The first really nice, high end fashion item of clothing I purchased, ever I think, was a black silk jumpsuit from Beth Ditto’s eponymous plus-sized clothing line. The first release was in 2016, the clothing made in New York City, the fabric ethically sourced, so the prices reflected these choices. A lot of fat people’s feelings were hurt by the cost, like Ditto owed us the coolest, cheapest, fast fashion to cover our bodies. Can you imagine? There’s a difference between betrayal and disappointment.

Her shit was cool. Full stop. Most of it wasn’t my style, too girly, too colorful, too exuberant, too not-me. I suffer from arrested development when it comes to clothing, my sense of style perpetually informed by what fit me, rather than what I was drawn to. I finally learned in my 40s that I don’t need to buy something to appreciate it, I can like an article of clothing but I don’t need to own it if I’m not ever going to wear it. For bodies like mine, the idea of flattering is usually what makes it disappear and be inoffensive. How to be a walking apology. When I was younger I found myself in clothing for special occasions that made me a tiny old person. My mom bought me a conservative navy suit, which I wore with tan pantyhose, for some family event. Between the navy and the perm my Aunt Dar gave me, I looked like a teller at Sparks State Bank. I was around ten years old. I have the physical evidence in my desk.

There were never enough black clothes in my size to satisfy me, as a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s. I hung out with the art kids, skaters, punks and writers. If you aligned yourself with an extreme identity, like goth, your commitment had to be airtight. My friend Alice looked like Siouxsie Sioux for most of her life, starting at the age of 13 when she went to shows in the city. You couldn’t just like something and wear it, you had to live it and breathe it.

Meaning if you wore a band shirt you knew who the names of the members and the albums, in chronological order. Otherwise, you faced shunning. A girl transferred to my high school, she told kids she saw the Misfits live the summer before. In her attempt to reinvent herself at a new school, she made an egregious error. The Misfits broke up in 1983, there was no way she saw them in 1988. She became an outcast to the outcasts, the butt of jokes and gossip and the recipient of a cruel nickname…”can you believe her? There’s no way she saw the Misfits!”

I wasn’t goth, or punk rock, or a SHARP skin (Skinheads Against Racist Prejudice). I wasn’t a hippie or a nerd or a renaissance fair romantic, I was sort of what was called ‘progressive’ in Baltimore, an affinity for black eyeliner and crimped hair, fuzzy feedback bands and all the ones that also wore eyeliner and red lipstick. My cousin was a Deadhead, I dabbled because the head shops offered more forgiving clothes than the ones with Doc Martens and Manic Panic. Punk was thin and gaunt, cheekbones, hipbones, tight leather…the other side was flowing fabrics and stretchy waistbands.

I never went to the fat lady stores—Dress Barn, Lane Bryant. Could you imagine? What if someone I knew saw me walk into a Fashion Bug—PLUS? I worked at the mall, at the crystal/pewter figurine stand making earrings and the Opinion Center conducting market research surveys for companies. I couldn’t be seen in any of those places. It never crossed my mind to go into one of those stores, and who can blame teenage me. Dress Barn? Is that a place anyone wants to go to, or a coffin to enter and declare your life passed on and gone.

I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because it was my problem to solve. My body, my fault. My shame was this body bigger than everyone else’s, visible to all. People feel completely entitled to comment on any female body, everyone know this, but the larger the body, the bigger the entitlement, the more cruelty dealt, from family, strangers, even so-called friends.

I figured it out. Baltimore City was a magical place of a lot of weird stores. My favorite was Karmic Connection in Fells Point, it reeked of incense and sold vintage and every square inch was covered in tapestries and jewelry that jingled. In college, I followed suit, luckily there were a lot of thrift stores in this weird college town with a lot of old folks homes. I even worked at one, Senior Thrift, run by senior citizens, in the basement of the bank building, you could get a brown paper bag filled with clothes for three bucks on Tuesdays. Whatever I could find that fit me that I could stand, I would wear. Extra credit for being black.

When I moved to Chicago, that beautiful utilitarian city, most of my clothes came from the men’s section in thrift stores, work shirts, ironic t-shirts, slogans! And work pants. Nothing better than a broken-in pair of Dickies. Going directly to the men’s section was just easier than looking through all of the women’s clothes, hoping and praying for something cool that rarely manifested. My uniform was mostly black and blues, Rust Belt Chic. It harmonized with the grey skies and general seriousness of the music scene.

How do I tell you about me, other than my body is bigger than others? How do I express myself, align myself with what I care about, visually, if I can’t find the clothes I want to wear? How do you know how much angst I experience if I can only find a shirt with cut-out shoulders and rhinestones? If you can always walk into a store that carries clothing that fits you, clothing you like, I don’t think you understand what it’s like to not have that possibility. You don’t understand the lack.

The height of fast fashion, or my experience of it, was a frenzy of clothes that fit me, things that couldn’t go in the dryer because the shoulders would shrink and the neck or waist or both would become a new shape. Cheap sleeves loathe a dryer. I have cared more for fast fashion clothes than most do, both for financial reasons and issues of availability. The means of production and crimes against labor are still egregious, but I’ve made the just right shirt or jeans last for years, knowing they may not come around again. I was high on just being able to buy clothes I liked that fit me. I can’t begrudge myself that too much, but luckily I burned through that self-pity and sensation and made it to the other side.

When I bought the Beth Ditto jumpsuit, I took a leap of faith, a leap of measurements. It was $200 or $250, this chic, high fashion jumpsuit, it was on final sale. I couldn’t try it on anywhere, her clothes, like most plus size clothing, was only sold online. So if it didn’t work, I was out a lot of money since I couldn’t return it. I knew that if it worked out, it was a once in a lifetime chance. Perhaps that sounds dramatic, but it’s also factual. When would I ever see such a great piece like that again, ethically made, reminiscent of something someone might have worn to Studio 54, made by someone who understands bodies like mine?

Never. The answer is never. I bought it and I love it and I still love it. My risk paid off, and I learned that really nice, thoughtful, intentional clothing costs money and is worth it.

Fashion is fleeting and trend-oriented, but style is personal, a statement of self. Even if that statement of self is an utter disinterest in clothing, that is quite intentional. For so long I have denied myself a certain amount of expression because it wasn’t offered to me, I couldn’t find it, and sadly, I do not sew. So I bought things because they were in my size, and learned. Do I like bright prints (no but also depends on the print) or something really feminine (not really) or am I a ‘come hither’ sort of dresser (hard pass). What about ruffles? Not. At. All.

I spend a lot of time in uniforms, mostly for work—for the past few years I’ve landed on deli shirts and overalls. I like how it simplifies getting dressed in the morning, a uniform also organizes my body and quiets my mind. Before shutdown, I felt myself veering down an almost too adult, too mature clothing path, maybe a little muted and Nordic, like next I’d have clogs with wooden soles. It just didn’t suit me. The COVID years, essentially working in a warehouse, moving pallets of food, brought me back to carhartts, band shirts and hoodies. I didn’t have to perform for anyone, so I found myself again, this body made for work with a style I’ve worn since days on the farm layering sweatshirts under barn jackets from Southern States for chores.

I was always a little influenced by my Uncle Kenny, the dairy farmer who worked for the gas company. He was so smart, and truly loved his animals. Uncle Kenny always looked put together and tidy, regardless of how threadbare the clothing or how many hours he worked. His was a uniform of a button-down shirt tucked into work pants, with a pipe and tobacco in his shirt pocket. He looked a little bit like Elvis Presley, especially through the cheekbones.

I can’t attest to always looking tidy, but I’ve learned what a certain tailored form, no matter if it’s from the grain and tractor equipment store, offers, and the power of a shirt with a collar, along with the emotional support a favorite t-shirt bestows. I can make a beloved flannel, leather jacket and canvas pants look like a goddamn tuxedo some days.

I’ve learned the lesson that style ends up being an aggregate of our years, of the places we’ve been, the people we’ve wanted to be and tried hard not to, the jobs we’ve had, the clothes we wore for them and the time in-between clocking out then in again. Sure, some people leaf through pages and pick and choose who they feel like being, at any given moment. The rest of us receive our armor through necessity, the mother of invention.

Both this year and last, I considered doing no-buy years. I thought about how much no-buying I’ve done over time, just because there was nothing for me. This mentality doesn’t capture the true essence and spirit of a no-buy challenge, but I’m not interested in making my life with clothing more challenging than it already is. Sure, I’ve painted a wonderful picture of how I’ve scrapped it together, how style is something made, constructed over time through place, but I’m leaving out some dire years of clothing myself in petroleum products from the Rainbow and Big D Lots on Manhattan Avenue, along with the sad offerings from TJ Maxx, where no clothing shall go un-bedazzled. I’m probably leaving out another terrible suit from childhood, wiped from my memory for mental health reasons.

A lot of sustainable clothing brands that are size-inclusive are going out of business. Several of the bigger companies no longer offer clothes in extended sizes, or they think XXL is inclusive, even though the majority of the population in the US is larger than a size 16. We hate fat people more than we love money. That’s how much we hate fat people. There’s so much clothing I’ve never been able to buy because it just doesn’t exist for me.

What I am doing is trying to buy clothes that will last a long time, to be more intentional. I imagine a lot of these pieces lasting for the rest of my life. I try to buy high quality clothing, either new or secondhand. It’s a worthwhile investment. The clothes look better, the clothes feel better. I look better, I feel better. I’m not perfect, sometimes I buy fast fashion, sometimes I just need some breezy black shirt, that yes, I will keep for years.

My goal, upon my death, is to have the best estate sale this side of the Mississippi—vintage caftans, jackets, jumpsuits, lots of t-shirts, silk shirts that make me feel like I’m Faye Dunaway in Network, big ass rings for big ass fingers. I want to give people what I always hope to happen upon—an eccentric fat person’s closet, to be shopped in person, ideally.

I’ve shaken the notion that clothing has to be as small a size I can wear and as fitted as possible to make my body palatable. No one will mistake this body for something small, there’s no visual illusion up to such a task, so fuck it. It’s been great to play with scale and volume in clothing, to experiment and discover the thing my body can do quite well—take up a lot of space.