Shopping for fancy dress -- Contributor post

I’ve known about my husband’s office holiday party since early November. It’s at a swanky downtown hotel. The invitation specifies semiformal dress.

I translates this as “suit and tie” for him and “cocktail attire” for me.

I’m going to throw up.



Me: Short, postmenopausal round with chubby retail feet and roadmaps for legs. My hair is streaked gray. I’m starting to jowl.

Wardrobe: Work uniform, jeans, t-shirts in the summer and long-sleeved t-shirts or turtlenecks in the winter, hoodies, sneakers. I usually pull my hair back with a clippie. I always wear fake gold hoop earrings because I tend to lose anything that’s real.

A few years ago, at my husband’s urging, I splurged on two “just in case” outfits – two tweed jackets, two matching tops, two pairs of matching pants, two pairs of matching shoes. I haven’t worn any of them in over a year, maybe two.

Clothing makes me anxious. Oh, I can window shop and say that X is cute or that’s a really nice cut/design/color, but you have no idea how anxious it makes me. I can’t afford nor can wear most off-the-rack clothing with any kind of panache. Younger overweight me’s vomit-inducting body anxiety eventually exchanged itself for full-blown panic attacks in the middle of our local mall or refusing to attend whatever-it-was because I needed this particular item and I didn’t want to spend the money or admit that I was THAT size.

I’m nowhere near as overweight now but the anxiety still clings. Nowadays I treat clothes shopping as a military mission. Browsing makes me anxious because what’s the use of browsing if most clothing, nice clothing, doesn’t fit you, especially if you have a disappearing waistline?

Jeans, t-shirts, sneakers. It’s easy and I don’t have to think about it.



So back to this holiday party. One day my husband and our housemate tag with me to Expensive Department Store With The Widest Selection Of Evening Wear.

I’m automatically drawn to the sleek uncluttered dresses made for six-foot stringbeans crooning standards in a Las Vegas nightclub.

They steer me toward the separates. “You’re smaller on top than the bottom,” my husband whispers.

“The trouble with tops,” says our housemate, “is that they’ll fit her at the waist but the shoulders will be too big, or vice versa.” She picks out several spangled tops and sends me into the dressing room.

This makes me feel like a sausage. Hate the color. Too low cut. I’d need a strapless bra (ack, MONEY) to wear this, Spanx (SPANX? ME?!?) to wear that. Too tight, too short-waisted, I’m swimming in this, too tight…

I feel queasy and sit down.

An hour later I’m staring at the floor trying not to cry, piles of shiny sequined bedazzled fabric at my feet.



They eventually find a top while I stare at the floor: It’s an explosion of rich red lace with beribboned roses sprinkled with small red sequins here and there. My husband knocks on the dressing room door and hands it to me.

Oh god no, it looks like something my GRANDMA would wear! No…wait a minute, it’s got some give. Oh, OK, it’s not THAT low cut. Three-quarter sleeves, narrow black ribbon makes it sort of peplum which means it’d give me waist, maybe? Hmm.

I slide it on and peek at myself in the mirror.

Ohhh, I LOVE this color! It’s not too low cut. It’s…holy crap, I HAVE A WAIST! OK, the shoulders are a little big, but maybe…if I pull it down like this maybe?

I keep gazing at my reflection as I turn one way, then the other. I don’t hear our housemate knocking at the door. She exclaims in delight and leads me out so my husband can see. He beams.

Suddenly my mouth feels very dry because OMG, I actually own a bona-fide evening-type fancy top…|ME?!?!?





Then there’s the tale of the skirt for this top, but I’ll save that for another time.



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Kathi Bourke is a guest contributor on Parentwin.

Clarity in the Check Out Lane - Contributor Post

Today, I'm lucky enough to share a post from Pollychromatic who had a sobering experience at a grocery store that cemented a realization that so often floats around our collective peripheral vision.

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I was standing in the checkout line waiting my turn. Bored. Looking at the magazine covers rather than making eye contact with the other people in line.

As you do.

I was doing this, and something really clarified for me.

See, there was this horrible rag cover. Globe or National Enquirer, or Star, or something. It had the title of “Worst Beach Bodies.” There’s Kim Kardashian’s butt, front and center, titled “Double Wide.” Ha! Ha! Because Kim Kardashian has a butt that is wide, you see. Oh, and we all agree that big butts mean fat, and fat means ugly err, I mean not healthy. So we can all make fun of her butt being big because really we’re just concerned about her health and fuck if she doesn’t deserve it because what the hell is she doing thinking her big butt is okay to show off to the world as desirable! How dare she?! The nerve!

NEEEEEXT!

People I don’t know, people I don’t know, people I don’t know and… what? Is that the little person from that tv show? Amy Roloff? What in the actual fuck? They’re making fun of her? Because her body is different? And she dared to show it on the beach?

Are you fucking kidding me?

You know that point when your ears start to make that whooshing sound and your vision narrows, and you realize that you might just actually be one ragequit away from a for real stroke because you actually got that pissed off?

I was there. Right there.

And I want to use nicer language. I want to not use curse words, because I’d like for you to pass this around, and I know that using curse words makes that harder for you to do. I know that curse words are the retreat of a small vocabulary and that it takes finer skill and creates more power to write without them, but I am so enraged by this.

But it made something clear.

See, I’ve grown desensitized to the fat shaming. Every now and then it’ll get my ire up, but I have come to expect it. It’s what our media does. It’s what people in our culture do. It’s what our coworkers and friends and family do. Not all of them, sure, but enough. We can spread the body positivity from here to eternity, but the streak of shame and blame that we place on people, and ourselves, for fat, for daring to be fat? That’s wider than all the fat combined. It’s heavier, meatier, and I am here to tell you uglier.


Gabourey Sidibe can make her speeches about living past the hate and finding her own beauty, but at the end, we know, we all know, there are a world of comments that will come after about how she should still lose a few pounds. At the least, “for her health.”

And we’ve come to expect that, if not accept that. We don’t, as a culture, accept that fat is a genetic difference, we don’t, as a culture, accept that fat is just another one of the facets of beauty that exists in our species.

But.

I did not expect that to be put on a little person. I didn’t expect the highly critical eye of the media to turn to a person who was born with the genes that express themselves through one of the many varieties of drawfism. Amy Roloff is a little person. Her body is different. Making fun of her body for being different makes as much sense as making fun of Stephen Hawking because he’s in a wheelchair.

Here’s another horrible part of this. They cropped the picture carefully. They didn’t make fun of her husband for daring to be a little person on the beach. All the hate was reserved for her. Because that’s what we do.

And I really should have known better. Because we know better, don’t we? Of course the media is going to make fun of Amy Roloff. Just like they make fun of Gabourey Sidibhe. And it really is all the same. And it isn’t about a focused set of standards of beauty. It isn’t about the overuse of photoshop. It isn’t about fashion. It isn’t even about attraction, or health.
It’s about being bullies.

We’ve accepted a culture that bullies, especially, women. We take part in it. We consume it and regurgitate it and spread it far and wide on Tumblr and Pinterest and blogs and Instagram.

And god. I sort of want to thank that horrible magazine for clarifying it for me. Because damn if another picture dissecting what parts of whichever actress they took apart this week for being too fat was going to get through to me.

If you are a woman, you are less than. You are a consumable product. Here are your array of products and services to purchase so that you can be consumed. And you will consume it. $20 billion a year on the diet industry. $34 billion a year on beauty products and services (I’m sure there’s some overlap there on beauty services/products and the diet industry, but you get the idea). There’s a lot of money to be made by telling you that you look like crap. And when you get fed up and feel down and depressed about it, there’ll be a whole row of magazines at the grocery store, and entire blogs dedicated to ripping apart actresses and female celebrities who didn’t live up to the expectations that you haven’t been able to live up to either. And maybe you’ll rip them apart, too. So you can feel better about how shitty you feel about yourself, inevitably.

And maybe it’s time that we see that we feel like shit because we have been consumed and processed through a machine that digests us to turn us into ready consumers for their products and services. Maybe it’s time we realize that this media machine is not celebrating the beautiful life, but the impossible life, simply so we will consume it and be consumed by it. That the reason will feel like shit is because we have been shat.

And maybe we need to step away from the bullies and stop giving them our voices and ears to use. We need to stop consuming this. There’s just no world where it is acceptable to make fun of people’s bodies for being different. We need to turn it around on ourselves. There’s just no world where it is acceptable to make fun of our own body for being different.

Dammit, we are the expression of a beautiful conglomeration of millennia of evolution. We are life. We are living, breathing, thinking, dancing, rolling, wrinkling, jiggling, taut, stretched, bunched up, beautiful life. In myriad forms. We are life.

And that is beautiful.

Woman Hands Out Fat Shaming Notes to Kids so She's not Seen as the 'Mean Lady' -- Oh.

Perhaps by now you've seen this?

Now, you might this this is some spoof out to rile the social justice warriors. I admit, I wasn't sure at first. But no. This is a real note, courtesy of Cheryl from Fargo, North Dakota. In fact, here she is on y94 defending her decision.

The DJ asks her why she doesn't just give out healthy alternatives, and her reply is that she doesn't want to be the mean lady. So she'll give all the kids candy, and the ones she deems overweight will also be getting this incredibly well worded, and caring, note.

There are so many things wrong with this I hardly know where to start.

Let's first define "concern trolling" okay? Since apparently a lot of people don't seem to understand the concept.

Concern Trolling: "A person who posts on a blog thread, in the guise of "concern," to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that posters and/or the site may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or power. They point out problems that don't really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending." --Urban Dictionary

Now, this is a case of in real life concern trolling. The woman holds herself up to be helping the community by inserting a note which she finds to be "well-meaning" into those people's hands that she finds unhealthy. She has put herself into a dialogue that didn't exist, is controlling it, and wants to be seen as the good guy.

Here's why she can't do that:

1) It's none of her business. Halloween is an opt-in holiday. Think Halloween candy makes kids fatter and you can't stand it? Opt out. Leave your porch light off. It's as simple as that. Or as the DJ suggested, give out something you consider healthy. The kids won't care. They're there for the costumes and festivities. If they ever even do care about what kind of candy they got, it's long after the fact, and they won't even remember you. Repeat this to yourself: you are not that big a deal.

2) Parents have eyes. They can see their own children, they know what their children weigh moreso than even you do, and they have deemed it appropriate to allow their kids to partake in the collection of candy this year. They don't need you to tell them what they can see. They don't need you to tell them what they should do.

3) Collection of candy. That's as far as you see. For all you know that family is donating their stash this year. Or not. Not your business.

4) I happen to be a fairly thin, muscular woman--a woman some people would say is in great shape. I've  eaten four bags of Halloween candy in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, I know people struggling with their weight who have eaten nothing but wholesome, doctor-approved diets in that time. Point being, thin people do not represent healthy people necessarily. Those thin kids you're referencing in your note could have far worse diets and exercise than the ones you consider to be overweight.

5) Kids of trick-or-treating age are just coming into the stage where they learn about people like you, who will judge them for what they look like as opposed to for who they are. They've not yet built the walls of self-confidence around themselves, and reading a note like this could have a very definite and a very negative impact on them. They could accidentally allow you to define them. They could lose their sense of self and start judging who they are by what you think of them. They could then pattern this for years, becaoming more and more unhappy with themselves, always feeling inadequate, no matter how much they accomplish. These kids, they don't know you don't matter. So you have to act like you do. Because you might to them. And if that's the case, wouldn't you rather be the person who shored someone up when they were feeling insecure rather than pushed them down into the depths of self-doubt and worry?

In summation, here's a PSA. Happy Halloween, everybody! Remember this year to not be a total douchecanoe when handing out candy to the joyous children happy to be out and about and proud of their costumes.


 

We Don't Need an Excuse!

Based on the popularity of the last post, we have started a tumblr to take back our body images. It's called Don't Need an Excuse, and the submissions, so far, have been stunning!

Here are a couple, just to show you what's up.

Head over there and submit your own, and spread the word. Loving ourselves is the best way forward, whether we want to improve in any arena, or not!




 

How to Love Me - Guest Post

Melanie Greeke took time out of her busy schedule of wrestling her three lovely children to write an inspiring piece on body image that I'd like to share here.

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As women, we are told how to look, what we have to do to achieve this look, and how inadequate we are if we fall short. This irritates the absolute shit out of me.

Women in a size small have a hard time finding clothes and feel fat in a swimsuit. Why? Because the media has given us unreal expectations of what a female body should look like. Size small? Not small enough. Super-model size thin? Too thin! Eat something, you skinny bitch. Size 10? "You'd feel so much better if you were a size 8." Size 20? "You have such a pretty face, I don't understand why you don't lose the weight!"

Because fuck you, that's why.

I had gastric bypass in August 2010 in an attempt to prolong my life because my weight and family history were leading me down a road I didn't want to travel, with two little girls who needed their mom to be healthy.

I didn't have gastric bypass to be skinny; I didn't do it to look sexy. I did it to improve my health for my children. And it worked.

But, even after gastric bypass and losing weight, I still feel the need to hide my thinner body. Oh no, the extra skin on my arms is unappealing to some! Oh no, stretch marks!

Melanie, stop it. Your insecurities are ridiculous. Let it go. You are absolutely the only one who cares enough to notice how much your "bingo wings" jiggle when you gesture your hands...and even if people do notice, who cares?  You know that shit is jiggling, too. Nothing to be ashamed of here.

So, I'm paving a new way for myself, and hopefully my daughters. We are going to love ourselves unconditionally. We will not engage in body talk or body hate. If we are feeling like there is room for improvement, we will improve, but no more standing in front of a mirror crying because skinny jeans make my thick Portuguese thighs look like sausages! No more will I allow the media to try to bamboozle me into thinking I'm anything less than absolutely spectacular. I'm going to love me for me. If I feel I need to change, I'm going to do it by myself and for myself. No man, woman, or TV personality will tell me what I need to look like.