The Surprising Liberation I Found Getting Dressed in My Biggest Body + Advice I Received on Contending with Cooking Fatigue
Why I am no longer having meltdowns about having nothing to wear
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The Surprising Liberation I Found Getting Dressed in My Biggest Body
This May my calendar has been full of special occasions— birthdays, performances, and graduation events to name a few— that require leaving the house, socializing, and dressing for the occasion. Each year, although this year in particular, the demand on my closet is never higher than it is in May. And despite being a lifelong clotheshorse with a closet full of clothing that usually fits, having to get dressed for this many events normally renders me teary and stressed out. Historically, after an hour of trying to get ready I would erupt in a proclamation: “I have nothing to wear!” Then in a most unbecoming tantrum, I would hurl at least one item of clothing across the room and collapse on the floor surrounded by castoffs and have a big cry.
This spring however I simply got dressed.
Sometimes, pulling together an outfit I liked, required trying on a few combinations of tops and bottoms, but it was never upsetting. In fact, sometimes I enjoyed it. What was different this year? I am fatter than I have ever been.
Yeah, you read that right.
I am fatter than I have ever been and I finally find it easy to get dressed. I generally avoid numbers when writing about my experiences but in this case, one in which I encounter institutionalized sizeism but far less of it than others fatter than me, it seems important. For reference I am now a mid-fat often wearing a size 2X or twenty. As an adult I have been as small as a size four. I have spent most of my life as a size fourteen in many clothing brands.
There is no denying that shopping for clothes and dressing yourself is generally harder as a person of the plus-size persuasion. However, having this much body is also precisely what allowed me to relax more about getting dressed. No pants are going to make me look “slim,” or accentuate something small. I realized that no amount of boob boosting and waist squeezing was going to make me look lean and athletic. I found liberation dressing my mid-fat body because I was finally able to let go of my obsession with dressing in ways that would make me look smaller.
It isn’t easy for me to accept my size and inability to hide it. I went into recovery for binge eating disorder in the fall of 2021 and I have spent the last three years grieving for bodies I have been in and even bodies I will never have. I loved being lean and jacked in my thirties, except I was also my sickest then. When I see pictures of myself right before being enrolled in Weight Watchers at ten, and then choosing to go back at seventeen, and again at twenty-five, I think, “you’re more beautiful and healthier than you’re going to be—don’t do it!” But photos are not machines that allow me to go back and change the past. I look away from those pictures frustrated and regretful.
I have had the support of an eating disorder recovery coach, read some wonderful books and newsletters, and listened to the occasional podcast on fatphobia and body grief. While my own struggles with body grief deserve a much more nuanced conversation, in sum I was afraid of becoming unloveable in the eyes of everyone, even my closest friends and family members; I was terrified to lose the safety linked to thinness in my professional and personal spheres; and I was mourning the privileges I had by virtue of being in a smaller body when it came to most things outside of the home from shopping trips to visits to the doctor,
As part of recovery I have been unpacking my grief. I have also sought to turn down the volume on self-criticism of my appearance. I knew that part of my process would include buying new clothes that fit me that I also liked to wear. As someone who has always shopped in stores that usually only carried up to a size fourteen, I felt like I needed help. I didn’t know where I could find clothing I liked that also fit me.
So, I elected to bring in even more support—this time around getting dressed. I worked with stylist
who empowered me to source comfortable clothing that reflected my personal style and taste, regardless of whether or not it was “slimming.”One of the biggest problems I had faced in the past was buying clothing that was “flattering.” This meant fitted, cinched, and controlling clothing. It meant vertical stripes (black on black would be ideal) and things that emphasized my waist. But what I really wanted to wear was oversized athleisure paired with even larger structured layers. When I cried about not having “anything to wear,” what upset me was that I didn’t have anything that was simultaneously flattering, comfortable, and expressed who I was. I recently realized that the clothes I like don’t always conform to the notion of “flattering” and once I dropped it from the list of requirements I became a happier woman with a closet full of options.
While working with Gillespie I rediscovered the part of me that has always loved to get dressed: the little girl who was obsessed with black patent leather mary janes, lace trimmed socks, and chunky plastic jewelry, the trend obsessed teen, and the artistic adult. I bought bright oversized sweaters featuring yin yangs and smiley faces, and exaggerated barrel pants with comfortable waistbands. I ordered a huge blazer, orange parachute pants, and a very bright multicolored tracksuit. More recently when I had to get glasses, I picked frames that are so huge they are polarizing, but everyone will know that I made an intentional choice. I love them. In other words I am having fun getting dressed. And my clothing and accessories definitely do not make me disappear.
Wearing “unflattering” clothing was a little bit hard at first, but I started to garner compliments from strangers in coffee shops and clothing stores who had their own great sense of personal style. These compliments on my fashion decisions made me happy in a way that compliments on how a piece of clothing suited my figure didn’t. I love being seen as creative which reflects who I am in a way that being told that how my figure looks appealing does not. Complimenting my body shape and size says little to nothing about the essence of me.
After three years of doing the work around body image and unpacking my own internalized fatphobia, something shifted during this last year of dressing myself in possibly “unflattering” clothing. This May, as I got dressed to celebrate my daughter who performed in a cabaret, starred in her high school musical, graduated high school and turned eighteen; when I threw something on for a last minute invitation to a party for a magnolia tree; and when I put on outfits for work meetings, it began to dawn on me that I was no longer having tearful breakdowns, nor was getting dressed made harder by a sense of hopelessness and self-hatred. In fact, when I look in my closet now, I often smile because there is a lot in there that allows me to express who I am without physical discomfort. The tremendous amount of stress I faced when I was fixated on flattering has dissipated and that energy has been reclaimed.
That is liberating.
You don’t have to be in recovery from an eating disorder or have a dramatic change in dress size to liberate yourself from “flattering.” It is a shift in mindset. If there has always been something you have wanted to try wearing but felt you couldn’t because of a fashion rule you heard once, twice, or even more, I invite you to tell me about it in the comments and consider trying it out anyway. It could be a gentle way to find both greater ease and more creative self expression in your day.
The Part Where I Sometimes Share a Recipe…
I have great admiration for
: a James Beard nominated author who has written three books on cooking not to mention articles for Vogue, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. In her substack The Kitchen Shrink, she offers advice and a few weeks ago, I sent in my own question which appeared in her newsletter thusly:My next writing project has an awful lot to do with food. I have been cooking and writing, writing about cooking, and cooking for my writing for a couple years, and I'm all out of gas. I usually find joy in the kitchen. But I am suffering from what a therapist called "food fatigue." Symptoms include not wanting to cook for, shop for, prep, or even think about food. I do want to eat food though! I do get hungry! I just want someone else to narrow down my choices to "this or that." I have been managing my dilemma with take-out and accepting dinner invitations. Ordering whatever takeout I don't have to think too much about is dull but fine. Do you have any other solutions I might consider? Please help me find my kitchen mojo again!
Read Adler’s much appreciated advice to me here:
Until Next Time…
READ Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone Edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, a book whose now cheeky title comes from an essay by Laurie Colwin written decades before the smartphone and eggplant emojis. I am currently reading this delightful collection of essays and perhaps unsurprisingly, I find the book most enjoyable to read when I am about to dine alone.
WATCH The Residence, a smart and funny upstairs-downstairs murder mystery set inside the White House. The Residence is from Shondaland and stars some of my favorites: Uzo Aduba as private detective Cordelia Cupp, Randall Park as an FBI special agent, Jason Lee as the President’s brother and Jane Curtain as his mother. The twists and turns keep you guessing, the stunning design and cinematography sustains delight, and the humor inspires numerous giggles and chortles.
LISTEN to Proxy with Yowei Shore, a podcast that pairs people facing a particular emotional conundrum with a stranger for a conversation that can help them get unstuck. It is self decribed as “emotional investigative journalism™️.”