dressing

i really felt the need to share this. it's quoted from the comments section on this video page from bravotv.com. It's a response to Nina Garcia, a fashion editor of Elle magazine, who "addresses a misconception about dressing when you're a bigger woman." In it, she uses Kate Moss (yes, the coke using supermodel) as an example. ummm ok.

I, too, am a Runway fan. I love seeing the creativity (or lack there of in some cases). As a knitter, i am faced with finding patterns that not only come in my size, but are flattering too. At 28 years old, i still have a hard time figuring out what looks good on me. I am a size 18. This is a struggle no matter where i shop, as Milla so eloquently wrote.

ps. if you are Milla, please let me know! I'd like to link to your blog or site (if you have one, and if you don't, you should!)

(January 4, 2008 01:25 AM)

I am an adept Project Runway viewer and faithful Elle magazine reader. I am also a medical professional, a fashion writer and a fashion designer. I am a recovering eating-disordered individual. And moreover I have been fat my entire life. I was a fat toddler. I was a fat child. I was a fat teen and I am a fat adult.

And I do not want to change A THING about myself. It does not matter how ashamed my mother, daughter, family, and profession(s) are of me, I am proud of who I am and what I look like. I am beautiful and I have nothing to cover and nothing to camouflage or hide. Every scar, every roll and every dimple is a mark of something, even the pain, ostracism, exclusion and derision I have endured because I have been never able to get thin enough to please the world. So I got done trying and realized that I was perfect, just the way I was. And since then I went on a journey of discovery and found out that 99% of the things that I have been forcefed my whole life to make me hate and fear my body,were lies to make money. That the pain I have endured and continue to endure ( yesterday my daughter told me that I would be the last example she would follow and that she is going on a diet because God forbid, she gets fat) is NOTHING but sheer unadulterated prejudice, the kind of hate directed towards people because of a physical characteristic not seen since Jim Crow.

Nina, how do you know of ANYTHING about being "larger"?

NO thin person knows anything about what looks best on or feels best to a larger person because they don't ever ask. They just tell us what we should look like and how we should feel and what we should do. But no one EVER asks.

Why is it that you say that thin people look good "almost anything" but "larger people should stick to simple things"? Because you want to direct your eyes at "larger people" as little as possible perhaps? Maybe because you think that "larger people" should have the good sense to call as little attention to themselves as humanly possible if they MUST breathe the same air as you?

Mi reyna... si no sabes de lo que hablas mejor callate la boca. Only a fat person knows what looks best on another fat person, because only a fat person knows what a fat person thinks and feels. And here is what we think and here is what we want. Listen and listen well: THE EXACT SAME STUFF THAT THIN PEOPLE WEAR. BUT OUR SIZE. HOW. BLOODY. HARD. IS. THAT.

We want to have to same exact options available to us as are available to the size 0's ( since now even size 2's have joined our ranks). We want women that look like us ( beautiful models in sizes 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 18, 20 and 28 or whatever) gracing the pages of your magazine and all others like it and treated in the exact same way.

We want to be appreciated and loved and respected in the exact same way our thin counter parts are. Without judgement. Without diet advice. Without work-out routines and without health "threats" from so-called "obesity" experts. We want revolution.

We want the fashion industry to allows and grant us the right to feel as beautiful and sexy as we want to be. Because we already are and now we want to take the thin-enamoured, weight-loss obsessed, distortion goggles off the eyes of every human being on this planet and we would love it if you would assist us in that endeavour.

Because it's going to happen, if you like it or not. Because of a power that is stronger and mightier than Anna Wintour or you or Karl Lagerfeld or Domenico del Sole. It's going to happen and it is happening because of natural selection and evolution and natural size variance in the species. People are simply getting bigger. They have been getting bigger forever but it's happening faster and faster. We are taller and bigger that flappers and Rosie the Riveters and Bobby Soxers and Flower Children and Punks. I am 4 inches taller than my mother. And my daughter will break 6 feet. And that is the trend. And no diet is going to stop it.

There will always be smaller people and larger people just like there are Pomeranians and Mastiffs. But as long as the medical and fashion industry INSIST and PERSIST in trying to make Toy Poodles out of St. Bernards, you are going against the current. Not only is it futile, it's stupid and cruel and worthless although I am plenty aware it is highly profitable.

You can start change by hiring a fat fashion editor to write size freindly fashion advice and putting people in the magazine over a size 0. Seriously, the world will not come to an end, I promise. You probaly will gain thousands of readers.

What you might loose on the other hand is all the pharmaceutical and diet advertising in the magazine. Which could be easily made up if more designers who made clothes that fit your new readers bought up the advertising space.

Just saying, mami....

And next time si no sabes de que hablas, please abstain from opening your MAC lipglass coated boquita.

Love always,

Milla