BAGGY CLOTHES

I have always loved clothes and fashion. One of the most frustrating things about being overweight is the shopping. the clothes are so limited and ugly and poorly made. I have long felt that the dregs of the fabric industry are saved for the plus size manufacturers because it is so rare to find an attractive print.

Anyhow, I look forward to the day when I can shop the whole store and not one tiny "department." I really look forward to the day when shopping online for clothes is something I choose to do instead of the only option. Right now I am in a strange clothes phase. I have posted before about taking in my pants. I have done it a lot...the front pockets are starting to migrate toward the back! But that's OK.

It's the tops I am troubled with. I have a lot of polo shirts and short sleeved cotton blouses which are not suited to being taken in. But when I shop for new ones, they feel skimpy. I know the shirts I am wearing are really baggy and unattractive, but I can't seem to find anything that fits right. I must be between sizes, or the shirts are just not cut with the right proportions for me. I agree with Stacy and Clinton of What Not to Wear that oversize clothes make you look bigger, but I also don't want my clothes to be tight. Skimming the body, maybe. Some space between me and the fabric, definitely!

I have a few tops that I save for going out because they still fit pretty well. Not quite so baggy, yet. And I have some old ones boxed away that I still don't quite fit back into - I tried some on this morning just to see.

Maybe by fall my weight loss and the clothes in the stores will make for a better fit!

SLIM MODELS AND PLUS SIZE CLOTHES

As I mentioned in my previous post, I shop for my clothes by catalog and online a lot. I have noticed that very few companies actually use large models for their clothes. Mostly I see them in the smaller, boutique companies. Lane Bryant may use an extra curvy woman or two for their ads, but in their catalog, the clothes are on skinny women.

While there is big applause for the use of "real women" in some magazine lay outs and ad campaigns, in reality:

“We found that overweight consumers demonstrated lower self-esteem – and therefore probably less enthusiasm about buying products – after exposure to any size models in ads (versus ads with no models). Also, normal-weight consumers experienced lower self-esteem after exposure to moderately heavy models, such as those in Dove soap’s ‘Real Women’ campaign, than after exposure to moderately thin models.” According to a new study by researchers at ASU, the University of Cologne in Germany and Erasmus University in the Netherlands, which demonstrates a link between model sizes in advertisements and the self-esteem of consumers looking at the ads.

Apparently, seeing what we would really look like in the clothes makes us feel bad, so we would not buy them, we would rather have the fantasy that we look like the thinner models in the clothes. (Rather than actually getting fit and wearing the smaller size.)

The area where we don't mid seeing the large models? When we are viewing ads for weight loos programs and gyms - in other words, when they are the "Before" version.

It appears we need to work on more than our love for fast food in this country! Living in denial is a big problem - or is it living in a fantasy world?

MY THIN(NER) CLOTHES

Many years ago I gave up on saving my clothes from my much smaller days. They were hopelessly out of date and the likelihood that I would need silk blouses and little suits ever again was slim. So the clothes I have held onto are much more recent and larger - hardly "skinny" clothes.

However, being back in a blouse I wore 4 years ago is quite cheering! Plus, I can almost button myself into a blouse I wore 7 or 8 years ago - so that is very exciting.

I don't really have a goal in terms of weight or dress size. I don't even know with the "new" sizing what size I would be anymore. I do know that I want to be able to shop in the regular departments of the stores. That is my goal.

I have long had a belief that whatever weird, ugly fabric is leftover after all the other clothes are made is what they make the plus size clothes from. Really. Walk through the store and see all the pretty clothes and then walk into the plus size department and see what I mean....I want out of that department!