#thin-shaming

On Why We Can’t Let Fat People Be Happy

I’ve lived fat. As a child and teenager I was fat. A faded childhood photo shows off creamy plump cheeks secreting away my jawline, and dimpled knuckles clutch my stolen copy of The Secret Garden. I spent my entire childhood wearing caftan-style clothes that billowed and draped around my active body as I got lost in the woods behind my house. I was happy.

With the exception of a pregnancy, I have spent all of my adult life in a body that people classify as thin. Many of my adult years I was too thin, so thin that I was laid out in a suburban hospital bed like a sheet of legal pad paper and force-fed emulsified pablum smoothies. My body has expanded and contracted with age, excessive exercise, natural hormone fluctuations and dangerous eating disorders. I hope that this duality of experience affords me the integrity to write about some of the media response we’ve seen to Lane Bryant‘s new social media campaign, #ImNoAngel.

Lane Bryant is a plus-size retailer committed to producing clothing for bodies that aren’t represented in the average mall clothing store; the company promises clothes that are more than a simple upsizing of existing fashions. Instead they design their lines with the intention of fitting the bodies they market to, a truly rare concept in the “plus-size” industry.

As an extension of their clothing line, the Lane Bryant franchise includes Cacique, intimate apparel catering to the belief that a woman’s size should not define her relationship with lingerie or her sexual body.

La Senza, Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein don’t bother making much effort to design thongs, intricately nuanced lace bras or garter belts for women over size 14. Instead, mall and boxstore consumers are offered the choice of fitting into the regiment of arbitrary size charts or purchasing the sexless, shapeless and antiquated beige underclothes that are relegated to back corners of department store basements. Sure, the options exist for properly designed and beautiful plus-size lingerie and have done in large quantities since the advent of web-based shopping, but it remains difficult to access, unseen and exorbitant in cost.

14 Things You Say That You Don’t Realize Are Thin-Shaming

I’m ALL about using healthy models. I used to be in the modeling industry, and I think using healthy models is extremely important. However, in this situation, there wasn’t an investigation to see if the model had been Photoshopped to death. On the Urban Outfitters’ side, a representative stated, “The model was represented by one of the UK’s most successful and well-respected agencies. We do not believe she was underweight.” To me, this seems like an aggressive Photoshop job, but I also know as someone who is healthy with a thigh gap that it is possible to look that way.