The Clothes Make the Girl

by Brittany Gibbons

  How do you find that dress? That’s what I am here for. To help you figure out what makes you feel the most like you, and how to navigate your way there.

  As plus-size women, we find it hard to buy the right clothes because we don’t know how to categorize our bodies. We’re really only given one of two narratives for them; squat with cumbersome boobs or Amazonian and wide. This is a promise of guaranteed failure because “plus size” isn’t one body type.

  A little louder for the designers in the back: Plus. Size. Isn’t. One. Body. Type.

  Plus-size women, like all women, come in a variety of shapes. Some of us have long legs, some of us are petite. Not all of us have a rack like a Playboy model, and some of us have boobs for days. We are part of the wide spectrum of women’s bodies that are unique and different and unable to fit into the cliché body-type boxes provided to us.

  We’ve all heard of the basics; hourglass, apple, pear, rectangle . . . I find these to be mostly off base, and don’t know a single person who qualifies wholly as any of them. I have a friend who’s shaped exactly like a dildo—just, like, a huge head then two big kneecaps. Jean shopping is a nightmare.

  I, myself, have what I like to call a two-burrito body type. You know, the type of body you have when you’ve mistakenly eaten two burritos instead of one and as a result you have to unzip your pants and take your rings off when you get back into the car. It really works to my advantage on public transportation, sometimes allowing me to pass for around four months pregnant, always securing me a good seat. All I have to do is rub my tummy and stare wistfully out a window, like maybe I’m dreaming of my future baby, when the reality is, I’m Lamaze-breathing through that extra scoop of guacamole.

  If I was in charge of coming up with body types, they’d all come with a big huge asterisk. As in, *Note: It’s totally okay if none of these apply to you, there is nothing wrong with your body, go buy those skinny jeans you tried on earlier.

  They’d also feature much more relatable illustrations. Like my friend Jordan who is reverse Hobbit shaped, tiny but with even tinier feet. She always has the cutest shoes, but as a size 11, I can borrow none of them.

  My friend Jenn has what she likes to call Once-Used Sleeping Bag body. She’s had two C-sections, so she often feels she has to tuck some of her loose tummy skin into her pants, but it never quite fits right. Like trying to get a sleeping bag back into the bag it came in before eventually giving up and just tying a rope around it.

  There’s Rorschach Test Body, which is something I’ve noticed in many of my friends who have had gastric bypasses. We all see them walking around in a whole new body, but they see something completely different and their brain still dresses them like they didn’t just lose 110 pounds.

  FLOTUS arms, which is totally self-explanatory because, damn.

  You get the idea. We aren’t just fruit. Expecting clothes to fit us one of seven standard ways is a ridiculous concept. Instead, our job is to see what’s being produced, have fun with what works for our bodies, discard what doesn’t, and certainly never feel bad in the process.

  So what is the point of this book? It’s not just some book filled with vomited tips and tricks. Not only would that be insanely boring to read, but in a hundred years, when the alien overlords check it out of the library, crop tops and harem pants might not even be a thing.

  I’m here to tell you why loving your body is hard and sucks for everyone, regardless of size. And I’ll bring you along on my journey of finding my personal style and my quest to live a life outside of maternity underwear and men’s undershirts.

  We’ll talk about all the cringe-worthy things we should be talking about. Like, yes, you can have sex through that Spanx hole. And no, you should not cut your bangs yourself; I don’t care how much you’ve had to drink.

  We’ll cover personal style, wardrobe malfunctions, and mom bodies. To some body-love veterans, some of the things we talk about in this book might sound insecure, and they are. But that is exactly what so many still feel. This book is for the people who aren’t there yet, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a journey, and it’s not my job to brag about how much I love my size and not share how I got here, how I struggled to get here, how I’m still getting here.

  This book is a memoir. It’s an overdue love letter to my body. It’s a time machine of hilarity and humiliation and who wore it best. It’s an angry rant and an empowered battle cry.

  It’s a movement. Rage on.

  INTRODUCTION

  “If it doesn’t fit, just take it off.”

  “And then wear what?” I spat, red and sobbing, my face in my hands.

  The clear plastic bag the polyester Cleopatra costume came in was on the bathroom counter in front of me, the gold Velcro wristbands and crown completely forgotten as I desperately tried to zip the Egyptian gown around my irritated back fat.

  Andy was finishing up the last few elements of his Julius Caesar costume, even once complaining under his breath that the adult large was a touch too big in the waist.

  His funeral will be lovely, I thought, a modest gathering of all of his friends and family. I’d even spring for a buffet lunch after the service, not just an assortment of hors d’oeuvres.

  I had received a last-minute invitation to a coworker’s Halloween party and purchased the costumes from a pop-up Halloween store housed in a shuttered Circuit City. The theme was famous couples, and having just had a baby (two years ago), I opted for the most tent-like option.

  The plus-size sticker on the bag was deceiving. This dress wasn’t an American plus size . . . the kind of plus size that comes from stress, depression, and McRibs. It was the kind of plus size that comes from China, where a 5X is a U.S. size 8.

  Andy stepped behind me to take over as my sweaty fingers began to slip from the metal zipper. My flesh was provoked to the point of anger, red and swelling. I had become a human puffer fish.

  “If it doesn’t fit, just take it off.” The nurse buzzed around me, squirting lines of clear jellies on the folded paper towel on the metal tray beside the examination table.

  I pulled at the paper robe she’d asked me to change into after removing all my clothing. The folded seam under my right arm split loudly as I tugged the open front sides closer together.

  “And just sit here naked?” I asked.

  At the time, I had no idea that sitting naked on a table awaiting my first gynecological exam was the least of the indecencies I would be subjected to in my life as a woman. But as a sixteen-year-old kid, the thought mortified me.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Beth smiled before leaving the room.

  Beth had been my nurse my whole life. She’d taken my rectal temperature as a baby, given me stickers after my kindergarten vaccines, and could tell you, without looking at my medical history, how many ear infections I’d had in my lifetime.

  She was also the one who answered the phone when I’d called to tell her I wanted to get on birth control my junior year of high school.

  “You know,” I nonchalantly said into the phone, “for acne or whatever.”

  It never occurred to me at the time that getting on birth control would be any different from calling for something to treat a sore throat. When I’d brought the idea up to my mom, she was surprised but the practical liberal inside her nodded and agreed it was probably a good idea. We noted that birth control would be smart to help with cramps and pimples, both of us willing to ignore the fact that my skin was perfectly clear and I was going with the Spanish Club to Mexico in a few months with my boyfriend and limited chaperones.

  “You’ll have to make an appointment with Dr. Ernie for your first Pap smear.”

  I’m sorry, what? The first ten years of my life, Dr. Ernie came into the room wearing a clown nose. And now I’m sitting on the table in an exam room I’ve never been in before at the end of the hall. These were the rooms reserved for the grown-ups. Unlike the children’s room with colorful wallpaper borders and buckets of germ-covered Duplo Blocks on
the floor, the adult exam rooms were large, with burgundy paisley wallpaper and racks of pamphlets about diabetic foot care and colonoscopies.

  I was sitting on the table in a too-small paper gown I wore like a cape, shifting from side to side not only because I was terrified to leave a wet mark where I sat on the paper liner, but also because that morning, in a fit of insecurity about what my vagina might smell like, I’d sprayed myself with Bath & Body Works Cucumber Melon perfume.

  Because that is what insecure teenagers do. They spray their pubic hair with body spray and hope the gown fits.

  “If it doesn’t fit, just take it off.”

  I sat on the very edge of the couch as naturally as possible. If I kept my back completely straight and only exhaled half of my lung capacity, the dress totally fit.

  “I don’t understand why you borrowed this dress.” My mom sighed. “It doesn’t even fit.”

  “It fits when I stand up,” I argued.

  It was a dance, nobody sits at a dance, I think? Honestly, I had no idea. This was the first time the sisters at my small Catholic school had thrown a dance for the sixth through eighth graders, inviting all the area schools to join in from 7 to 9 P.M. on a Friday night. Prior to this event, my social interactions were mostly limited to the eight other kids in my class and the three girls in my Girl Scout troop.

  I had borrowed a dress from my best friend Laura’s older sister. It was a teal-and-white plaid shift dress with thick straps. The straight fit conflicted with my shape. The neckline puckered from the pull of the folds of my chest, ill supported and shaped in the flimsy bralette I’d insisted on wearing to avoid the giant cupped underwire monsters my mother wore, and the dress barely zipped. My mom quickly added a hook and eye above the zipper for extra hold, just in case.

  When I arrived at the school, I quickly removed the salmon-colored cardigan my mom insisted complemented the dress, and walked into the partially dim gym to find only Laura and myself had dressed up for the event. Our normally empty cement-walled gymnasium was now full of public school kids wearing jeans and striped polo shirts that were tucked in only in the front.

  No one was dancing; instead they just globbed together in groups. The boys were telling stories with their hands, stopping every few minutes to shake the hair out of their eyes like the characters did on the Nickelodeon shows I watched like Hey Dude and Clarissa Explains It All. All the girls wore penny loafers without socks and had their bangs clipped back from their faces as they laughed at the boys, playfully batting at their arms in fake disgust.

  Laura and a few of my classmates found their own table to gather around and I stood next to them, shaking off any requests to join them as they sat down.

  “No thanks, I’ve been sitting all day,” I explained. “It feels good to stand.”

  I used the sweat from my hands to work my permed bangs to the side. Every so often I saw a boy and girl I didn’t know sneak into one of the restrooms for a few minutes before bursting out red-faced and giggling.

  I crossed my arms across the front of my stomach, hiding the visible waist of my underwear sitting a few inches above my belly button, and sighed shallowly.

  Who needs to expel carbon dioxide from their bodies? I thought. Screw the trees.

  “If it doesn’t fit, just take it off.” My grandma smiled warmly, helping me pull the dress off over my head.

  She and my grandfather had returned from a trip visiting my aunt overseas with gifts for me and my brother: chocolates, wooden shoes, a T-shirt from the gift shop near the Eiffel Tower for my brother, Adam, and for me, a beautiful tiered party dress from Paris like I’d seen once in an American Girl book.

  “Not everything is going to fit you, Brittany,” she consoled me. “No shame in taking it off and trying something different.”

  And just like that, she shook off the matter, giving me the green plaid Scottish shawl she’d brought home for a friend, and blamed the small dress on “crazy European sizing.”

  It was easy for her not to give the moment a second thought. Jeanne Erausquin, my grandmother, was stunning; slim with long legs and fingers weighted down by rows of costume jewelry. She and her equally beautiful sister, Betty, owned a bridal salon in Toledo, Ohio, and I spent a great deal of time there watching women who looked like them spend money on gorgeous dresses that very much adhered to “European sizing.”

  What I didn’t know at the time was that Jeanne was preparing me for womanhood in a way that no other person had been able to . . . it just took me thirty years to figure this out.

  Up until that point, I had perfected a lifestyle of not fitting into things; from clothing, to high school, to the occasional mom clique. But let’s be real, sometimes those bitches are crazy.

  Wearing something that didn’t fit was, surprisingly, an appealing alterative to the otherwise terrible reality of being a fat person in the eighties, nineties, and two thousands. And I’m not talking about the body shaming and stigma. Truthfully, most of that didn’t really spread as violently as it did after the Internet happened. Don’t get me wrong, people still called you fat, but then you went home and, assuming your family members weren’t a bunch of assholes, you got a bit of a break from the hate and were left to try to piece together some semblance of healing quietly on your own.

  No, I’m talking about how terrible it was to dress yourself as a fat person back then. Right now, we’re living in a plus-size fashion renaissance, but these choices weren’t available to me even ten short years ago.

  Back then, plus-size fashion was designed and sold to two main demographics: women over sixty and rampant Looney Tunes fans. I don’t have the actual statistics, but I feel confident enough to say that roughly 50 percent of plus-size clothing in the nineties featured a bedazzled Looney Tunes character. Now, if the majority of women in this country were and are plus size, and I have yet to come across any sizable petition to bring Bugs Bunny back on the air, wouldn’t it be just good business sense to stop putting fucking Tweety Bird on a T-shirt?

  It makes me think that designers don’t see plus-size women as mature or as fashionable as their skinnier counterparts. We also hold jobs, we go out with friends, and we date. We do normal human activities and feel a healthy desire to do them in clothes that make us feel confident and beautiful and and are reflective of our personalities. Did Gisele Bundchen have to go on her first high school date wearing a T-shirt that said YOU’RE DETHPICABLE? No . . . but I did.

  It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I shopped at a legitimate plus-size-specific store. Prior to that, the majority of my wardrobe was made up of youthful clothing that simply didn’t fit properly, or matronly clothing my mother and I purchased from the women’s sections of department stores.

  My parents were hard-core Sears shoppers, mainly because we were very poor and anyone could get a Sears credit card. Whenever I needed new clothes, my mom and I would make the forty-five-minute drive to Sears, hand the woman at the service desk a piece of paper with my mom’s account number written on it, pay whatever late fees she had, and then head over to the adult women’s section to peruse their selection of denim pants and Empire-waist dresses.

  I was lucky in that I went to a Catholic school that required a uniform, but my out-of-school clothes left a lot to be desired, and I often dressed much older than I was, and I don’t mean in the trashy fun way. There is nothing provocative and sexy about elastic slacks.

  Fashion became more of a problem once I hit high school, and transferred from a small private elementary school where nobody cared what you looked like to a public school where everybody cared what you looked like. The majority of the clothing I wore in high school was either completely homemade or purchased on sale and altered by my mom, a skilled seamstress.

  Sewing is a skill I long to pick up but don’t have the patience to acquire. My mom, having altered her share of dresses at my grandmother’s shop, was brilliant with a pattern. Despite this talent, I always grew frustrated that she didn’t place the
same level of importance on fashion that I did. She’s told me often that the last day she wore heels was on her wedding day. Prior to that, she lived a different life as a fancy buyer for a bridal salon, traveling to Chicago and New York monthly. Then she had kids, cut off her waist-length black hair, gave all that up, and now lives in jean shorts and T-shirts with pugs on them.

  At the height of nineties grunge, I spent hours trying to find the perfect baby-doll dress to wear to a state choir contest. My mother and I flipped through the McCall’s and Simplicity pattern books on the table at Joann Fabrics, only to come up empty. Aprons or housedresses, yes, but apparently Courtney Love chic had not yet hit the do-it-yourself circuit.

  On a hunch, my mom took me to the maternity section of JCPenney and selected the longest tunic she could find. It was dark blue with tiny pale blue flowers, cap sleeves, and a detachable elastic clip you could use to cinch the back. It was a hideous shirt to sic on a pregnant person, but on me, a fourteen-year-old girl, if you looked at it just right, it had the same shape as the baby-doll dress in the picture from the dELiA*s catalog that I’d carried with me into every shop that day.

  The dress was short and the front was just a touch longer than the back, I assume to accommodate an actual pregnant stomach, but with opaque black tights and knockoff Dr. Martens . . . as long as I didn’t bend over, no one was the wiser. From that moment on, women’s maternity clothing became a fixture in my high school wardrobe.

  While home from college over Christmas break, Andy, whom I was only dating at the time, surprised me with a weekend getaway to a bed-and-breakfast in Upstate New York. Convinced he would be proposing to me on this trip (he did not), I went shopping for all new winter clothes, as well as some sexy lingerie.

  I went shopping with my friend Amanda, who was way more self-confident than I, and had no qualms about walking into Lane Bryant to shop.

  “This is a fat-lady store,” I whispered.

  “I’m a fat lady sometimes,” Amanda whispered back, and smiled before disappearing into the racks of clothing.