It is sometimes my greatest wish, Gentle Reader–truly, as I believe fashion empowers women–that my fellow Sister Suffragettes would embrace clothing that made them happy.
I think this is a problem especially for my Sisters of Size (of which Your Humble Narrator is most certainly one), as clothing marketed to them is often not clothing that is tailored for them.
What can be said about a well-made dress? “Cute butt” jeans? (Sisters, we all know we have or long for such a thing). Or perhaps a well-fitting suit, one that hugs the curves, enhances the enhance-able and flatters the seemingly heretofore unflatterable?
But instead, so many shops marketed specifically to Sisters of Size are instead petite clothing cut larger.
I am not a petite woman. I am not a disgusting fattie, or however else media would care to portray me. Fat shaming is one of the few acceptable avenues left for humor in polite society, and it does nothing but teach society that Persons of Size are to be mocked, pitied, ridiculed, or, at the worst, infantalized.
I am not, of course, advocating unhealthiness. I am advocating healthy living with our sizes, whatever they might be. But I am also longing for a Fashionable Education for the makers of fashion as well as the wearers of fashion.
Season 10 of Project Runway, more than anything, demonstrated how some people in the Fashionable System consider the quote unquote real woman. Ven Budhu’s attitude toward his client, his fat shaming of her, left her in tears, so much so that other designers were angry on her behalf. He made her an unflattering dress that caused his real-world client to be sad and unhappy.
Good fashion looks great, regardless of a woman’s size. It should flatter and hug and drape and sashay. It should empower women.
I humbly request that the Fashion Industry start recognizing its Clients of Size. Make clothes tailored for us, not larger versions of clothes tailored for thinner women. Give us sexy, flattering clothes, and we will buy them.
Betsey Johnson, Pankhursts Bless Her, is such a designer who has offered Women of Size some beautiful garments. Case in point, this stunning coat that This Humble Author wears every day in the frigid Midwest Winter:
That, Sister Suffragettes, is how you tailor for Sisters of Size. That, my friends, is how I flatter my particular body shape. Not by hiding it, but by celebrating it.
It is not less than what we all deserve.
Like what you’ve read? Visit my website: The Life and Times of the Postmodern Bluestocking.
The Postmodern Bluestocking 
My technical communications students are surprised to learn that one of the characteristics most discriminated against in the workplace is weight. Smoking is also, although neither of those groups is a protected class like race, gender, age, etc. are.