Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson

  Actually, this is not just for the improviser, but for all members of the sauseege party, so take note, mofos: This whole “one of the guys” concept of busting chops for funsies needs to die off like the evil twin on a soap opera. Why? Because some guys think it gives them license to just outright insult women’s bodies, looks, intelligence, etc., as in, “I thought you were cool and one of the guys where I could say mean stuff to you, and you would take it as a joke because you’re not like other girls and being ‘not like other girls’ is aspirational, or haven’t you heard?” No. No more of that. If you want to be an asshole, then be an asshole instead of pretending women not being super down to be your punching bag means they don’t know what real friendship is or, worse yet, implying that it’s aspirational to reject whatever society has deemed unacceptable characteristics in women (feelings) in exchange for mimicking toxic male behavior (being a dick due to own lack of self-esteem). It’s not OKAY, men. It’s also not cool when clothing companies and stylists tag dudes out and take over reminding me of my body’s supposed inadequacies as they did the day I discovered I was a size 12.*

  IDK about you, but whenever I go back home to visit my family, I automatically get into Operation Stuntin’ on These Heauxes, but it’s just my parents, who gave me life; my brother, who supports me; and my sister-in-life, who is pretty chill and definitely not a heaux, so I guess it’s more Operation Dressing Well Enough to Snag Myself a Divorced Dad at a Journey Concert. Whatever the case may be, when I visit my fam, I want to dress to impress, in hopes that my outfits convey the message that I’m doing more than all right in the Big Apple. And December 2016 was no different. I was fresh off the book tour for my first essay collection and had just completed minor on-camera work on a TV show, and with my Christmas trip right around the corner, I needed some new threads because I had been so busy working that I hadn’t been shopping in months and OH, YEAH, THAT TELEVISION SHOW THAT I MENTIONED? DURING DOWNTIME BETWEEN SHOOTING SCENES, I SPLIT THE SEAM THAT WENT DOWN THE BUTT CRACK OF A VINTAGE JUMPSUIT AND HAD TO SHOOT THE REST OF THE DAY WITH THE FLAPS OF SAID JUMPSUIT FEELING LIKE SALOON DOORS SWINGING IN THE WIND ON WESTWORLD. For the first time in my life, I had ripped a pair of pants simply from bending over, and I assumed the clothes had magically shrunk instead of the obvious truth: I had put on some weight. Unfortunately, the realization that I was a size 12 wouldn’t come until the shopping spree I went on before my Christmas trip in 2016.

  I went to one of my favorite stores, Zar Zar Binks. For a person like me, Zara is amazing because it allows me to feel like what I think being European is like (eating buttery pastries, riding Vespas, loving Dame Judi Dench the way black Americans love Smokey Robinson, ending bitchy statements with the question “isn’t it?” and no one calling you out for that, etc.) without actually doing the nonfrivolous things that Europeans do, like knowing two or more different languages, understanding degrees in Celsius, and not eating trash-ass baguettes and croissants from Au Bon Pain because French people def don’t touch the stuff. Anyway, Zara is the jam, and the clothes are reasonably priced, so there was no reason why Operation Dressing Well Enough to Snag Myself a Divorced Dad at a Journey Concert wouldn’t go off without a hitch. After all, about eight months after the Spanx snafu (more on that later), I was less sedentary and eating healthier just to have enough energy to handle my growing schedule, and ultimately, I lost weight and dropped down to a size 8. However, by Christmastime, I had put the pounds back on and then some as evidenced by the ripped jumpsuit. Still, I didn’t register the weight gain, and while looking through the jeans pile in Zara, I grabbed a few 8s and headed into the changing room. I couldn’t pull them up past my thighs, which I chalked up to maybe just being bloated from too much LaCroix. #NotARealThing. So I went back to the showroom and snagged some 10s. And, derp, I couldn’t zip them up, so I had that Julia Roberts moment in Eat Pray Love where she is on the dressing room floor, cackling because she’s having the gahtdamn time of her life in Italy, eating pasta, and oops! She put on weight and can’t fit into pants, but it’s all good because by the end of the movie, she’s smashing Javier Bardem and wearing bejeweled tunics from Chico’s. Except there was no Javier Bardem in my life, I hadn’t had pasta in months, I was not in Italy but in SoHo during rush hour, with a line of impatient women behind me, and I was most definitely not laughing. I was pissed. What the hell was going on with these jeans and why were none of them fitting?! Once again, I exited the changing room and grabbed the next largest size, which also happened to be, as I later learned, the biggest size Zara goes up to—a 12 aka an XXL—which I was certain was going to be too big. But when I returned to the dressing room and pulled up those jeans, I was shocked not only to find that they barely fit but that I was rocking a fupa.

  Sure, part of the shock was due to the fact that I had my very first fupa. And it’s not like anyone warns you that it’s coming. Life gets in the way: You’re busy working, making plans with family, paying bills, visiting friends, dating, and you wake up one morning and realize that you have way more cushion for the pushin’ than you realized. That’s a mini annoyance, but the bigger frustration about becoming a pear shape aka small on top (34A) and bigger on bottom (soft and cute belly, fuller hips, thick thighs and booty) and reaching size 12 status was everything below my waist was officially damn near too big to fit into clothes at places like Zar Zar Binks. Sorry, but so many amazing things come in twelves: roses, eggs, cupcakes, the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song, the A.M. and P.M. hours, doughnuts, oysters . . . All right, so it’s mostly food, but you get the idea. Twelve is a great number, but I had trouble finding clothes in that size. I thought and hoped it would be different if I had the help of stylists. I was (mostly) wrong.

  Before I go any further, I will state that I’ve had the pleasure of working with a Blue Ivy–sized handful of amazing, talented, and body-conscious stylists (whaddup, Katya!—you’re my fave!). As for the majority? It has been mostly a disaster. Whatever pieces of self-esteem I had walking into a photo shoot tended to be massacred the moment I tried on the clothes that were picked out for me. Yes, I understand that dressing someone for a magazine shoot is not easy. Stylists often have to work in tandem with the magazine, photographer, makeup artist, and hairstylist to create a unified vision. Also, stylists want to create the perfect outfit that not only matches the subject’s personality and fashion tastes but also elevates it, so that the picture will grab readers’ attention while they flip through a magazine. Plus, stylists tend to work with a limited budget and time window to get the clothing, and like with a lot of creative industries, the stylists sometimes don’t get paid; the paycheck is being featured in the magazine. Not to mention the fact that the fashion industry is incredibly sizeist, so plenty of designers don’t make clothes above a size 8. That’s a lot for a stylist to contend with, but that’s no excuse. There are designers and/or clothing lines that cater to a wider range of body types. These brands may not be the coolest, but they’re out there and should be used as much as the same batch of household names many stylists and magazines rely on. But these clothing lines remain underused, so here I am with an all-too-familiar situation of a disaster fitting, which admittedly is the definition of a champagne problem.

  Being body-shamed at an all-expenses-paid-for photo shoot is certainly not on the level of the Flint, Michigan, water crisis or soul-crushing minimum wage many Americans receive and must use to figure out how to pay all their bills in a timely manner. So if your first instinct is to tell me to stop the complain train, I understand. But I would ask you to hop aboard as we journey to These Motherfuckers Must Be Out They Damn Minds Ville and Oh, I See Why She’s Mad, Go ‘Head and Stay Mad Town because underneath the trappings of a photo shoot, the recurring problems that I and so many other women in my position have had remain. We’re still subjected to fashion and society’s two-prong attack—physical (not making clothes in appropriate sizes that will fit) and psychological/emotional (making women feel bad/sad/guilt
y/ashamed/like failures for not being able to fit into clothing)—in the hopes that we’ll change and adhere to the often unhealthy and unrealistic body standards so as to perform womanhood the way the patriarchy wants us to.

  Below is a list of some of the embarrassing moments I’ve had to endure in the name of fashion:

  Often stylists will want to give women a Cinderella moment, dressing them up in a fabulous gown with high heels and making them the belle of the ball. But I don’t necessarily want to be the belle of the ball; I want to be the basic bitch of a Raymour & Flanigan aka I’m all ‘bout that comfort, ‘bout that comfort, minimal effort. Truly, I’m a jeans, T-shirt, and Converse sneakers gal (or a fierce jumpsuit if I’m feeling frisky), so whenever I do a shoot and all I see are pants and, more importantly, a plethora of jeans, the black auntie who lives inside me is praise-dancing to Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman.” And that joy was on full display at this one photo shoot that was to accompany an internet profile of me. The happiness evaporated quickly, however, when I saw that all the jeans were a size 29 and under (I vary between a 30 and a 33 if they are stretchy; am starting at a 32 if there is no stretch, which why would you make jeans without stretch, ya filthy animal?), and none of them had any stretch, meaning they would not accommodate my at-the-time size 10 butt, hips, or thighs. Still, I was told to fear not, because the jeans would work. Ya know, the only thing more annoying than being presented with clothes that don’t fit and trying them on in front of strangers is a stylist acting as though I could fit into the too-small clothing if only I believed enough.

  But I carried on because I don’t want to be labeled as difficult. I struggled but managed to put on the fabulous blue jeans that were supposed to go with the fabulous designer top that actually did fit. Sigh. The jeans. Would. Not. Zip. Up. We each took turns gripping and straining, but the zipper wasn’t budging and remained at the bottom of the crotch. I suggested putting on a different pair of jeans because duh. She dismissed me and replied, “But these are the perfect jeans to go with this shirt.” Y’all. Y’ALL. Y’ALL. This is not a Michelin-star restaurant where no substitutions are allowed. These are blue jeans; they’re everywhere, and so many of them look alike that you can’t even tell the difference. This stylist didn’t feel this way and instead had the genius idea of safety-pinning the ends of the zipper together all the way to the top of the jeans, reassuring me that this was fine because she’s used this method before and they can simply crop the photo if need be. Wait. Wut? There’s a possibility the final photo won’t even show me in the jeans? Then why are we doing this? I could’ve been Winnie the Pooh’ing all up in this mofo from the get-go. Before I could say this aloud, someone told the photo shoot crew that the delay was due to the jeans not fitting, causing everyone to look over to see the stylist struggling to make her “solution” work. THANK YOU FOR THAT VERY PUBLIC UPDATE BECAUSE THE CHERRY ON TOP OF THE SOMEONE-PERSPIRING-WHILE-FORCING-YOUR-BODY-INTO-CLOTHES-THAT-DON’T-FIT SHIT SUNDAE IS MAKING A DAMN CNN BREAKING NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT IT TO EVERYONE IN THE VICINITY.

  Anyway, the stylist eventually finished and I was pinned into the jeans. I stiffly walked over to sit down where the photographer wanted. As soon as I sat, the safety pins were like, “Abort mish,” and snapped open, including one that flew like Mark Wahlberg does in an action movie when a bomb has gone off behind him. The stylist ran, picked up the safety pin, and there I was in front of everyone with my stomach doing its best Jack Nicholson “Here’s Johnny!” impression from The Shining. And guess what? The picture ended up being cropped from my head down to the top titty quadrant. #TechnicalLingo.

  A recent photo shoot kicked off with the first hour of fittings composed of my least favorite greatest hits about my body—“You Ain’t Got No Titties to Fill Out This Shirt,” “Carbs, Carbs, Carbs, Carbs, Carbs I Do Adore (The Ballad of a Muffin Top),” “No, I Don’t Need Help Trying Anything On/I’ve Been in This Changing Room for Fifteen Minutes Because None of This Shit Fits”—before there was an outfit that worked. We found a few more looks to make this shoot an overall success. However, the moment that sticks out the most is when, at one point, I was handed a size small top to put on. I said, “Oh, I’m not a small. I’m usually a medium and sometimes a large if the shirt is cut to be extremely form-fitting.” The stylist’s response: “Yeah, but the designer makes their smalls kind of big, so it’s almost like a medium.” Um, mofo, can the designer then just make a medium that is a full fucking medium? I don’t need to be out in these streets dealing with all these smalls masquerading as mediums and lulling me into a false sense of security when there’s only enough fabric allowance for you to have a food baby made up of sixteen peanut M&M’s. These are the kinds of smalls where the bottom of the shirt rides up your stomach approximately 1.6 seconds after you put it on. And then you look like Will Ferrell in the “Need More Cowbell” SNL sketch.

  Look, I love me a jumpsuit. They are all the rage and have been for a few seasons. But everyone and their mom can tell the difference between a joyful jumpsuit that has you looking like a sexy auto-parts salesperson at Pep Boys and a jumpsuit a stylist has you try on as a catchall/last resort option, as in “catch all the non-toned, jiggly parts of your body.” The difference being, the latter jumpsuit will fit most parts of your body well and then be tight as hell around your thighs so that it looks like you’re smuggling two weeks’ worth of lingerie out of Victoria’s Secret. This outfit works the way that DMV employee did when she sat in her booth, spent twenty minutes eating a Chobani yogurt and chatting with her coworker who was actually working, and then locked eyes with me before getting up and leaving. All of this is to say: Don’t just shove me into the most shapeless outfit you have because you don’t want to be bothered with my body.

  I love doing a photo shoot with a friend. You get to have a partner in crime whom you can sneak side-eyes at when good (“Yooooo, can you believe they’re blasting a U2 playlist?” #ThisIsGoodOnlyForMe) and bad (“Why is this hairstylist giving me a Designing Women bouffant?”) stuff happens. No matter what goes down, it’s tight to share such an equally luxurious and absurd experience with someone you’d be just as happy doing the mundane with. At this particular shoot, racks of clothes were on full display and lined up and ready to make us shine bright like diamonds in this magazine. My homie had gotten pretty used to glamorous shoots like this. I, on the other hand, had not. Sure, I had done smaller stuff for indie outlets, but this was my first one for a maj magazine and I was ready to pop my couture cherry, which is similar to popping one’s sexual cherry because Sade is played in the background. Moving on. I scanned the designer labels and thought to myself, Whoa, these are the fashion lines that goddesses like Mindy Kaling, Cate Blanchett, and Kerry Washington wear on the regs at fancy events. Oh, shit! Is that Christian Louboutin? Jimmy Choo?! I felt like a character in a TV makeover montage. I whooped it up, got my cocoa-butter-lotion fingerprints on all the clothes, and took blurry, on-the-down-low pictures of different outfits to send to my fam.

  Once that was done, my buddy and I set off to try on the clothes. As you can probably guess by now, quite a few of the clothes were unflattering on me. Luckily, there was one outfit that mostly worked except it was too tight and highlighted certain things I’m insecure about, most notably my belly, and made them considerably bigger. But of course, that outfit was the look everyone at the magazine loved. So that’s what I was wearing, which I was told was no Jason Biggs aka no biggie because the fashion department had Spanx, which I had never worn before. I’m not saying this to brag. I get people wanting to look smoother and more toned in their clothes. But I’m just not into the idea of my body fat being stuffed and compressed like a comforter shoved in a too-full hallway closet. So, in real life, I either covered up my belly or just accepted that it was visible in whatever outfit I was wearing. But this was beyond real life. This was a national magazine. I was not too keen on opening it up and seeing my protruding be
lly. I knew that if push came to shove, it would be photoshopped away, but I didn’t want to later regret not doing everything in my power to hide my soft stomach, so I said yes to wearing Spanx, and with that, someone left to find the magical garment that was going to make my insecurity about my body go away. Hooray! Then that person returned and handed me a size XS Spanx. An XS Spanx?!?! What in the sneak-into-the-bathroom-and-slip-off-your-shapewear-before-sex hell is this? WHY WOULD YOU GET ME A SIZE XS SPANX WHEN I’M A SIZE 10?!

  Y’all, remember in school when you’d see that one black girl who straightened her hair to its maximum length, which ended up not being very long at all, and she gathered it into the shortest, barely there #StrugglePonytail where just past the elastic ponytail holder was the tiniest tuft of hair that looked like bristles from a Bob Ross paintbrush, and if you stood close enough to her, you could hear her overworked hair humming the Negro spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” because it barely had the strenf to carry on and was ready to meet its maker? Well, just as pointless as it was for her to put her locks in a ponytail, it’s equally as ignorant to make Spanx a size extra small. For what purpose? In case the person breathes in too much air at once and their stomach puffs out like a protective screen has been shoddily applied to a cell phone, so that all the air bubbles are smoothed out except for one? This is gahtdamn ridiculous!

  So I said, “Hmm, this is an extra small, but I’m not. Can we get one in my size?” To which the magazine staffer replied, “Yeah, sorry. Earlier today we did a shoot with a few supermodels, so this is the only size we have, so you’ve got to use this.” Coooooooooooooooooooool. I’m gonna just go in this corner, shove this up my vajeen, and slap it on my left fallopian tube to make it as thin as uncooked linguini.