- Show:
- Comments
- Liked Comments
By Blondsak on Someone Design These Women Some Clothes
@cherrispryte You might not want to shamelessly self-promote, but I will shamelessly post the link here. Everyone, READ NOW. http://thehairpin.com/2012/03/choose-your-own-fatventure-interview-clothes
2
By cherrispryte on Someone Design These Women Some Clothes
I have a lot of feelings about this topic! And because I'm trying to be less of a cunt, I'm not even going to engage the fat-shaming basic bitch up there in the earlier comments. What I would like to point out, however, is that Forever 21's plus size line is 1) not carried in most of their stores and 2)stops at a size 20. So that's, what, 3 more whole sizes? I happen to work right about a Forever 21 that DOES have the plus size department, and their plus size stuff is way less cute and on-trend than their straight sizes. 50% of women wear above a size 14. Half the women in this country are shopping in plus sizes. It is an enormous (ha, rite?!) untapped market, and your conspiracy theory is totally true. The article you link to is interesting, because the "plus-size fashion bloggers" they link to and focus on are really on the small end of plus size, or not at all - at a size 10/12, you're not even an inbetweenie. A size 18 girl in a bikini?! Quelle horreur! Black Cat Bikinis and Ester Williams both make sexy-as-hell bikinis up to a size 26, and people are buying them and wearing them. Using Lena fucking Dunham and Mindy Kaling as examples of fat acceptance is incredibly insulting to people who are legitimately fat in the real world, and face the sort of size-based discrimination those two women couldn't even begin to comprehend. There's no plot line on Girls in which Lena Dunham is forced to buy a second airplane seat, you know? How anyone in their right mind could write about plus-size fashion blogging and not mention Lesley Kinzel and Marianne Kirby, both pioneers in the field who started out talking about fatshion and have moved on to fat acceptance in general, or hell, without talking about the fatshionista livejournal group, has either not done their research or is deliberately shying away from fat fashion bloggers who are, you know, actually fat. Also, not to shamelessly self-promote, but perhaps someone intimately familiar with this issue has written about it in a humorous way, on, say, your sister site?
5
By Blondsak on Someone Design These Women Some Clothes
@zou bisou I'm a pretty big fatty, and I do agree with you that, statistically speaking, the numbers show that obesity is generally 1) a serious detriment to an individual's holistic well-being and 2) a major drain on the economy. Our society does need to address this. HOWEVER, I don't believe that your solution (to not cater to the needs of obese people because it promotes a certain lifestyle that believes being obese is okay) is any solution at all. You see, most people who are large today were never given any tools or advantages to being skinny to begin with. Generally, we were born to people with mid-level to large BMIs. Then, from the get-go (just like our parents) we were fed cheap, genetically modified food full of government subsidized products rich in carbs, fat, sugar, starch and other things terrible for our bodies. Related: statistically speaking, many of us were born in the low-to-middle class range, meaning that instead of having time to exercise our growing asses in high school and beyond we were holding down part-time jobs at fast food restaurants, malls and cinemas so that our families could eat said crap food and pay the bills. So, what can we do with this data? We can attack the actual origins, rather than the symptoms. First, we can get rid of government subsidies that promote - and some would argue require - unhealthy eating in order to survive financially. Second, we can put more money into exercise and nutrition education, especially in schools but also importantly in family learning and development programs. Third, our country could get serious about the pervasive poverty issues which do not allow lifestyles that promote any sort of well-being. In any case, I can safely assure you that making a clothing line catering to the obese is NOT going to stop OR promote this trend. Leaving us to only be able to wear sweats only further shames us, in a society that already sees us as being less than.
8
By Anna Jayne@twitter on Someone Design These Women Some Clothes
@zou bisou everyone knows that if you don't provide fat people with clothes, they stop being fat, so this makes total sense.
29
By EM on Someone Design These Women Some Clothes
@zou bisou Health issues are not moral issues. North America has this weird obsession with making medical topics into moral issues (you beat cancer because you have a beautiful warrior spirit/you are a smoker because you are a bad person) but that's kind of a lot of bullshit. As mentioned there are a lot of institutional and socio-economic factors are work in obesity. Most obesity begins in childhood, and there is a very clever mathematician (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html?_r=0) who can explain why it's extremely difficult to lose weight permanently. I mean, if you want to maintain a consistent position, what right to disabled people (non-contributors!) have to health care or education or social support? What about the immunocompromised? Do HIV/AIDS+ people not deserve medical care because they made a (moral) choice to have sex or inject drugs? This is a weird slippery slope. While we are making moral arguments, providing obese people (who are 30% of the population, aka millions of people) high-quality, non-sweatshop-made clothing would be better for the world than forcing them to shop at shitty fast fashion outlets.