Clothes: if there were no prejudice against fat women

[nancylebov]

I recently asked whether there'd been any improvement in the availability of clothing for fat women, and the answer, in some detail, was almost entirely no, with some aspects getting worse.

Here's what I think the world would be like if the prejudice wasn't there-- there would be no differences in stylishness or quality. There might be some difference in price and availability for the less common sizes-- I think the mere size of the clothing is less important than not having as much advantage from mass production.

There might be some differences in what's stylish-- clothes wouldn't be designed to make women look thinner or to show off thinness-- but I'm not sure what the differences would be.

Comments

[beatnikbetty.livejournal.com]

a professional acquaintance of mine here in Portland runs Skorch magazine. You might be interested.

Skorch: where curves are sexy

http://www.skorchblog.blogspot.com/

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

That seems a reasonable hypothesis. Gentlemen's tailors offer the same styles regardless of size though might discretely suggest that some might be less suitable to the more portly! They do charge extra for very large sizes though that applies to the tall as well as the stout.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I think some things would cost more (assuming they were well made) in cases where more tailoring is needed - like, a shift dress shouldn't cost more for labor, but something like a bra might, just because more support requires better engineering (well - the engineering is done once, but I mean a more complicated shape and a more complicated process to produce it.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be a bit of a bitch here, and suggest, from what I know of the options that are available to fat women (being almost the largest woman I know, in the 330lb range), the issue is more complicated.

Simply put: the options are there. and they *are* locally available without going online, at Avenue and Lane Bryant and Dress Barn and TJ Maxx and Target and Faith 21 and Torrid and several local places (I could give you a list of local stores in Boston, DC, Atlanta and Toronto, but that's not germane right now).

Unlike my thinner friends, I can't just expect to spend an hour and leave with 3 great outfits. I do need to spend time really looking at things. I need to make a commitment of my time; clothes shopping for me, with transit and such, is about a 3-4 hour commitment. And I'm lucky; I happen to *enjoy* it lots.

I am, depending on how it fits and what look I'm going for, between a size 22 and a size 30. I have bought 3 maxi dresses, a corset, a skirt, a knee length dress and 2 shirts this month. I've spent about $40 for all of them, but spent about 15 hours in the shopping. A thin woman could probably pull that off in an evening. And a lot of women that I know (at least 2 of whom take me shopping because I do have mad skillz in the stores) get equally frustrated; they spend 40 minutes at it, and they're done, and want to just grab whatever 'at least' fit and be done with it. You can't do that and be fat and stylish.

(please note, I'm TOTALLY ok with people who have decided it's not worth the sort of effort I put into it. I'm, well, me, and was raised by the World Champeen Shopper, and I find shopping relaxing)

It's harder for large women to find clothes. It's harder to find them cheaply, sure. But unlike a lot of women, I was a size 18 when I was *15*. I've been doing this for a very, very long time now, and I know what has happened in the industry in the last 25 years that I've had to shop +size, and there has actually been a HUGE improvement in styles, availability, and cost.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

And the New York Times Magazine seems to have an article on this very topic, coming out this weekend:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/magazine/01plussize-t.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&src=sch&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1280436804-cmuP2z6LFHT+sMENPObRIQ

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Too lazy to go back to check: "whether there'd been any improvement in the availability of clothing for fat women" ... over what time frame? I remember nellorat talking about how back in the 1970s, she sometimes had to resort to ordering clothing from catalogs for transvestites, because some of them had more different styles available to them than the few existing outlets for large women.