Free Designated Fat Girl by Jennifer Joyner Page B

pride in what I wore. I may have been chubby, but I was neat and stylish!
    When the added weight gain started, I was barely in my twenties. At first I just bought bigger sizes. It hurt to have to do so, but remember: I always had a plan, always had a strategy as to how I was going to fix it. When I had to start buying clothes in sizes 14 and 16, I figured it was only temporary. But of course it didn’t get better, and soon size 16 didn’t fit. And then size 18 didn’t fit. And I was completely lost and devastated. When this happened to me, in the early 1990s, there wasn’t the proliferation of plus-size clothing there is now. Obese women had to shop at stores like Catherine’s, a place I remember going to with my grandmother when I was a little girl—a place that, back then, definitely catered to the over-sixty crowd. There was no Lane Bryant. No Ashley Stewart. I was relegated to the misses section at department stores like Ivey’s and Belk, where I had limited choices. I may have dressed older than my age, but the clothing options left to me were for the geriatric set. So not only was I gaining weight and feeling terrible about my inability todo anything about it, I was also unable to make myself feel better with stylish clothes, something that had always helped me when I struggled with weight issues growing up.
    Shopping for a special occasion was a nightmare, and I avoided it as much as possible by simply not attending special occasions. I made excuses when it came to company holiday parties or special birthday events. But sometimes I just couldn’t avoid it. My brother-in-law’s mother died after a long battle with cancer, and it was important to me to be there for the funeral. The problem: I had nothing to wear. You would think a black outfit would have been easy to come up with, but everywhere I looked, the clothes were fitted jackets and skirts for size-4 women. Finally, after a long day of store hopping, I found what can only be described as a big black tent that masqueraded as a dress. Sure it had little fancy gold buttons and a collar, but it was a size-24 black bedsheet as far as I was concerned. Still, I had to have something, and it fit, so I bought it. I wore it to work the next day before the funeral, and one of my coworkers walked in and said, “Hey! It’s Mama Cass!” You know, from the Mamas and the Papas? Yeah, not very complimentary, unless you have a great singing voice. I don’t. I choked back tears and thought about how that’s what I got when I tried to make an effort.
    So, I just gave up.
    I was tired from looking, and I wanted to do anything to avoid the pain I felt when I shopped, so I didn’t shop. I bought three to four outfits that I could fit into, and that was all I wore. No, I didn’t think that was okay, but again, the push-pull was always at play. I would convince myself that my state was temporary and I would soon be in more normal clothes sizes.
    Over the years, as obesity numbers in this country skyrocketed, the clothing choices got better. You had labels that catered to plus-size women without giving up (too much) fashion. Even well-known brands like Liz Claiborne and Tommy Hilfiger designed clothing for larger ladies. But I, sadly, never caught on. I should have, no matter my size, taken more pride in my appearance. But honestly I couldn’t stand to look in the mirror. I absolutely detested shopping for clothes because it made me confront, head-on, how much weight I had gained and how much I had lost because of my weight. Clothes used to be such a source of pleasure for me, and now the weight and my inability to control it had robbed me of that enjoyment.
    Now that’s not to say I never bought anything. I was a professional career woman, and I had to have clothes for work. But I kept it as safe and as bland as possible. First of all, I had every variation of the black top available. Black sweater. Black blouse. Black button-down shirt with long sleeves. Black