One thing you might not know about me is that I love clothes. Absolutely love them, and (usually) like getting dressed. I have had, throughout my long life, mixed success in this area, largely due, IMHO, to the size I was wearing at any given time. I have fought my weight for most of my adult life, but, long before I knew it was something I needed to fight, people were telling me I needed to: my mother made comments, especially when my two best friends in HS also turned out to be… not skinny. My mother and my sister were skinny, so my mom was flummoxed about where my “trouble” came from. So she often said things to me about my weight, mostly asking, like a person new to this planet, why I thought I was heavy, and where it came from. If only she had voiced that question while looking in a mirror, she’d have found her answer looking at her. And then there were my two Irish grandmas, who looked as potato-fed as they were. So, why was weight trouble for me? Anxiety from my narcissistic mom, and genetics. No one else in my family ever said anything, and certainly not my size 22 grandmas, but there were others. I remember the gym teachers in HS, male and female, told me I was very pretty, and I just needed to lose 20 pounds. I believe I weighed 118 then; I hadn’t yet begun to stress eat enough to be considered self-medicating. I know I hated gym, and never spoke to gym teachers if I didn’t have to, so the fact that 2 from each gender felt the need to tell me I was attractive and losing weight could make me more so is, I now see, weird. But when you feel guilty (I am guilty for being too large) you often don’t realize inapproprate behavior. Between them and my mother I was taught that my weight was a problem before I saw it as one. I don’t think I’ll ever make it to 118 again in this lifetime (at least not while healthy), but I have done many things to try and get smaller. I’m going to say that I feel better smaller too, which is not to accept body-shaming or anything like that. I am, and have always been, petite, short, short legs, short waist, small bones. In HS when I bought my class ring it was a size 5, so skinny fingers (although now the joints are a bit lumpy). It feels better in my body to be smaller in pounds. And with a smaller body I can buy more fitted clothing that suits me better. Even though there are a lot of stores that carry clothes for larger female bodies, they are often not scaled for a petite person: the legs are too long, the waist is too long, the sleeves are too long, the shoulders too broad. They expect a larger woman to be large in height, in bone structure, shoes size 9 or higher, just all-around large. I remember my mother telling me I could wear big flowery prints because I was large, when I thought the opposite was true, but the stores agreed with her, and often the prints are gigantic. To be a combo of large and petite is really hard when trying to find clothes.
How did I get “large” to begin with? I think now, looking back, it was anxiety that I could neither rid myself of, or live with. It had to go somewhere, and it went into my stomach where it gnawed, and I was simply trying to give it something else to chew on. Not being a sweets person, that usually meant a second sandwich. Too much pasta really took up space, and gave the anxiety hours of distraction, much like my dog with a chew. These things worked on the uncomfortable feelings, but stretched my body.
In any case, I love clothes, and I love getting dressed. Though I have worked from home exclusively since just after the pandemic, I still get up and shower and dress and fix my hair, every day. And put on shoes usually too. I know some people won’t wear shoes in their house that they wear outside of their house, but shoes are part of the outfit, my friends.
In this photo I am wearing the first jumpsuit, coverall, whatever you want to call it that I’d ever bought for myself. It’s from Wildfang, and I am wearing it with an old Old Navy sweater in sort of an acid yellow, with my yellow specs, yellow socks, and my beloved Basquiat Pez Dispenser Doc Martens that Dave and Sophie got me for my birthday a few years back. I tend to keep clothes I love a long time. I have a pair of Bass Weejuns from 1983 (that I have had resoled at least three times), and they’re probably my oldest article of clothing.
So when I get dressed, though I’m often not going anywhere, and no one sees me but me and the fam (and the fam has long ago stopped noticing me), I still do it. And I do it, like the weightloss, 100% for me. Now that we’ve settled in our little rented house I’m back to running too, which I do alone, and also just for me. I’d love to be able to get back to doing a 5K again, and, hopefully, with a less embarrassing time. In the future. Not today. But for today I also have with me, in the photo, tied with Oliver the Dog for my most ardent fan, Patrick, the fluffy alergen who loves me. I am willing to swear he can actually say “Mom.” Pets don’t care what I am wearing, or how much their hair messes with the outfit. This fluffy white fellow here has recently had a haircut, and is still fairly fluffy. He was a gift from my crazy cat lady brother, and he loves me like my brother did, which is awesome as I miss my brother, gone some years now, still almost every day. So, from time to time I’ll post something I have on that I particularly like, as I get more used to seeing photos of me, and having other people see them too. And I’ll always know that Patrick thinks I look, as my brother would have said, “Marvelous.”
Dianne Pearce Writes 