I’m a bit late posting my NYE pictures! I didn’t get any traditional outfit pictures, but I did get plenty of photos of my friends and I goofing off at the party Steve and I held–which was a ton of fun.
It was my and Steve’s one-year friend-a-versary with Maggie and Jon, who we met at last year’s NYE party!
Dress: originally Dots, bought from another fatshion blogger on Storenvy (which I found through Tumblr), crown: Crown & Glory (of course), jewelry: nearly all from So Good, shoes: Fluevog
My style has been changing so much lately, and I wonder how much of that comes from reading a million fatshion blogs, and how much is just natural style evolution. I don’t think I would have worn something like this even a year or two ago, but lately I’ve been so into low-key gray and black nu-goth-y clothing.
Two and a half years ago, Domino Dollhouse was selling a few Nakimuli items that had a similar aesthetic to DD’s current Science/Visions collection. At the time, I thought they were kind of boring; now I wish like hell that I could get my hands on that drape-y gray dress.
Dress and leggings: Domino Dollhouse, blazer: Torrid, shoes: L.L. Bean, belt: Re/Dress, jewelry: all old
(Please ignore the weird thing my hair is doing. I didn’t notice it after I’d finished taking the pictures, and I didn’t want to start all over again.)
I was sorting through my closet this weekend, trying to pick which items to bring to a clothing swap I’m holding in a few weeks, and almost threw this dress into the swap pile. I haven’t worn it in forever because the straps don’t quite cover my bra, so it’s not appropriate for fancy occasions.
But then I saw my studded button-down shirt hanging near it, and I had an idea. And I’m really happy with how it turned out! This kind of mix-and-match outfit creation–playing with pattern and texture within a limited color palette, or vice versa–is exactly what I love about fashion.
Dress: Dress Barn via eBay, top: Marshall’s, shrug: SimplyBe, leggings: Re/Dress, snow boots: from my mom, tote bag: ASOS, necklace: a gift shop in France (I’ve also seen it available online at La Marelle, although it is currently sold out), earrings: Faces (which is closing, boo), fascinator: from my aunt, rings: old, wristbands: So Good
Wintry frolicking
Fa(t)shion
-When I read this, I was internally jumping up and down and shouting “YES”: The revolution will not be plus-sized. I’m working on a post of related reflections, which I’ll try to put up within the next few days.
–Deb is going out of business, which is a good opportunity to get clothes at rock-bottom prices, but also sad because it’s one of the few options for cheap, trendy plus size clothing. I still remember how excited I was the one time I visited a Deb store in person.
-Leah writes about why she is finished with SimplyBe.
-Gabifresh’s new line of swimsuits looks awesome. Like her last line, it only goes up to a size 24, but she is hoping to expand the size range in the future.
–A review of (mostly) black plus size leggings.
–The most important fashion trend of this century: Quvenzhane Wallis’ puppy purses.
–Legendary women in literature are rewriting the rules of style. This piece links to a great piece by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about her struggle to be taken seriously within the literary world as a woman who loves fashion.
-New online vintage shop Future is the Future sells clothes with sizes listed in both men’s and women’s sizing.
-Major fatshion inspiration: the incredibly glamorous all-black outfits of Melissa McCarthy, Amber Riley, and Gabourey Sidibe.
–Advanced Style interviews the Accidental Icon: “As someone who has been involved in thinking about social welfare and social well-being for my entire career, I have recently become interested in the power of fashion and clothing to challenge oppression alongside it’s [sic] potential power to oppress.”
–Target finally listened to Chastity Garner and decided to make a plus size designer collaboration….which will be available online only. *sigh*
-I love Buttercup’s end-of-2014 post, especially this: “Seriously though, where does this come from, this bizarre, misplaced sense of moral outrage at other people’s clothing choices, as if there were a universally recognised right and wrong way to get dressed?”
-If you live in western MA, check out this upcoming clothing swap.
On our adventures, we came across a field of friendly cows.
I’m so glad I snapped up two pairs of leggings from Domino Dollhouse’s Science/Visions collection during their holiday sale–one in onyx and one in onyx/pewter–because it turns out they’re super-warm. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re warmer than any actual pants I own.
It’s been below freezing all week here in Boston, and with these leggings, my legs haven’t gotten cold at all on my daily commute and lunchtime walks. Your mileage may vary, as I’m a bit of a polar bear, but they are definitely warmer than your average leggings. They’re made out of a combination of two materials: cotton lycra on top, and faux suede on the bottom. The faux suede is the same material that makes up the sleeves of the Oblivion dress, and it’s so soft that I end up wanting to pet my own legs/arms all day.
Like all Domino Dollhouse leggings, they’re thick and opaque, so they work well as pants. I wear them with dresses to work, but on the weekends I sometimes wear them as pants, as you can see in the middle picture above. I wear them in a 1x, which is my usual size in DD leggings, although I wear a 2x or 3x in their dresses.
If you’re looking for a cheaper way to keep your legs warm, check out the Berkshire Cozy Hose tights, which one of my friends recommends highly. I haven’t tried them myself because I don’t like the feeling of tights, but she says they’re really comfortable. As for sizing, she is about the same size as I am (22-ish, and we always take each other’s old clothes at swaps!), and wears the tights in a 3x-4x.
Re/Dress also has fleece-lined leggings available for preorder, in a bunch of colors including pink (yay!). I haven’t tried these either, but I’ve heard good things about them in the past.
What do you wear to keep warm in the winter?
In last week’s Sunday Links post, I mentioned the Leelah Project, which sends clothes and necessities to transgender people in memory of Leelah Alcorn, the trans teenager who recently killed herself because her parents refused to let her express her gender identity.
I linked to the project’s fundraising page, but didn’t think of another obvious way to help until one of my friends mentioned it on Facebook: they accept clothing donations, which would be a perfect use for post-clothing-swap leftovers. I am hosting a clothing swap later this month, and will be donating all leftovers to the Leelah Project.
If you’re also holding a clothing swap any time soon, or just have extra clothes you don’t need and the money to ship them, please consider donating them! The address is: The Leelah Project at 985 Kendall Dr. Ste. A – 234, San Bernardino, CA 92407. I think it’s especially important for fat people to donate clothes if we can, because plus size clothing is so much harder to find in general.
(Note: in this piece, I refer to the movement in question mainly as fat acceptance, or FA, since that’s how I first came to know it. Other people may prefer to call it size acceptance, fat justice, fat activism, etc. Like most movements, it’s more a series of overlapping movements than one cohesive community, which I think is a good thing.)
I recently read a piece on XOJane titled, Why I’m Over The Size Acceptance Movement or Hey, SA, What Have You Done For Me Lately? Like many XOJane pieces, it’s scattered and confusingly written (and could have benefited greatly from the hand of a skilled editor). It’s especially confusing that the author, Cary Webb, calls for more 201-level discussions within the fat acceptance movement, yet doesn’t seem to grasp some of the 101-level basics of the movement: like the fact that discussions about considering weight loss surgery support fat-negative narratives, and therefore don’t belong in FA spaces. People who want to talk about weight loss can go literally anywhere else on the internet–or in the world–and have those discussions supported, but those of us who want a break from hearing about it have only a few spaces where we can do so. It’s the height of entitlement to demand that such spaces include weight loss talk.
Webb brings up important issues like racism, healthism, poverty, and ableism in the same sentence as wanting to be allowed to say that “there is such a thing as clothes that fat people shouldn’t wear”–umm, what? Policing what other fat people wear is neither FA 201 nor 101–it’s just more of the same oppressive shit we get from the rest of the world. And like weight loss talk, it has no place in our movement.
Even though I have some major issues with the piece, I’m glad that it has sparked discussion across multiple FA spaces about the state of the movement. Here are a few of my thoughts, in no particular order: Continue reading
Since I already rounded up my favorite outfits from 2014, here’s a similar list of non-outfit posts, in no particular order. Sometimes my more substantive posts get buried under all the outfits, so it’s nice to go through them and remember what I was thinking about throughout the year.
1.) Another thing I’m sick of: blaming fat women for our lack of clothing options. This one was especially popular, mostly because it was featured on WordPress’ Freshly Pressed (yay!).
2.) Is creativity dead in Boston? Not the one I know.
3.) Fighting fat-phobia matters. For so many reasons other than body image.
4.) We need to talk about how social and economic structures impact health.
7.) On “feeling fat” and the multiple truths of fat experience.
8.) In defense of the question, “Where do you get your confidence?”
9.) Romantic rejection, gendered blame, and narratives we need to change.
10.) A narrow bridge: on Israel, Palestine, and fear.
With my fellow fab fatties at the Curvy Yoga retreat
Here are a few things that didn’t make it into my 2014 Year in Review post. In 2014, I:
-Started participating in the Alternative Curves blog hop, and joined its Facebook group. It’s been great to find my niche with other plus size bloggers who enjoy punky, goth-y, costume-y, and otherwise quirky fashion. Looking for that niche was the very reason I started this blog! I’m especially excited for this upcoming month’s theme, Riot Grrl Heroines, as well as June’s (’90s Mall Witch) and August’s (Japanese Streets).
-Joined another fashion-niche FB group, the Glitterati, for people who subscribe to Crown and Glory’s monthly subscription box (which is always awesome and full of shinies). It’s fun to connect with other people who love sparkly things as much as I do. And I got Leah into C&G too, woohoo!
-Even as I joined more groups and connected more with the fatshion world, I also felt left out, as people have increasingly moved to Instagram. I don’t have a smart phone and don’t plan to get one anytime soon, so there’s a whole social network I can’t be part of, and it feel like that’s where everything’s happening these days. It’s also frustrating seeing so many lists of “top ten bloggers!” “best 20 outfits!” and knowing that I never even had a chance to make the list, because they’re all pulled from Instagram. (I know, I know, I’m not in this for the recognition–but sometimes recognition is nice.)
-Read 30 books by women of color.
-Participated in a Curvy Yoga workshop at a yoga retreat in Western Massachusetts. Anna Guest-Jelley is just as wonderfully body-positive in person as she is on her blog, and it was so powerful to do yoga with a room full of fat women, moving our bellies out of the way without shame. I hope to have more opportunities for movement with other fat people in the upcoming year.
I wish I could wake up to this view every day.
Tutus And Tiny Hats 