I’m going to take the cheat’s way out and just link to something I liked:
This is a bit topical for me right now. Am going through a phase of struggling with my loss and my appearance getting me down a bit. It’s weird how one day to the next my view of myself in the mirror can so drastically change.
So I have totally slacked off on this blog, and was sat here pondering what to write about. Then it hit me – I can’t believe I haven’t told you the Princess story yet!
Have you ever heard of Slink magazine? Me neither, but apparently it’s the Holy Grail. It appears to be a fashion magazine which actually uses and styles for plus size women without it merely being some annual concession before going back to their regularly scheduled size zeros.
You can check out the magazine here at this link. I’ve not had a chance to read an issue myself yet, but came across it in an intriguing interview with its editor which you can read here. Both the interview and then the comments section touch on an issue I’ve already blogged about – the difficulty of language when describing body shapes and how some words immediately scream “euphemism for fat” – but what particularly struck me was her frustration in getting advertisers and brands on board. Given that the average UK dress size is a 16 and that there is a… God, why does every word I can think of for this sound like a bad size pun… let’s call it a significant market for plus sizes, it seems remarkable that retailers are so willing to ignore it. She notes that even cosmetics brands (which of course have no relation to size) or clothing brands which go well up into the plus sizes have been reluctant to work with the magazine.
Am I surprised? Sadly I’m not. I’ve talked enough about the poor perception of bigger sizes. It can’t be much of a shock that people who want to sell stuff are scared of the association, even when these women form part of their potential customer base. Still I consider the existence of a magazine like Slink a cause for celebration, though I’ll reserve judgment on its quality until I’ve actually read it! It’s very gratifying to see somebody representing us in the media and acknowledging that we plus sizes are interested in more than shapeless sacks and granny pants. It might take a little more thought but we can look good in clothes too!
Haven’t posted much in the last couple of weeks because I’ve been going through a very annoying on/off period in my motivation. Haven’t really felt like being insightful on the topic lol.
Was inspired today however by an article I read in the new issue of UK Glamour, which talks about where we get our body insecurities from. A lot of the dialogue around this topic is about the media and how celebrities etc affect our body image, but interestingly this article asked whether we actually get more of it from those close to us. Watching a family member struggle with a diet, being in school and taking all the banter (some jocular and some more malevolent) about each other’s features to heart. That kind of thing.
So where do those voices niggling at us and telling us our boobs aren’t perky enough or that we’ve got bingo wings really come from?
So today I read an interesting opinion piece in the Guardian.
I don’t agree with everything said or the way it’s expressed, but I do think it makes an important point – there are entire industries with a financial interest in our body woes.
We all hit stumbling blocks in life, both literally and figuratively. That said I think you have to ask – how often do you have to fall on your butt due to the same block before you’re just a numpty for not remembering to avoid it?
And that thought inspires today’s blog – dieting stumbling blocks. The same damn ones I fall for every time lol.
Guilty confession here – as much as I want to encourage everybody to be as healthy and happy in their skin as they can, sometimes I find it deeply irritating when somebody who’s barely been dieting for five minutes has lost a dress size/big chunk of weight already. I want to be happy for them, I do, it’s good work and they should keep it up. Problem is it just makes me glare at my own flab which takes forever to shift and has to be shifted in large amounts before I drop a size lol.
(It’s very odd – despite some reasonable large fluctuation in weight over the past few years, I’ve really only fluctuated one dress size. Guess my body just distributes it weirdly lol)
So today I’ve been wandering around feeling pretty good about the way I look and my outfit. That’s kind of funny to me. Not because it’s rare, but because yesterday I felt the exact opposite.
Isn’t it weird how your feelings about your appearance often seem to have so little relation to how you actually look?
I’m in an almost identical outfit to yesterday’s, although this one is block colour instead of a pattern. I did wear a minimal amount of make up today (just some BB cream, blusher and mascara) whereas yesterday I wore none. Those are the only differences between yesterday and today yet my feelings about how I look are polar opposite. I go make up free all the time without issue, so I doubt that’s what caused the big perception shift.
Don’t mind telling you that yesterday whenever I looked down at my stomach I got annoyed and the words “I look pregnant” flittered through my head lol. I think we all have days like that, days when for some reason we just don’t feel good about ourselves. What strikes me as so odd though is how little in common those days seem to have. I have had good body image days and bad body image days in the same outfit. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don’t see too many of my facial flaws but on others I think I look like a troll (not the internet kind, the sleeps under a bridge kind). I can’t see any common denominators like days when I’m depressed or anything like that. It’s kind of strange.
But as a break from bemoaning some of the nasty shit that gets said about weight gain (because it’s very depressing to talk about nothing but the negative lol) I thought I’d just do a post of some things that give me a little lift and make me feel ready to face the world.
Disclaimer: nobody is sponsoring or paying me for any advertising etc. The products I mention are just my personal faves and things I actually use. I bloody well wish they were paying me but sadly not!
Am I the only who’s noticed how utterly incensed people get if there is so much as a hint of a suggestion that weight gain is/was/can be caused by something other than overeating? I’ve seen it in many places – forums, comment sections of many different sites including some newspapers whose readers I would assume were fairly intelligent – and it does amuse and bemuse me.
Are people really so attached to the idea that being overweight is a failing that they cannot accept that it may have more than one cause? Gluttony is the only acceptable explanation?
Having made my aversion to the F word clear, it kind of begs the question – if not “fat” then what?
A lot of the adjectives people tend to use in place of “fat” get mocked. It’s said that they’re a form of denial and of avoiding the issue. However, when as previously discussed the word “fat” is so heavily loaded is it really any wonder that people look for alternatives? There are plenty of derogatory synonyms like chunky, blubbery, chubby and so on which are far too socially acceptable to use, yet sometimes it can be a struggle to find terms with more positive or even simply neutral connotations.
So what can we call ourselves if we don’t feel like accepting all that negativity? How does language play into things?
Fat is the Real F Word 