Clothes Encounters

My relationship with clothing has been a rocky one fairly early on in my existence. When I was little, about 3 or 4, the only way for me to adequately express my rage would be to rip the clothes off of my body and throw a naked temper tantrum. There are whole segments of the "Racite Family Fourth of July-1988" VHS where I am streaking angrily across my Aunt Debbie's yard and away from my mother (and her fantastic mullet), to the amusement of all my Racite relatives. I don't actually remember these incidents (thank God) but I guess I must have known, intuitively, that clothing and I had some tough times ahead of us.

I was kind of a pistol...

Fast forward to when I was about 11 years old. My mother just forced a bowl cut onto me and I was wearing tapered corduroy pants with an elastic waist band for my first day of middle school. Up until this point I really, truly wanted to believe that I wasn't a fat kid. My peers had long since been teasing me for my weight, but in my tragically naive, adolescent heart I clung to the hope that once they got to know me as a person, they'd soon forget that I was both fat and awkward. Unfortunately, having a bowl cut, gigantic wire rimmed glasses, buck teeth, and tapered pants with an elastic band is, uh, pretty unforgettable. I was quickly assured in no uncertain terms that I was, indeed, fat. Being fat then became the lens through which I began to view myself. And with this new bit of knowledge I quickly learned to hide my offending larger body beneath even larger clothing.

I also learned that clothes shopping for a fat adolescent girl is right up there with teeth pulling and eye stabbing in terms of sheer enjoyment. When we weren't arguing over our differing fashion tastes, I would be standing half naked in a fitting room while my mother roamed the store for different sizes and styles of plus-sized pants that might fit me (options were limited in the 90s). She almost always engaged a salesperson into what seemed like our entire life story and could never understand why I got upset every time she would shout out pant sizes or bra measurements across the store. But that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was coming home and having my father inspect the waistband of said pants; he'd tug on the band to check for snugness and inspect the sturdiness of my zipper and button. When you're an insecure, overweight adolescent girl, this kind of examination from your father is a whole new tier of humiliation. As if this wasn't enough, my grandmother would then have to come over and hem the pants ('cause I'm a shawty), which meant measuring tape, pins, and other assorted torture devices. Needless to say that by the end of a shopping trip day, I wanted nothing more than to rock back and forth in a dark corner.**

**I assure you that now, at age 27, I appreciate the efforts made by my parents and grandmother. I would never ever wish the task of outfitting such an angry, ungrateful brat upon even my worst enemies.**

With time and a driver's license, my shopping trips became less traumatic, but not by much. I have stormed out of dressing rooms, cursed the full-length mirrors that surrounded me on three sides (like anyone ever wants to see that much of their backside), broken down into quiet sobs of disappointment over sizes that were dirty rotten liars, and have fallen prey to the worst shopping experience of all for a Big Girl: Having a too-small dress seal itself to your waist when you try to get it over your head and off of your body. In this particular situation, I must confess that I totally spazz out in a sheer claustrophobic panic. (This qualifies as one of those experiences that Skinny Girls really don't understand.) Clawing your way out of a dress that is permanently fused to your upper body is like being in labor, except that you are the baby in this scenario. When this happens to me, I never leave the dressing room or cry out for help (out of sheer stupidity and stubbornness). I usually end up tilted on my side, flailing about, dripping with sweat, and desperately trying to reach behind me for deliverance from my zipper. This move is almost always a bust because my arms feel like they weigh about 200 lbs and the zipper I'm hunting for is about an entire centimeter of metal. After 30 seconds of what is essentially Stage 2 labor, I stop fighting against the spasms in my arm and the slow suffocation of the dress' birth canal, and I just flop uselessly against the wall, panting, like a deer who just put up a good fight and is now waiting to be put out of its misery. After about 2 minutes of this, around the time when the sweating stops, my breathing slows, and my body is no longer swelling in panic, I am able to yank the dress up and off of me in one swift movement. I usually leave the dressing room feeling as though I have won the battle but lost the war. Because of situations like this, I can sum up my wardrobe from ages 13-27 with one word: baggy.

Not that I haven't made efforts to be presentable, though. I have tried to wear pretty dresses and flattering jeans. However, when one of your clothing store options has the word "barn" in its title, you begin to wonder if "plus sized fashion" is an oxymoron. On one trip into said store with my dear friend JennEds, I took one look at the shapeless dresses hanging on the walls and sputtered, "That is it, Jenn! Why on earth would I wear a square sack with zebra print!? Isn't it bad enough that I'm shopping in a "barn"? Now they're going to dress us like actual animals too?! They hate us! DRESS BARN HATES FAT PEOPLE!" I may have kicked one of the dress dummies as I stormed out. Then there's Lane Bryant. Lane Bryant, the holy Mecca of plus-sized clothing, at least acknowledges that not every Big Girl is auditioning for the Lion King. Their clothing line is mostly clean and professional-looking, perfect for the working Big Girl. And work you must if you plan on being a long-term Lane Bryant customer. I've long since accepted that I must pay $29.95 for a blouse because it is my unspoken punishment for being overweight and wanting to look nice. I would like to say that since I've lost 60 lbs, my clothing situation has gotten significantly easier. It hasn't, at least not yet. I'm currently in that weird in-between world of sizes, a clothing limbo if you will. The "regular size" stores are still trying to figure out if they want to let me in, but clearly we have differing opinions over the definition of "extra large" (I have sports bras that don't hold me in as tightly as most Gap XL shirts). One thing is for certain: I am currently in jeans hell. When you're short, fat, and apple shaped, finding a flattering pair of jeans is harder than finding a good man. I currently lack the time, patience, and finances for a jeans upgrade and I know that in a few weeks this pair will most likely meet their end in one of three ways: 1. I'll size out of them, 2. I'll fall out of them (as I did with the last pair), or 3. My thick thighs will chafe the crap out of them. I have no idea what my options will be once this happens, but I do know that I will not resort to wearing tights as an alternative to pants. You have my word.

My most recent weight loss clothing conundrum came last Thursday night, just as I was getting ready to go to the Twilight movie premier with my girlfriends. I was freshly showered, dressed, and riding my endorphin high from a successful Step class when I came upstairs and greeted Rachael. She took one look at my chest and said "What...is going on there...?" I looked down to find that the sides of my chest were caved in. "Crap! I think my boobs lost weight.." She unsuccessfully attempted to adjust my straps for me, but that just made the craters even bigger. Because I didn't have any smaller bras (and I just threw out all of my old ones), I had only one alternative left: Kleenex. That's right, last Thursday I was a 27 year-old woman stuffing my bra before my big night out to go see Twilight. Just in case you were wondering, it takes approximately half a box of Kleenex to fill two D-cups. It will take me approximately half a lifetime to live this story down at the Bill house. Because I can't very well stuff my bra on a daily basis, I had to get re-sized. When the salesperson handed me my new size, I kind of stared at it for a few minutes. It was smaller, obviously. But this was a new kind of small for me. I couldn't reconcile my body parts with the piece of fabric in my hand. And yet, this was me. It was kind of a surreal moment.

 When I look at these pictures of my younger self, two thoughts come to mind: First, "Wow...I've had some serious hair". But the second thing I think is that I look like a girl who didn't care about a whole lot. She didn't care about what she wore and she certainly didn't care about her health. And I admit, it was much easier to not care. But in not caring, I think I sacrificed some happiness as well. I don't look very happy...and I don't think I felt happy. I'm not saying that clothes=happiness or that being thin=happiness. What I am saying is that when I was unhealthy, I was unhappy, and I clearly expressed this in how I presented myself. I don't know what this whole process holds for me in the future, but I hope that even if I still dress like a shlub, I hope that I'm at least a happy shlub, and more importantly, I hope that I'm a nice, happy shlub. I hope that I am the kind of happy shlub that makes it a point of being encouraging and decent towards others on a daily basis. Because despite it all, I'm still that 11 year old kid that believes that when you take the time and effort to get to know someone, you will forget to care about what they look like.