Size WHAT? God, I'm STILL bothered by this... (Some Profanity - not too bad just letting you know)

I saw an article the other day headlined: “Tim Gunn wants size 12-plus models for whole season of Project Runway”   Cool, right?   Except when I first saw the headline all my insecurities bubbled up to the surface.  All the fears about size and acceptance that I harbor.  I believe the phrase “12-plus” is intentionally ambiguous in that headline to get people to read it.  In my opinion it can mean ‘Models who are plus size, 12 of them’ or ‘Models who are size 12 and larger’.   Which is it?   Further, is size 12 the new low end for fat clothes?  My head was spinning.  Fortunately, when you read the article you understand that it is the later interpretation and that Tim Gunn is NOT implying that size 12 is fat or unacceptable.  Mr. Gunn is expressing concern about women who are underserved by the fashion industry, such as the very petite and those who are larger than size 12.  I think I love Tim Gunn. 

But I absolutely continued down that horrible path that the voices in my head send me on sometimes and I wondered whether size 12 was the new threshold for ‘fat’.  Where does ‘plus size’ begin these days?   I’m sort of sad that size 12 might be the end of ‘normal’, ‘acceptable’ or even ‘good enough’ these days.  I’m really sad that size 14 is where ‘plus size’ starts now.   Size 14 has always been my goal – and size 12 has always been my dream.  I am forever trying and failing to attain these sizes so that I will feel ‘good enough’. 

I have been over-weight my whole life.  I remember vividly being taunted by a family member:

 ‘Fatty Fatty two by four, can’t fit through the bathroom door.’  I was six.  Really, no shit, that happened.  I remember another family member talking about me like I wasn’t there – about ‘It’s such a shame that she is so fat.’  Honestly, I was bullied about my weight by family more than peers.  I know that it was in the name of trying to get me to do something about it – but it still sucks.

I always thought of size 14 as ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’, ‘perfect’ even (which is also sad because, you know, what does that mean?), for someone of my height.   And size 14, or 13/14 for teens, was not the largest size in the ‘regular’ departments back when I was a kid.  The largest size was 15/16, in certain stores or 13/14 in specialty stores geared to just teens, like The Deb Shop.  If you were bigger than 15/16 you were screwed as a teen.  You had to shop in the women’s department.  The women’s department, where polyester reigned supreme and your grandmother shopped.  If you were from an upper middle class family you were able to shop at Macys and the like for better quality polyester, but if not, it was K-Mart or Bradlees.  Either way you were thirteen looking like a thirty year old secretary while everyone else looked like they walked out of a Seventeen photo shoot.  (Probably not really, but in my mind absolute reality)

When I was a teenager, I never felt that I could get to 13/14 so the holy-grail to me was to be a 15/16.  If only I were size 15/16 then I could wear some of the same brands of clothing that all the other girls were wearing.  If only I were a size 15/16 I would get dates.  If only I were a 15/16 I would be popular.   It was painfully important to me.  I remember, to this day, the first time I could get a pair of 15/16 jeans zipped.  I was SO happy.  I was going to fit in – I had jeans that other girls were wearing.  I didn’t care that they were supposed to be baggy and weren’t – they zipped damn it and I had made it – I was deemed acceptable enough for a major jeans company to make pants in my size.  I was flying high when I proudly walked out of the dressing room to show my Mom and Dad.

And then I was devastated.  Utterly crushed.  Because they said I couldn’t have them, my parents were not going to let me have this piece of nirvana.  This acid washed path to social acceptance and happiness was being denied to me.  My parents said that the jeans were too tight.  I was a pretty naïve kid – so I didn’t see what they saw.  As far as I was concerned they zipped, I could breathe, sort of, and all the girls wore tight pants so what’s the what?  I was convinced that my parents didn’t want me to be happy, they wanted to keep me down.  They were EVIL.  Why would they want to do that?  I don’t know, that thought didn’t happen, I was thirteen.  Thirteen year olds often don’t think past their initial thoughts.  I was furious and despondent.

I felt so hurt and betrayed.  Because they KNEW that I was not popular.  They knew that I was ridiculed and bullied.  They knew it was so much more than just being picked last for some group thing.  I had a horrible time on the school bus.  It was kids refusing to let me sit down coupled with the bus driver not coming to my aid but yelling at me to sit down.  Twice a day every day.   It was sneers and name calling in the halls.  And I knew that my parents knew I was going through this and that appearance was a big part of it.  We didn’t have a lot of money so my clothes were not the best so that didn’t help either.  So I could not fathom why they were actively preventing me from taking this denim paved road to social success.   

What an argument – tears were shed, why did they hate me?  Reason was tried and failed flatly.  And then finally my Dad just left for the automotive department or something.  My Mom just didn’t know how else to make me understand what was really wrong with the jeans.  She could not gently impart to me that buying these jeans would NOT improve my social situation but make things worse.  So, in desperation, she blurted it out right there in the dressing room.  She told me EXACTLY where the jeans were too tight.  She used the word ‘Pussy’ to do it too!  Due to my recent research on another ‘fun’ label I had been given I was not so very naïve to certain slang anymore.  I think I turned a particularly brilliant shade of magenta as I looked in the mirror and experienced my first real fashion epiphany.  The sight combined with my Mom’s use of the ‘P’ word right there in the Bradlees dressing room for strangers to hear, brought it all right on home for me.  Yeah, still not sure how I survived the humiliation.  I mean, people were looking and they were like - 'What did you say?' to my Mom.  It would be quite a few years before I learned the phrase ‘camel toe’ but I am pretty certain that no one has ever used the phrase when describing me or my clothing because of that day at Bradlees. Thank you Mom, God bless you.

In my quest for acceptance, squeezing into anything that was close to popular in clothing became an obsession. (As long as ‘camel toe’ was not happening – it was a few years before I learned about ‘back fat’ though -bummer).  I scoured, not the magazines designed for teenagers, but Cosmo – because that is geared towards twenty something ‘misses’ sized women and I could fit in ‘misses’ clothes.  I rationalized that if it looked a bit like a style I saw in Cosmo I could make it work for me.  I decided I was being ahead of my time, that was my story and I was sticking with it.  If it was in the store I assumed it was cool therefore I attempted to fit in it.  No store would sell something that wasn’t cool right? (I didn't know that is what they want you to think!)  I had quite the collection of polyester blouses, which I paired with the jeans that I was able to fit into.   If it fit, I wore it all year long – season appropriate be damned.  God, I was always sweating with that polyester!  It’s like designers determined that cotton was only for the thin.  And every now and again I found something in the juniors department that would fit.  It was like I won the lottery if I fit into an XL in the teen department.   Skirt and top with piano keyboard motif?  It fit – I wore it – was from the Junior Department!  Yay me.  (Choking on the memory of the piano mini skirt /  dolman sleeve top ensemble now, even if it was the 80’s)

I did other things as well to ensure that I ‘fit in’ and to make sure I didn’t give anyone reason to make up new names or rumors for me.  I had to wash my hair every day because I noticed that one of the things that people ridiculed the unpopular kids about was dirty hair.   All the popular girls washed their hair every day so I did too.  I NEVER had dirty hair.  What I did have was some really dry, unhealthy hair.  One day on the bus – some girl out of the blue just stared me in the face and said ‘God. You. Are. So. UGLY!’  Yep, I remember exactly how she looked when she said it too – like she just ate a bug.  And so began my affair with make-up.  How to contour my eyes and my cheeks – how to cover up any imperfection on my face, like my freckles, to avoid being ‘ugly’.  Make-up became another obsession.  I’m not exactly over it now – maybe a little, but not really.  I showered multiple times a day for the same reason, no one ever said I smelled and they weren’t going to either, unless they wanted to lie about it.

 Another thing I did, or more to the point didn’t do, was to practice ‘avoidance’.  If I didn’t think I would be successful at something or look ‘OK’ doing something – no matter what it was - I did not do it, avoided it at all costs.  I affected an ‘I am too cool to do that’ attitude.  That is what I thought I was doing – likely I just looked silly or maybe even nasty and mean.  (Which is probably the real reason I never had any dates in high school - not my flubber.)   If I wasn’t sure I could do a cartwheel, I didn’t try.  I still can’t do one.  If I wasn’t sure that the moped would hold me, I didn’t get on it. To this day I have never taken a ride on a moped.   If I felt fat in a bathing suit, and I always felt fat in a bathing suit, I didn’t go to the beach.  If I went to the beach I always had a long t-shirt on over my bathing suit.  I lived ‘At the Shore’ and I was white as snow in the middle of the summer.   Once, someone actually thought I was seriously ill because I was so pale.  If I didn’t know how to play I didn’t try to play, any sport.  I only did anything resembling a sport in gym class so that I wouldn’t fail the class and I was predictably awful.  That was pretty counter intuitive to my goal of getting thin huh?   But logic wasn't at play here, and rarely is when someone starts doing these things to 'fit in'

I don’t know how to play any sport at all properly – not even kick ball.  The concept of ‘practice makes perfect’ was lost on me – to me that was just ‘practice provides more opportunity for someone to laugh at me’.  Do you know how much I missed out on?   I had one chance to go skiing – the senior trip – and I fell getting off the ski lift and needed the ski instructor to help me up, I was so mortified because, you know, I was the ONLY person that ever happened to right?   But I knew that the two main reasons I needed help were that my jeans were too tight and I had zero flexibility in my legs, not just that I had never skied before.  I made it down the bunny hill, once, but only because I had to in order to get down the hill.  I fell at the bottom of the hill and needed the same ski instructor to help me up again.  That was all I could take and I took off the skis and sat out the rest of the trip.  I was 17.  I am 48 and the shame I felt then, burns in me now as I type like it was yesterday.  I have never tried skiing again.  Which sucks because it really looks like so much fun.   What a waste and how foolish.  

Eventually, I combined modest weight loss with dressing old for my age via the ‘misses’ department and was able to eek out a style that was, if not embraced as cool, was at least ignored most days by the other kids by the time I was a sophomore.   And even after gaining some acceptance in a ‘crowd’ I continued to do a lot of stuff to ensure that I was NOT the butt of anyone’s joke and certainly not in need of any offensive nick names.  I was not always successful - but enough that I wasn't always miserable and in tears.  

I still fight those feelings today.  I am still afraid of being laughed at.  Not as much as when I was a kid – but enough to still hamper my life to some degree.   I am 5’ 8” and I weigh 217 pounds.  I could stand to be healthier – absolutely.  However, I will NEVER be petite.  I will always be a ‘big girl’ even if I were to win The Biggest Loser – because that is my body shape.  No matter how silly I KNOW it is, I still feel that if I lost weight that would fix everything.  The hot guy would pay attention to me for a change.    I would be lovable and sexy and pretty and all that awesome stuff that some days I don’t feel I am.  (Yeah, I'm married and he is hot but that is not the point - see comment about logic above.)  I do exercise now more than I ever did when I was younger.  And I do eat better, although nothing you would call healthy that is for certain!  And not enough of either to fully test my theory that if I were I size 12 I would feel like Miss Universe.  Because I would be SO thin at that size and thin equals beautiful and lovable, right?  And angry – I would be really angry because I would be very hungry.  And also tired from all the working out.  And oblivious to a lot of things in the world because of all the stuff I would miss because I had to work out so much to be thin.  Dilemmas everywhere.  But I would be a size 12, the new top end of normal and acceptable.  I would also weigh about 150 pounds if I were a size 12.  Technically I would still be ‘FAT’, according to society, at that weight.  Even on my 5’8” frame, 150 pounds is still fat.  And by ‘FAT’ I mean somehow not good enough to be one of the ‘beautiful’ people.  Not worthy of love or attention from a beautiful man.   Not sexy.  Not pretty. 

But I would be a size 12 and that is NOT ‘plus size’. 

I know I am not the only one who beats demons back each and every day – these are just some of mine and part of how they were born.  And a bit of how they continue to linger in my soul through perceptions created by people in boardrooms and by my own insidious brain.  What else will we allow ourselves to believe as we continue on in life?  What demons will be helped to thrive in us?   

And just an addendum to everything because I wrote all of the above awhile ago and something just happened recently that goes with this, because its about how our minds can be our worst enemy :
A super hot guy, not my husband, stopped what he was doing, held up a bunch of people, to check on ME, regardless of how FAT I am, my size was not his concern - my well being was.  Apparently I looked upset, like something was wrong. This guy was concerned and wanted to be sure I was OK.  He did this because he is a caring human being.  I was fine -it was just damn hot in the room and my pale face was quite flushed - I LOOKED like I was either about to cry or flip out or pass out, any one of those things would be an appropriate assumption if you saw me and didn't know me.  If you know me, you know that I get red in the face whenever I am warmer than I want to be or if I do even the slightest thing that might resemble exercise, which I had just done.  The curse of the pale Irish girl.  So I said "Oh, No, I'm fine - this is just because I am Irish" while gesturing at my face. He laughed and later did something incredibly kind as well.  I didn't get exactly how really kind what he had done was until later when I saw the photographic evidence.  And that is all I am saying because its so awesome that I feel like its private. : ) 

Forty - eight hours after this experience I was certain that in reality the nice, hot guy was really being sarcastic and not sincere.  My brain had decided that he had witnessed me doing something that made him think I was being mean to someone else.  My brain made me think he was actually trying to call me out on this perceived 'problem' I had with another person in the room by pretending to be concerned.  My brain twisted it into 'Shit he thinks I was really rude to that other girl when in reality it was a running joke thing between us, but if you didn't know that you'd think I'm a bitch'  And my brain did this 'crazy' dance, forgetting the sequence of events that day and just thinking that I did something that made someone think I was evil. And totally freaked me out because I really don't think I am mean and I don't like to be mean and I surely don't want people to think I am mean.  Because mean people suck.   And my brain also made me bother the shit out of two other people so that they could reassure me that my brain was being stupid.  And they were kind to me and talked me off the edge.  

Our brains are amazing - they can make us feel perfect and wonderful and joyous or they can make us feel like tiny, insignificant, horrible creatures.  No matter what age we are.  So always be on the lookout for what your brain is saying to you.  If its bad and you can turn it off by yourself get your support system to help you because feeling like I felt after my brain started its little crazy dance sucks.

Peace Out Beautiful People! <3 p="">