I want to post a link to Joy Nash's You Tube video "A Fat Rant", since I can't post the actual vid here.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yUTJQIBI1oA
Joy has a really good point to make about the way overweight people are regarded.
I saw it on Sister Decadence's MySpace blog and had to add a comment
This is an amended and expanded version of what I said there:
Joy is SO right. She might be technically overweight. but she's bloody gorgeous.
My doctor keeps telling me I need to lose weight. I think he's daft. I weigh between 158 and 162lb depending on the time of the month. I eat well, I exercise regularly (bellydancing is extremely good exercise for women and I walk a lot as well) and I look and feel fine if not fantastic.
I do find it depressing though that I (not a hugely overweight woman) find it hard to find clothes that fit and look good. I wear a size 14-16 (that's UK sizes. I think that's 10-12 in US sizes - correct me if I'm wrong, please!), sometimes an 18 depending on fit and style, but I'm finding that the young-and-trendy shops are increasingly not stocking above a size 14, and their size 14 is too tight on me. Conversely, I'm also finding that the shops catering for curvy (normal sized) women start at 16-18, but their sizes are too generous on me, especially in the bust.
One of Joy's YouTube commenters, seanpuckett said that normal curvy women weren't enough of a market to make it worthwhile for manufacturers to make clothes in bigger sizes - "the profit ratio for such large sizes is small. the amount of manufacturing it would take, the additional shipments, the extra assembly line workers would drive prices up,now poor people cant afford it..unfair?" I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. The amount of manufacturing, extra assembly line workers? Bullshit!
A lot of manufacturers seem to be gravitating towards the superskinny hollywood starlet size end of the market. Admittedly, the starlets have thousands of pounds to blow on one frock, but they're a tiny tiny market for exclusive designers. For normal manufacturers, the people who fall into the superskinny category - the size zeros - are very much in the minority among the population in general. The majority of us are not superskinny - that's why we're called "average sized" - for those having trouble with the concept, "average" is a mathematical term which indicates the group "most" people fit into. To spell it out - the majority of the population are I believe (in the UK) in the size 14-18 range - that's a lot of people who don't have thousands at our disposal for a one off party frock, but we do have our regular paychecks - which might enable us to spend a hundred a month on clothes at most. Question is, why are we being fobbed off with stuff that doesn't fit well and doesn't look good just because we're not skinny and can't or won't spend money on designer gear? This is potentially a real moneyspinner for the store that cracks the size issue and yet we're being ignored.
Size zero is not healthy, not attractive and not the way most women are meant to be.
As an aside - my beloved reading over my shoulder passed comment on the amount "regular" women spend on clothes in a month. He thought a hundred to a couple of hundred a month excessive so I rephrased it to a hundred a month tops, which is pretty much the most I would spend on clothes for myself in any one month - not every month, because I can't afford to spend any more than that, I certainly couldn't afford to spend a hundred every month on clothes - not even half that. I pointed out that if I had a full-time well paying job, I'd probably spend more. He told me that'd really piss him off if I wasted money on clothes for myself when there were more important things. Fair enough, but if I had a full-time well-paying job, I'd consider that those more important things would be already taken care of.
I wondered if is this a bloke thing? Is it a lack of understanding of what clothes actually cost? That a hundred quid in one month isn't actually going to buy very much - when you consider that one item eg a skirt or a pair of pants would cost £30 possibly more depending on where you shop. You could spend less, but you'd know it'd be poorly made by some underpaid overworked sweatshop labourer and would
a) not fit properly
b) not look all that good
c) fall apart/shrink/fade/all of the above after not very long at all.
Is it a lack of appreciation of the need for variety in a woman's wardrobe. Most blokes seem to think (mine certainly does) that more than one coat is an unnecessary indulgence without realising that for a bloke, you're wearing pants all the time - you have a coat and it looks good with pants. Women wear a range of different outfits, skirts and dresses of varying lengths, pants, casual, formal clothes, clothes for particular seasons and climates - and one single style of coat is not suitable for every type of outfit.
I wondered if it was the effect of having worn a uniform for work every day for the last few years? Maybe you forget that when you have to wear your own clothes for work and you work in a job where things get damaged, stained, splashed etc you wear things out more quickly than if you had a uniform provided - and these things have to be replaced out of your own pocket. And maybe it's a lack of appreciation of the snidiness of other women, our colleagues who mutter "has she only got one skirt - she wore that last week". It's the spending model we grew up with too - we learn a lot from our mum's spending habits and I've not been set the best example. I feel down quite often for no reason than envy - I envy my friends who earn more than me and can spend money on new stuff just because they saw it and wanted it and bought it without having to worry about the bills. I wish I could do that too.
There are advantages and disadvantages to everything and although I don't have money I have time. Maybe one day I'll have both. I'll drink to that! Cheers!
About Me
- Lily the Pink
- Human, Pagan, Proud Parent, Nearly-Middle-Aged Rebel, Artist, Dancer, Teaching Assistant, Photographer, Artists' Model, Ex-Librarian, Sometime Target for Faraway Laughter
Blue Thread
Original art for Losing the Thread blog header by Sara Smith (January 2008)
Maenad
attributed to Kleophrades (500-490 BCE)
I'm a brainiac - officially.
Probably a con, but it makes me feel like a proper intellectual.
4 comments:
My problem in the amount that anyone (not just women) spends on clothes is more related to the social conditioning of acquisitiveness than the actual need for those clothes.
There is a woman I know who has a psychological need to buy a top she likes in every colour. Obviously she has a problem, but it's not considered by most people to be all that serious. There are adverts on radio and TV encouraging such behaviour.
Who is at an advantage in this situation? Not the people who make the clothes - they just earn a living. Nor the person who buys those clothes - they end up with something that they often didn't need, are likely (especially in the case of posh, expensive clothes) to have very little use of, and are financially worse off.
The people who are at an advantage here are the evil, brainwashing marketers and advertisers who have been using subtle and powerful persuasion techniques to convince generations of people (aiming mostly at women) that to have 20-30 pairs of uncomfortable and impractical shoes is good and normal while to have only 3 pairs of high quality ones is somehow bad.
The cause of all this is the constant bombardment of image and conformity that's been aimed at women for the past sixty years in order for advertisers to make a huge profit out of them. It's amazing that anybody (especially a woman) is even capable of deciding whether a particular item really suits them or not.
The hard-wired personal insecurity such bombardment causes tends to lead people into buying for the sake of buying, which is exactly what the advertisers want. Fashion makes that insecurity an ongoing experience.
The really difficult thing is to say to oneself: yes, I do need five pairs of trousers for work, but do I really need 18 skirts for going out in?
Love,
Seán
Oddly enough, it's the "what to wear for a night out?" question that causes the most stress.
I have not fallen into the trap of feeling it absolutely necessary to buy a complete new outfit each time I "go out" anywhere (and it's clubs, pubs, parties etc that I mean). I know I'm unusual, but I still have this enormous residual guilt and insecurity simply because I'm wearing something old and familiar.
To concentrate on the bonuses, the old and familiar should mean that you already know it's comfy and won't itch or ride up. You already know, theoretically, that it's something you look damn good in.
However, there's this snidiness thing that creeps in. We're our own worst enemies. I overhear remarks all the time along the lines of
"Isn't that what she wore at the Christmas Do last year?" and "Is that the only smart thing she owns?". Fortunately, my closest friends - the people who really matter to me - don't do this kind of thing. I like to think we're above that kind of thing - but we still do it. Maybe we just don't vocalise those critical thoughts.
Another problem I have is with what Seán says "It's amazing that anybody (especially a woman) is even capable of deciding whether a particular item really suits them or not."
We don't know if something really suits us or not. We haven't a clue. We're told by one fashion magazine that if you've got x figure type you should never ever wear y. Another magazine or fashion show presenter will tell you that actually, "y" is really flattering to that body shape.
My favourite example - a couple of years ago, when hipster pants first made their big comeback, Trinny & Susannah were telling everyone to wear them - especially if you had big hips or a wobbly tum, because you didn't have this big bulge across the waistline, as the pants started below that big bulge.
They didn't actually help at all, all you saw for the next couple of years were wobbly tums hanging over the wasitband of pants, often uncovered because the tops that were in fashion only half-covered the tum area.
Now, high-waisted pants are back in, and people with wobbly tums are being told that these are fab, because they help to hold all that in.
We're constantly being told contradictory things - because that, as Seán says, it what sells clothes. How else do you get people to buy the new things that designers and manufacturers have ocme up with if not to tell people that actually, what you thought was brilliant actually makes you look hideous, so you should try these instead , this is the magic garment that will make you look and feel fabulous - The Emperor's New Clothes.
I am never really sure if something really suits me or not. The best clue is whether I feel good in something, but that doesn't always work. I've seen photos of myself looking bloody horrendous while I thought I looked okay. It would help if I had some positive feedback - but while my beloved is very very positive about how I look without clothes, he's not usually forthcoming about how good I look in clothes. I imagine I'm quite rare in having a very positive self-image of my naked body - I'm very comfortable in my own skin, I just have these dreadful insecurities about clothes.
This is almost identical in content to the post I deleted. I noticed typos and I just couldn't live with them! (Typos make you look stoopid!) Note to Blogger - allow users who post comments to edit their posts!
Damn, still got typos. Feckit!
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