As a fat woman I fly the freak flag just stepping out of the house every day. As a fat woman who dresses well, that flag is simply flapping in the wind. It is unexpected to be fat and to dress well. In the Midwest where I live, quite honestly, it’s considered freakish to want to aspire to more and to dress to impress in any way.
In my current day job as a temp in a conservative financial services firm, I frankly feel like I’m the one surrounded by people waving an unaware freak flag. Let’s be honest, what’s more freakish than a holiday sweater? There is an unannounced uniform in my office. For example, we wear colors to match holidays – this past week there were two of them alone, St. Patrick’s Day green and St. Urho’s day and its corresponding purple. Put us all together last week and we looked like a big bruise. We wore all black when one of my co-workers turned 50; Valentine’s day is pink of course, and for administrative secretaries day, black armbands were all the rage. Power to the typists.
I am noticed for how I dress as I take great pride in what I wear but this is met with a suspicious sort of resentment. If I wear a dress for example, I usually get at least one comment of “ohhhhhhhh, you’re in a dress today” followed by an up and down look and the harrumphing walk-away. And perhaps it stands out because most days on my floor consist a lot of people in sports jerseys, which should be forbidden once we start wearing big boy and girl pants. These are often topped with the nylon sports jacket or bomber style coat, usually much too large for the wearer. The jerseys are usually paired mom jeans and footwear that can only be described as the love child of comfort and an unemployed baby daddy named ugly.
I ask you: when did it become fashionable to dress to match your coffee mug? My office is the place where style didn’t just come to die but where it’s been cremated and is sitting in a plain, forgotten about cardboard box in the closet like my uncle Bob did for years.
Doesn't anyone care anymore? The weird thing is there is a dress code at my office yet it’s always being relaxed so that people can wear jeans. Don’t get me wrong, I love jeans. A smart pair of jeans updates and looks great on just about everyone. But, the wearing of denim has taken on a mythical appeal at my office, the likes of which has not been seen since the corset was finally abolished. It’s like wearing something other than a pair of jeans is akin to torture; wearing a dress or pants not made of washed out denim, might make one break out in hives or have some sort of reaction. I’m calling in sick today because I have black trouser disease..it makes me nauseous and not want to take an hourly smoke break.
There is one woman on my floor who stands out for her absolute commitment to 80’s mall bangs and oversized sweaters paired with mom jeans and reeboks. The first time I saw her I wondered if perhaps there was a John Hughes movie casting nearby. There is also a small clique of what, in highschool, I would have called burnouts. Their look has not changed at all since my time in highschool, oh..25 years ago, and even now they come to work in acid washed jeans, strange turtleneck sweaters with necklaces that drape over the top of the neck, and a prominent camel toe. Many of them are in the infamous mock turtleneck which reeks of giving up. When did we get too lazy to simply turn over the top of a turtleneck? And don’t get me started on the purses many of them carry. In Minnesota, handbags often contain a cluster of buttons with photos of hockey playing children. I get it; they love their kids. If I ever start putting buttons on my handbags with photos of something I love, I’ll have a purse full of pictures of other purses. This is my youngest, Marc Jacobs..don’t think he doesn’t know how cute he is.
We all look at fashion and style so differently. My dad would totally not understand someone like Lady Gaga and would probably label her a “rum dum” for some of her “crazy get ups”. However, my dad has been know to actually cut out paint stains from the front of his shirt and continue wearing the shirt with the resulting hole so I don’t know if he’s very well-suited to judge. Really, are any of us? Style is individual and it does say something about who we are. Maybe working in a mind-numbing, boring capacity 40 hours a week results in a sort of giving up that says old jeans and sweatshirts are all I can manage today. In the Midwest, we so often have a mentality of not wanting to look like we are “above” anyone else and dressing well is one way of showing our station in life, or perhaps more importantly, the station we want. I’m fat and my freak flag is waving and that usually means taking the time to wear what I feel good in and what I know I look good in. In the words of Miss Gaga “I was born this way.”
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