to lead with an outlook of curiosity and gentleness in this process- even though I am disdainful that I have to at all.
My body was something I had unshakeable anxiety about. Something I really genuinely didn’t ever see myself liking, at all. With the ambiguous feelings I have about it now, it’s something I am using to get to know myself better. Maybe I shouldn’t have to, but looking at it with this perspective, rather than one of loss, is freeing.
The process of getting to know myself again, through clothing and through body, is a way to counter the shame and anxiety of body terrorism.
This year, I’ve committed to curating a personal style for myself. I’m trying to make fashion a form of self expression and growth; to destroy the link it previously held with exclusion.
I’ve been vision boarding, following plus-size fashion bloggers, buying clothes in bright pastels, and with bold prints, looking outside of my three comfort clothing store’s sites, and stepping out of my comfort zone.
I’ve been inspired by big women who wear clothes that accentuate features I always tried to hide. Whose clothing is loud and beautiful and luxurious and calls attention to them. Whose clothing is funky and different but come together to make a sense of style that you can understand from looking at a few instagram posts.
It makes me want to do the same. It makes me want to invest in my style as an investment in myself.
“Before streetwear was streetwear for me, I used non form fitting clothes as a way to hide my body because I was afraid people would see my shape, which back then, really scared me. Then I began disliking oversized clothes because I wanted people to see my shape and deem me desirable despite my shape. It took a long time to get out of that, especially while seeing thinner people be praised for streetwear more than plus sized people — despite many plus sized people being pioneers in streetwear. But now I feel as though I’m finally in a place where I can wear whatever I want, no matter the circumstance and no matter my shape. And I wish the same for everyone. I want us to embrace fashion that make us feel seen and honor how we truly wish to express ourselves.”
— Simi (@simimoonlight) on instagram
Just a girl and her butterfly dress
It’s not by any means some groundbreaking political statement on like, a social level or anything. Fat people are being neglected by doctors and misdiagnosed, denied from housing, denied from jobs, every day in acts of material violence that me wearing bright pink athleisure doesn’t change.
There are also so many issues that the fashion industry perpetuates that also feel really crucial to contend with in this journey. Sustainability and labor ethics are a huge one. My shein era was short lived when I realized that their business model was really sketchy on the labor ethics front, and that their most of their clothing is meant to follow short-lived trends so you just keep buying and buying. (Those spring/summer-2020 milkmaid-style blouses just don’t do it for me anymore)
For me, focusing on self expression through clothing as a personal act of body-acceptance can’t exist independent of these other social issues. So, reinventing my style through bright colors, prints, and patterns also means buying more intentionally, more custom-made, less frequently, and- a big one- learning how to make my own clothes.
That last one has been quite the task- considering I’ve had a sewing machine for over a year and haven’t made anything, I’d say I’m kinda flopping. But it’s still a goal! Not only would it be more environmentally friendly - but it’s also the ultimate self-appreciation activity. Making exactly what I want tailored exactly to my measurements, through a self taught process.
Jokes aside, I do feel excited to undertake this renaissance in my personal style (that’s so dramatic). Having been excluded from fashion my whole life, and that exclusion implicating so much more than just clothes for me, it’s refreshing to feel like I can, and want to, participate in this way.
Getting into fashion and style for the first time as a twenty-two year old with firm socio-political values means I get to really curate this part of myself with so much care. Care that I wish I could extend to how I feel about my body on its own. For now, though, I hope this helps. I think it already is.
What I learned on tiktok this week was…
mhm mhm mhm