For the last ten weeks of term, I had been conducting a social experiment. Being a ‘big girl’ (thank you Macklemore for making us all so sassy) dressing has always taken a little consideration. Being ‘on trend’ or wearing what the skinny girls wear is not always possible. Well, it is possible but I avoid the hippo in a tutu look as much as I can but sometimes perception is a bitch. Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see a pot-bellied gazelle but when faced with images in shop windows or dressing rooms, it is a hippo in tutu that is usually staring back at me.
There are less and less rules associated with dressing these days. The ‘big girl’ movement and the online world screams at me in my facebook feed daily to ‘love myself’ that I can ‘do anything I want’ despite the size of my arse, my jeans or the way my thighs rub together. I can wear a tutu, a crop top and a pair of denim overalls as long as I accessorise them correctly. The world is willing to forgive fashion bravery but pairing pearls and a fob chain is not one of them. On the whole I am a subscriber to this world of thought. I am who I am and the rest of the world can go fuck itself. Well that’s the aura I choose to send out to the universe but we all know that it’s probably 9% truth, 80% bravado and 11% just plain bullshit. (Don’t check my math, I know you are.)
Last summer I bought a bikini. I hadn’t worn one since I was probably four. I’d have to check with my mum on the actual statistics but two piece swimwear did not enter my life after preteens until the invention of the tankini. (And even then calling a tankini a two piece is a stretch. The only thing the tankini did for the big girl world was make it easier to pee when you were swimming.) Then, last summer, at the ripe old age of 34, I bought a bikini. A big panted, high waisted, thick strapped bikini. In the ‘curvy world’ (fuck I hate that term – but that’s a whole different blog) the fat people have taken the shame and made it their own and called them fatkinis. It’s not a real word, but the English language is made up of thousands of words that don’t exist so why can’t this be one?
Before summer well and truly hit this year, my fashion experiment went a little differently. It wasn’t about embracing the hidden shame of showing my faded and silver stretch marks to the world, it was about hiding them. In my cupboard are more than forty dresses. Easy more than forty. Every day I go to work in array of the same simple dresses, shorts, shirts, pants and skirts and most of those forty (more) dresses lay asleep in my cupboard waiting to be worn. Hoping and wishing that soon they will get to swish in the breeze somewhere outside in the sun. While that sounds fairly cheesy and overly romantic about my wardrobe, it is what I think when I look at them. I make up stories, places and people that that dress should be seen in, what would happen to me when I wear it and how the world would be while I am in it. It’s lame and embarrassing but hey, it’s something to pass the time while I stare into the cupboard working out which pair of denim shorts I am actually going to wear that day. One such day in October I stood in my underwear with two pairs of denim shorts sprawled on the floor and a Ninja Turtle t-shirt in one hand and a Jurassic Park T-shirt in the other and I picked up a blue off the shoulder, belted, cap sleeve dressed covered in bright red poppies. It had fallen from it’s hanger and lie unloved and wrinkled at the bottom of the cupboard, sprawled across all of the shoes I don’t wear.
I discarded the t-shirts with the denim shorts on the floor and held the giant, blooming red flowers against my chest. The skirt swirled out a little and the patent red belt glittered a little in the morning light. I literally said, ‘Fuck it’ out loud and put the dress over my head. The flowers are huge and the red incredible bright. There was absolutely no way to hide in that dress and no way to be the fat, funny girl who wears 80s and 90s t-shirts. In that dress I had to be accountable. Accountable as a woman, a grown up and a fully fledged member of a group of women who dressed themselves in beautiful fabric that screamed ‘look at me’ no matter how big their body is.
I stood in front of the mirror and looked closely at myself from top to bottom. In that dress there was no half way. If you’re going to be accountable and visible as a woman, then the rest must follow. Do your hair, with a hairdryer. Put on your real make-up (not your tinted moisturiser) and follow through with that red lipstick you tell yourself is for special occasions and only when you’re feeling super confident. Find shoes, a bag and accessories that complement the dress you are wearing and pull your shit together.
For ten whole weeks at work, on every workday, I did not wear the same outfit twice. I wore pants only once and skirts only twice but even then they went with full regalia. Every day I put on one of those forty (more) dresses and went to work with make-up, shoes and accessories that put me together. In the beginning everybody noticed. People who I work with who had never mentioned my outfits before made comment about my dresses. One even went so far as to call me ‘brave’. I wore prints and colours of all kind and I colour blocked like Queen Latifah, the early years. The coffee shop barista remembered my name and random strangers smiled at me on the street. My interactions with the public were generally more positive and the compliments came daily.
After the first couple weeks, the gasps, the oohs and aahs reduced and the world almost went back to normal. The people I interact with daily expected me to arrive in dresses and present myself in this way. The strangers and the general public however continued their complimentary greetings and incredibly polite and courteous interactions. Was it my dresses and make-up that all of a sudden made people notice I was there? Was it the fact that I was dressed so carefully what made the service industry remember my orders and strangers in queues let me go first? I had originally made the decision that it was. I was mortified that people’s interactions with me could change so much just because my handbag now matched my dress everyday.
When telling a much smarter friend my story of disgust and lack of faith in the human race she laughed at me. ‘Really?’ She said. ‘That’s what you think it is?’ My look of incomprehension must have showed and slowly she began to question. ‘How do you feel when you put on your dress and lipstick?’ ‘What do you think happens to the way you interact with people when you are feeling good about what you’ve put together?’ And like any good teacher of lessons, she didn’t have to say anymore, she let me answer for myself.
I didn’t put the dresses or the red lipstick on for anyone else. I didn’t put them on to elicit compliments from those people around me. I put those dresses on so my stories would come true. I put those dresses on so that I felt less like a girl and more like a woman. I put on that lipstick to force myself to be proud of who and what I am regardless of how far the fat journey has yet to go. And that is what people were reacting to. Not my dress or my lipstick, but me. I was smiling first, I was letting others go first in line, I was ‘playing’ with strangers in the street and it’s those things in me that people were responding to. What I was putting out to the world was reflecting back.
It’s a cliche that people throw around a lot. ‘You get what you put in.’ And it’s true to some extent. The daily world was working better for me and I was generally happier and more confident wearing lipstick everyday but it didn’t change my life. The man I not so secretly love didn’t suddenly turn around and confess his feelings because I had a selfie makeover (in fact he was the only person who didn’t mention my dresses at all), I didn’t instantly drop another ten kilos, and the rest of my friends and family didn’t became more rich and glamourous. Grocery shopping, coffee buying, information counters, shop assistants and the general public got friendly. It didn’t change the world but it made buying broccoli a whole lot easier and that is reason enough to get dressed of a morning and I will do it again. After the holidays.
life in big frilly knickers 