fat women want clothes
like now.
In today’s piece, I allow myself to free write. I began frustrated with finding creators and content that was relevant to me as a Black, fat woman and move through the powerful act of getting dressed, the limitations of male dominated creative control and finish neatly with grievances about the state of plus size fashion. For my paid subscribers, I am also sharing some good fashion finds that are available now [at minimum up to a size 22]. This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your continued support.
A growing distaste for homogenous mediocrity on the FYP tends to poison the discourse. Women get tired of not seeing themselves reflected in the content they’re served. Suddenly, there’s an influx of polarizing, viral TikTok series like — “Is it a fit or is she just skinny?” — generally uninspired, unhelpful and toxic.
Personally, I’m more drawn to the personal process of style and related content — driven by creativity and taste. I try to purposefully engage with creative, entertaining, and thoughtful content from a diverse set of voices. Ultimately, social media should cater to your individual tastes and needs.
Social media is not the only place where women are underserved.
Women have always been consumer powerhouses — controlling household spending and the trajectory of the fashion, beauty, food, and fitness industries1. And yet, women are largely absent from the decision making processes. You have to ask why are so many [luxury fashion] creative directors white men? And why is there still a consistent and palpable dissatisfaction with the quality, pricing2, and offerings in these categories.
There’s a passage in They’re Going To Love You that stuck with me. “What does friendship look like, in ballet? […] Balanchine adored women, and adoration generally doesn’t include examination of an inner life. I can’t imagine he was interested in how women felt about each other.”
It’s simple: men don’t have the insight that women do. They see beautiful creatures [and shadowy gorgons who want nothing more than to be the beautiful creatures].
We see women tired of depression flares in the dressing room.
Human beings who are tired of their denim fitting at the hips and not the waist [or vice versa]. Enter the new era of Abercrombie and their curve love jeans.
We know our lips always get chapped and yet we never have a lip balm on hand. Enter the rhode lip case.
We know that sometimes all you need is a steamy celebrity-normal person romcom [that’s under 200 pages for the busy moms who may or may not be corporate lawyers]. Enter 831 Stories.
Modern womanhood holds a certain banal brutality. We are too often subjected to the purist ideals of men. In the rat race for skinny, we’re being forced out of trusting our own bodies. Listen to and communicate with our internal cues? No more. The age of ozempic is convincing us to simply tune it all out. Fat women will be sacrificed at the altar of desirability as long as society idolizes it.
As if any authentic woman [with a truly fashionable eye] gets dressed simultaneously wondering if the men of the world will want her. I get dressed to express myself— directed by my moods, interests, and creativity.
I need anyone who is perceiving me that day to be able to guess one or more things about me. That I adore the dichotomy generated from pairing feminine silhouettes with tailored menswear pieces or that I read bell hooks and Toni Morrison and Dolly Alderton and fantasy novels. That I do a full re-listen of Cowboy Carter once a week. That flowing fabrics and layered textures are visually exciting to me. I’m intellectual, but goofy. That I promise I’m cool as shit, even though I’m also just another francophile who loves red lipstick.
Shopping has been a testy endeavour my entire life. In high school and college, I was solidly midsize: falling right on the edges of traditional sizing ranges, but also forced to shop traditional plus size brands for essentials like tailored pants, bras, underwear, and outerwear. Now, I sit in the frustrating land of extended sizing — constantly at the mercy of buyers and merchandising teams who refuse to make the whole collection available to all customers.
If we ask, what do fat women need? The answer is many things, but let’s begin with the simple idea of consideration.
Why brands don’t want to expand their size ranges is speculative for the most part. No one goes on record anymore to say they hate fat people. They just say “we’re working on it and things like this take time to create”. Eternity, apparently.
Can I be a bitch for a second? Okay, cool. High-end designers are worried about fat women wearing their clothing when they should be worried about how Blake Lively is styling their clothing in her movies. Sorry.
The other speculation is that brands aren’t willing to take the financial hit of innovation. Plus size clothing lines done correctly would require finding actual plus size people to talk to. They’d need to understand their potential customers. They’d finally have to see us. They’d finally have to pay us [mind].
Fat women need clothes.