Hi! This blog kind of petered away over the years and I never
really posted to say goodbye. I’m not blogging anymore, partly because I have a
busy life and partly because I feel really uncomfortable with what happened to
fatshion in the last 4-5 years. I wanted to leave a final post to say goodbye
(and thank you), and also process these thoughts.
I liked this blog a lot when I posted here, I met friends
that I still care deeply for and it was probably the first place that anyone
told me that what I had to say was important and valuable. The support I got
here helped me to feel confident enough to start writing zines, making music
and producing countercultural *stuff* that makes me feel alive and full of
energy and excitement. The words and pictures I put here were the first I’d
expressed publicly in a long time, and that was a significant thing for me
given where I come from and particularly how hard it is to write as a working
class woman.
I started this blog because I read other blogs and I was
annoyed at how much fatshion was centred around purchasing capacity and buy-in
culture. I was on the dole and I had *nothing*, and I came from a working class
background. I still liked clothes and I thought other people like me existed,
so I started a blog. I still like clothes but I’m not as poor most of the time
now.
I participated in fatshion communities for years before I
started posting here. The livejournal Fatshionista community was the first fat
positive culture I found. One of the things I liked about that space was the
visibility of queer femmes, working class women and women of colour, which
(with a few notable exceptions, you know who you are) are not the bloggers that
have been picked up out of these spaces (I wonder why). I liked the bad outfits
too, the rainbow socks and tutus and the age inappropriate clothing that got
chewed out on Unfatshionista (the secret snark community). I liked seeing
everyone, shoddy mirror pics and all, gleefully existing, wearing stuff and not
giving a shit.
Signatures of success for bloggers have become the ability
to assimilate within brand culture - having clothing lines, working for them, being
sponsored by them, and acting as ambassadors for them. I can count on one hand
the amount of bloggers I’ve seen show signs of having any sense of radical
politics now. Brands adopt “body positivity” to sell stuff (sometimes even
stuff to change your body). People have stopped reading blogs because they’re
full of the same rhetoric as the brands we sat criticising on livejournal all
those years ago.
Fatshion culture now still exists around a dichotomy of good
vs bad fashion that makes me feel uncomfortable. There’s a lot of talking about
breaking fashion rules, and maybe people are breaking the most obvious rules,
but you’re still posting with your hands on your hips and your legs pressed
together and in poses that hide your fattest parts. When I followed bloggers on
twitter I regularly saw bitching about outfits that weren’t “good enough” – as if
people who weren’t professionally photographed in flawless make up and on trend
everything didn’t have the right to claim access to this space. Other people are regularly accused of being "too radical" or too hard on brands. This good/bad
dichotomy and apolitical attitude about clothes is exactly why I needed to access fatshion spaces in the *first
place*, and I resent it existing in them now.
When I posted here, people bitched about me on forums
because I’m not pretty or conventionally attractive for a fat woman. Sometimes
people zoomed in on my face and commented on the fact that I didn’t have
perfect make up, or that I showed signs of sweating (oh my god). I was expected
to be pristine in a way that I’m not, most days, and that’s okay. It’s okay to
post pictures of yourself on a public platform without being “perfect”. It’s
okay to celebrate your fashion choices when people call you ugly constantly. It’s
okay to wear a bad outfit.
So basically hi, I’m still here, existing, wearing ridiculous
stuff that I shouldn’t. Thank you for being here and supporting me, when I
posted here all the time. I am archiving this blog (and encourage anyone to do
this same) on the British Library’s Web Archive.
Here are some places you can find stuff I do and my writing
now:
