Fat Girl, Dress Pretty

I first heard about Pinterest 4 or 5 years ago. A tutoring client of mine was a crafter and she was hooked. She showed me the site, raving, one day after a tutoring session.

Shoot, I’m crafy, I thought. So I gave it a try and started an account. After thirty minutes or so of scrolling through a mish-mosh of random pictures, I was over it. I just didn’t get the point.

I didn’t even give a thought to Pinterest again for a couple of years. It was around the same time I originally wrote “Don’t Wait Until You’re Thin.” My quest to start living in the now instead of some distant skinny future brought the virtual cork board back to mind. I had made up my mind to be beautiful, all 270 pounds of me. I wasn’t going to wait any longer.

But how was a fat girl supposed to accomplish such a monumental task? As a general rule, we are told to dress to downplay, cover-up, minimize, and disguise. Good chubby girls  use their clothing to shield the world from their hefty bodies so no one has to be uncomfortable at the sight of all that flesh.

It was straight rebellious of me, but I didn’t care anymore. I wanted my wardrobe to be fashionable.

Have you ever heard the old adage, “Dress for the job you want?” Well, I wanted to be the gorgeous, polished, put together diva. I needed my wardrobe to align with my life goals.

What I needed was a little bit of inspiration.

So I made my way back to Pinterest, typed plus size fashion in the search bar and started scrolling.

Mind blown.

There were all these women breaking all these rules and slaying it.

They were wearing horizontal stripes. Bikinis. Daring crop tops. Bathing suits without skirts. Sheer little skirts. The dreaded white pants. Color, color, and more color. Layers. Frilly Tutus. Jumpsuits. Short Shorts. All kinds of form–fitting. Mixing prints. There was Elly even rockin’ her bald head.

And they didn’t seem ashamed about it at all!

I made a board. I started pinning. I pinned and I pinned and I pinned.

Clothing lines like Igigi, Anna Scholz, SWAK, Domino Dollhouse, and Jibri were putting our clothes a far cry from the frumpy plus-size styles featured in most women’s departments.

Models like Mia, Tess, Candice, Ashley, Tara, Fluvia, Denise, Rosie reshaped my definition of what an “ideal” woman was.

Fattie bloggers rocking it- Nadia, Tanesha, Gabi, Kaelah, Stephanie– lent me strength to get more and more daring with my own style.

Summer in Phoenix came and I drew from Pinterest the courage to leave my apartment wearing less than the standard blue jeans and a cardigan. Arms out, legs out, even bellies out!

All this new lingo got added to my vocabulary: fatshion, OOTD, VBO, Psychobilly…

Day after day, I found no end to the eye candy on Pinterest. There were fat mermaids. Fat art. Fat activists like the Militant Baker. Even a fat cartoon icon Hilda (move over Betty Boop!)

My fashion board has since filled up with thousands of pins. Hundreds of other women have even started following it. To all of them and to all of you, I have one thing to say….

Don’t wait. Start today. Fat girl, dress pretty.

Photo Credit: Pinboard by midiman on Flickr; used under Creative Commons License.