Fat Chicks Rule

The Tale of Two Pants

I hope everyone in the States had a good holiday weekend and didn’t worry about calories at the multi-BBQ’s they went to (I ended up going to two.)

A lot of the pants I use for work were in dire need of replacement. Because I didn’t know in advance what kind of selection the Big Fat Flea would have, I bought two pairs of pants from Marshalls and ended up getting two more pairs from the Flea. (Technically three, but only two were for work)

My favorite type of pants are pinstripes. I think they are debonair and classy looking. I couldn’t find  a single pinstripe at Marshalls. After hunting their lackluster section, I ended up with two black pairs of pants.

At the flea I found many pinstripes and after trying them all on, I ended up with two pairs. 

• Costs of my pants from Marshalls: $45
• Costs of my pants from Big Fat Flea: $10.

The pants I got from Marshalls were just okay. Both were all black. One was cotton and loose and light for summer. The other was heavier meant for all seasons. The heavier one was a lint magnet. It seemed to come out of the laundry already with cat hair.  The lighter pair winkled easily.

 Meanwhile the two pairs I got from the flea  didn’t winkle or attract lint. They were both pinstriped and looked great on me.  I have mentioned before how hard it is to buy clothes. This isn’t a rant against Marshall, but department stores and even plus size stores don’t have the sizes, style, price, quality and quantity that I want. I can't just walk into a Lane Bryant or a Macys or a JC Penney and get what I need. I have to rely on a yearly event to make up the bulk on my wardrobe. I rely more on my fat sisters to give me what I need rather than a place that I'm willing to give money.

Gather, Rather than Hunt

On Saturday morning, I decided to go shopping for pants. Being 10 am the morning before Easter, I figured I'd avoid the lines and the crowds at Marshalls, a close-out department store.

I've a hard body to buy for: a rectangle with an apple belly and large boobs, I usually have to try on many things before I can find maybe one item that fits me nicely. Most of the times pants that fit my waist make my legs look like tree trunks and pants that fit my legs make my stomach look like a giant sack. Tops are worse: clothes that fit my chest make me look pregnant or else I'm popping out of my shirt (Something my husband doesn't mind but work might.)

I don't really like to shop at Department stores. I prefer stores that stock only larger sizes (my issues with them are another story). No offense against thin folks, but at least I know the entire store is catered to large bodies including my size. However, I usually can get one or two things at Marshalls if I hunt. My local venue has gotten worse as far as plus sizes go. They used to have a large section in the middle of the floor. Now they are pushed over to the side and are limited to two large racks, and a few smaller ones. Dresses are the only sizes that are integrated.

Some days I go there and find some good pieces. Other days I don't know why I bother.

I was semi-successful on Saturday as I managed to snag Lauren pants that fit me nicely, and a pair of loose yoga pants that for $20 were good enough. Together they were $60.

Remember this is the “discount” store.

On May 4th is the Big Fat Flea in NYC. Last year I spent about the same amount at Marshalls and bought home a much cheaper and better selection. This is a flea market. Selection is based on donation, not a department store which is theory should be serving their customer’s needs. And knowing that two-thirds of the population need plus sizes, I’m surprised that Marshall’s plus size selection has shrunk.

Marshalls was a hunt. A hope that a wild pair of pants would appear and fit me properly. My hunting ground was only a few feet but still not a lot wild pants to be found.

At the Flea, it's a gather. I go through stacks and stacks of pants, dresses, shirts, jackets and miscellaneous. My size is located all in the same place, often towering because there is so much selection. I stuff things to try on in my bag which becomes heavy in my arms while my follow shoppers dig around with me, being friendly, giving advice. No one seems upset when someone grabs an Igigi dress before you can. You feel great when a person tells you, “This doesn’t look good on me, maybe it will look good on you.”

I come home exhausted but in a good way. My spirits are high as I check out my new clothes (and some are brand new with tags). And as I model my new clothes, I feel confident and happy.

I never feel this way at any department store.

 

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The Tankini

Still not buying it.

Every once in a while I’ll have a bizarre fantasy of what it’s like being thin. During my dieting days, I had this fantasy frequently. I would show off my thin and beautiful bod to the people who made fun of me. They would look at me with their mouths agape and beg to be my friend. I would laugh and shrug them off.

I don't have this fantasy as much because I accept that I'm fat and I no longer care what people think of me. I don’t want to be thin, except maybe while clothes shopping. With the exception of the Big Fat Flea and some of the plus size stores like Torrid and Lane Bryant, I find clothes shopping a level of hell. With an apple belly, large boobs and a rectangle side. I imagine what it would be like to walk into any store and have an abundant selection of what I need. Even stores that carry plus sizes often have such a small selection that I find nothing.

Mike Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch wasn't thinking about the future in 2006 when he said A&F was only for the cool kids (i.e. no fatties). He wasn't thinking there'd be a giant fucking recession and apparently retail clothing isn't as quite as niche a market as an exclusive night club. They find their niche has other crappy clothing stores to go too. Ones that have cheaper prices, aren’t run by assholes, and sell clothes that fit them.

"Students are looking for better prices," (Doreen) Burdalski says. "They may realize the quality of clothing isn't as good, but it serves their purpose for now. I think the price point is too high, they've been struggling since 2008. People are experiencing that crunch, college students included."

A&F has been suffering declining sales and have now realized that maybe they do need to actually sell some clothes to more than five people. They will be offering plus size clothes to women. I'm not sure what size they will go to. If they go to 2x I can possibly fit into their clothes.

But still I won't shop there. You see Old Navy, H&M, and Forever 21 all carry plus sizes but yet I don't step foot in them because I know I am but a token to them. Two-third of the US populatio are considered fat but you wouldn’t know it even from the stores that sell plus sizes. I won't find the same sizes, styles, selection as a thin person would. And unlike Torrid, Lane Bryant and the Big Fat Flea, I wouldn’t feel like a human being shopping in these stores. One time I went into the plus size boutique Lee Lee’s Valise, told the sales girl I need something for someone that has no waist and walked out with a kick ass dress.

I often state on my blog to never buy anything from a store that doesn’t carry plus sizes. My thin fantasy would end with the realization that no store that carried fat and thin sizes has ever been good to me. If I were thin I would have no where to shop.

I will continue to not buy A&F and laugh when they go under. I look forward to the same thing happening to Lululemon.

Always be Wonder Woman

No post next week, I will be away. 

If you search Fat Wonder Woman (WW), you'll get lovely art work featuring a plumped up sexy WW. Fat superheroes in comics don't exist. Heroes are muscular and heroines are thin and scantily clad. It's easier to find a mainstream fat villain than a fat hero. 

Hurricane Sandy soured the mood of most New Yorkers last year and Halloween was one of its victims. This year I decided to make up for lost time and actually dress up compared to other years where I might wear my cat ears, my squid or zombie hat.

I decided on Wonder Woman, mostly because I love her and it was one of the few costumes that went up to 2x with reviews saying it was a comfortable 2x.

Even through this awesome costume went to size 2x, I was more interested in buying a costume tee-shirt and then buy the accessories. I wanted something so I could be WW year round. 

That was until I tried to find it. I went to Ricky's Halloween shop and Spirit of Halloween. Both I might add do carry plus size costumes. While their selection has gotten better over the years, they still had more selections for dogs than fat people. I would even say it was easier to find a fat suit than a costume in my size.

They did carry Wonder Woman costume tee-shirts (with capes), night shorts (also with capes) and dresses.

The sizes? XS to XL.

I thought maybe it was the stores that didn't carry the plus sizes. Surely if I go online I'll find ones at least in my size (and if you're supersized, don't even bother, make your own).

No dice. Apparently the manufacturer didn't realize that fat women did in fact go out to celebrate Halloween and don't sit at home eating all the candy.

After searching for costume tees and coming up with nothing, I gave up until I got an email from Hot Topic that said that costumes were available. I wasn't getting my hopes up. Hot Topic tends to throw scraps at plus sizes. I was surprised to see a Wonder Woman dress that went up to 3x and a sexy costume that went up to 2x.

Until I clicked on the sizing chart and discovered Hot Topic's 3x only went to size 19. Why they made a 3x equivalent to at 19 and not a 22 was beyond me. (Macy’s Junior plus uses the same sizes as adults and the model in the costume was a young adult.) This made no sense. I felt Hot Topic was bullying me. Teasing me with a costume in my size than giving me a big FU.

I searched again and found that once upon a time Torrid, Hot Topics' fat younger sister, made a WW costume tee. Because they hadn't made it this year, it was only available on ebay. After several attempts to get it, I gave in and purchased a 2x WW logo tee-shirt. Figured I'd go back to Spirit of Halloween and get the full costume. 

They make Wonder Woman tutus which I initially dismissed because I assumed it wasn’t made for fat asses.  After the frustration of trying to find the costume tee, I decided to try it on and was surprised to find it fit. I was shocked and amazed when it slid over my jeans easily. Adding the tutu (Which I love and want to wear every day), the accessory set and WW stockings to the logo tshirt, I was finally ready to go. It wasn’t what I wanted but this was as close as I could get.

But the moral of this story isn't finding the costume and putting it together, it was the complete lack of items in my size. Had I been a large, I could have found anything I wanted in those stores without too much trouble.

Wonder Woman wouldn't stand for that shit. 

The Tankini

So it’s getting on summer (Although it doesn’t feel that way in NYC), and blog posts will be shorter and there will be no blog posts on the following dates: 7/29, 8/5, 8/12, 8/26^th. Normally I might take a summer break but fat hatred doesn’t. If I don’t post those days it’s not because I had a combo heart attack, diabetes, MS, plane crash, global warming catastrophe, I’m going to be on vacation, enjoying good food and fun exercise.

Last Sunday was the Big Fat Flea (Formerly the Fat Girl’s Flea). My favorite fat positive annual event. (Love it to be a bi-annual event, hint, hint). This year I paid $25 to get in a half hour early. And for $53 I walked out with: 2 pairs of pants, an awesome torrid dress, a hippie shirt, beads for my niece, sunglasses, a bathing suit, a swimming shirt, and tankini top. (I now have more tops than bottoms.)

Recently I joined an outdoor pool  and despite the weather have been swimming 2-4 times a week. Unlike the once a week I was doing at the pool from hell. This meant a bathing suit upgrade from the 3 regular and one emergency bathing suit (the emergency suit was fraying.)

So off I went to Marshalls which has been going downhill for a while. I don’t blame Marshalls for the fact that two piece bikinis vanish after size 12, or that thin women’s bathing suits look like string and fat women’s a full-on evening gowns but I do blame them for their lack of inventory. Once we get pass the fat ceiling of size 16, selection and quantity becomes horrendous. I understand that not all fat women want to wear tankini, bikini and some even like the skirts but we are 2/3 of the majority, why do we have to get crap. All they had in my size was a few one piece dresses. I found one bathing suit, saw the long line and figured I might do better at Sears next door.

I did. Even though I call Sears the store of the most returns. If Sears didn’t have a better selection of bathing suits, I would tell them to stick to appliances.

Sears had tankinis, one pieces and skirts. But the tankini bottom and tops were sold separately and even with a half-off sale the pieces were $25 double than what the were in Marshalls. I ended up buying $125 worth of bathing suits. I'm not against spending more to get good quality, but I had a feeling that in one or two years I would be replacing them.

I thought about waiting for the flea to get my bathing suit but the one thing the flea doesn't have is quality control. It is all based on donations.

Doesn't mean I'm disappointed. I never am. I always find a great piece (This year being the Torrid dress) At the flea I got a bathing suit, a top and a swim shirt for $15. Two of them were from a sample sale and never worn. I also feel like I'm a person at the flea because I know that the organizers are looking out for us. They want shoppers to go away with that one or more great article of clothing.

 

Loser's Club

While researching my book, I did some reviews of national stores on the local level. This included dragging my friends to many mall trips. Mostly I looked at the bigger department stores and the smaller plus size stores. I already knew that most of the smaller stores especially the trendy/chic ones didn’t carry plus sizes or like H&M carried had them in microscopic ghettos. One place I went into, I looked at the high prices and the tiny sweaters and walked out without a word.

On one mall trip, my friend dragged me over to the very good looking male model in front of Abercrombie and Fitch (A&F). The model was a sweet young man who was nice to me the fat girl and my friend with a thin body and nerdy glasses.

I didn’t go into A&F because I didn't have to ask if they had plus sizes. The buff men and thin women adored on the store made me realize this store was for thin people only especially thin women. I’ve many times been dragged into thin people only stores where I noticed women’s clothes rarely go to large and men can go to XXL meaning these stores cater to fat men by accident because they really want muscular ones.

The CEO of A&F has said they don’t make clothes for fat people because they make clothes for cool people and fat people are not cool. “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."



Believe it or not I admire his honesty. Almost all of these stores aimed at the young and trendy carry small sizes and I don’t mean just Junior Miss sizes, I mean small sizes. Even stores with sizes up to 16, such as the Gap are a rare animal with an abundant amount of extra smalls. These stores fear that if fat people wore their clothes it would no longer be considered trendy except forgetting that 2/3 of the people of the US are considered fat. I assume the inflated prices marketed to niche stereotypes is enough to keep them afloat.  

But I was talking about A&F. I could point out all the terrible things they have done : the sweatshops, Discrimination, the Sexualization of pre-teens  and their refusal to donate excess clothes to poor people. 

Instead I will talk about not being in the cool club. At no time in my life was I ever in the "cool" club. I don't have styled hair, do my eye brows, get regularly mani-pedis, I barely shave, I don't wear trendy clothes (I wear clothes because I like them), only occasionally wearing some freakier outfits because I need a change. My worst offense is refusing to try to lose weight.

You see, being trendy, the fitting in into a tiny cookie cutter, is something I have always refused to do. I refused to be told what to like or wear. Sure clothing shopping has become a disaster and I'm certain I've lost getting a job being a hairy fat-ass, but I despise the idea of being someone I'm not. I've gotten several troll comments that I play sour grapes, that I really want to be thin but it isn't true.

Not only A&F is labeling the "uncool" kids but the people who wear their clothes as vapid, mean bullies which I am sure they are not. I don’t believe it of the nice male model outside the store. He is not vapid, I am not a label.

Of course just because this fool has no power over me, doesn't mean he can say mean things without consequences.

But (Robin, author of the A&F book the quote comes from ) Lewis says it's a model that may not fit the future. Plus-sized shoppers now make up 67 percent of consumers.

"I think the young people today want cool, but as they define it themselves," Lewis said.

From Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign - highlighting real women - to H&M's inclusion of plus-sized swimsuit model Jennie Runk, many other brands are embracing that individualism and making their clothes more accessible. For example, rival retailers H&M and American Eagle both carry sizes up to 16 and 18. The largest at Abercrombie & Fitch is a 10.

I urge people of all sizes not to buy anything from Abercrombie and Fitch, no clothes, no accessories, nothing. And if you have A&F clothes, be sure to donate them to the poor or a fat chick. I might wear one of these tiny tee shirts as a tank tube.  

In search of a mythical suit

For almost a year, I’ve been trying to buy a nice suit. I don’t like to buy online because I don’t fit the cookie cutter body of even plus size wear and going to the post office to return anything is one of my levels of hell.

I've pretty much given up on department stores ever having plus size business wear, not to mention the poor quality of materials, or the fact Macy limits which malls have plus size wear other than sweat pants (they should just stain it with chocolate ice cream to complete the stereotype). Plus size stores have sizes but not the selection. It's disturbing that a person size 12 and under can find a variety of styles. I bet it would be easier to find a business suit in maternity wear that in regular plus size. 

 My solution will most likely have to be to go to an expensive boutique. The good thing is I have the finances to purchase something from them without breaking the bank.

But I have to wonder about my poorer sisters who don’t money to buy a nice suit and have to hope the outfit they pick from the internet fits or hope for a lucky find at a department or close out store. I have to wonder when I hear about fat people in poverty. Is it because it’s so hard to find affordable, nice clothes that they look like a joke at an interview? There’s a reason why the only time I was somewhat fashionable (or at least wearing clothes other than jeans and a tee-shirt as I considered myself a fashion misfit who refuses to wear trendy clothes) was when I had access to the plus size consignment store Re/Dress and the Fat Girl’s Flea Market. The loss of Re/Dress (which BTW is reopening as a Fab online store and maybe even a brick and mortar one) left me to really only have the Fat Girl’s Flea Market (Now called to the Big Fat Flea for so fatties of all genders can have clothes.)

I love the Big Fat Flea. Even as someone who hates crowds and last year because it was on Mother’s day I had to go in the mad rush beginning, I went home with a decent amount of clothes, but no suit. While they have lots of clothes and I always come home with a variety of clothes, finding exactly what I need is again luck. Still it’s sad that I have to get the majority of clothes from them because the department stores and most plus size stores have failed me.

The Big Fat Flea is coming back to New York City on June 9^th in a new Venue at New York University Law School. (BTW NYU Press is the publisher of the fabulous Fat Studies Reader). If you live in the area, get yourself there. Buy entire new wardrobes for next to nothing and tell the department stores to suck it. 

Stigma doesn't make you thin

Stigma (Dictionary.com) - a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one's reputation.

A few months ago I was in the doctor's office. CNN was playing loudly in the background. Most of it involved Republicans talking about how the health care law was the root of all evil. Then Sanjay Gupta came on and gave a five minute rant about the evils of obesity and how it's destroying all health care everywhere. I got annoyed, wanted to yell and throw stuff at the TV. (I didn't.) Thankfully I was called into see the doctor soon after.

I've never had an abnormal blood pressure reading in my life and I didn't when the nurse took my stats but I've always been on the low side of normal. Today's reading had me at the high side of normal. I had to wonder. Did Sanjay Grupta just raise my blood pressure?

Of course this isn't a study or proof of anything. But this 2012 study and 2010 study from the Rudd Center  does prove there are considerable health consequences to weight based stigma.

RESULTS: Participants responded most favorably to messages involving themes of increased fruit and vegetable consumption, and general messages involving multiple health behaviors. Messages that have been publicly criticized for their stigmatizing content received the most negative ratings and the lowest intentions to comply with message content. Furthermore, messages that were perceived to be most positive and motivating made no mention of the word ‘obesity’ at all, and instead focused on making healthy behavioral changes without reference to body weight.

I have huge issues with the Rudd Center and they are pro-weight loss. Even they recognized that stigmatizing a fat person doesn't help.

This week is Weight Stigma Awareness Week. It's time to point out that no matter what you believe about fat people, stigma doesn't help at all and if anything can make health worse.

"People who are severely obese were more likely than people of recommended weight to face some level of difficulty in doing activities of daily living," Schafer said. "Over 10 years, those odds of disability were nearly five times higher for people who reported some form of weight discrimination, but only twice as high for those who didn't face discrimination."

I created a list of 5 perceptions we need to change to end weight based stigma

1. End the assumption that  fat people are fat because we eat too much and don't exercise. Everyone has a unique body. Not all fat people are fat because they eat too much just like not all thin people are thin because they don't eat enough. There is a lot of proof that genetics play a strong role in your size. 

2. Stop pressuring weight loss in the name of health. There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to cut down on junk food and enjoy healthy movement. There are several studies showing that healthy habits and movement are more important than weight loss. Encouraging weight loss will only make people stop healthy habits when weight loss stops.

3. Stop making fun of fat people, even the ones that fit the stereotype. You'll find many of them are normal kind human beings. All fat people deserve the same rights and privileges has everyone else.

4. If you are fat, start learning ways to love your body and avoid the stigma around you. While it might be hard in the doctor's office or work,  you can ignore the trolls and the weight based health programs.

5. Reducing stigma on fat people won't work if you push weigh loss. What might work is a healthy dose of self-esteem including ending discrimination at the doctor's office, the workplace and even the mall.  A perfect example is this MRI machine meant to accommodate very heavy people. 

Stigma against fat people will end if we make it socially unacceptable. We all need to be proud of our bodies, we need to say no to the diet industry, weight based health and hatred.

Cake, Clothes, and Consumption

When I wrote my essay for the Fat Studies Reader one of my source materials spoke about the book Jermina Jby Jane Green. In the book the main character is fat and to impress a man she never met she drops 80 pounds through crash dieting then buys a whole new wardrobe.  The essay spoke about the issue of consumption. Fat people are often the examples of consumption gone wild. We obviously steal food from hungry babies while driving our gas guzzling automobiles.  However the essay points out the Jermina consumes much more after she becomes thin. When Jerminia is fat, she consumes less clothes, when she is thin, she buys a new wardrobe. She consumes way more materialistic things than she did when she was fat. (And btw, I am not saying thin people consume more or less than fat people. It's Clothing and fashion industry consumption, and they happen to make mostly thin people's clothes.)

Fat people, being shunned by the mainstream fashion industry, consume less clothes. I barely buy new clothes, instead chose to get most of my selection at Big Fat Flea (formerly the Fat Girl's Flea Market) (May 13 btw, you better be there) and keeping my old clothes in good repair. 

*

Oh look it's me and the fabulous Lesley Kinzel of fatshionistas  who also wrote a fabulous book based on her blog: Two whole cakes. Leslie is a self described "clothes horse" but she laments in her book what many other fat people can share with her, unable to find clothes in her size. Another book I happened to be reading at the same time Greenwashed talks about the immense amount of clothes waste (clothes only have  ten wear lifes span. I have a skirt from high school still in my closet.) 

Getting back to Leslie's book. It's a short but intense read of vignettes and most fat people could share stories almost to the same as hers.  If you are unfamiliar with where the term Two Whole Cakes comes from. On Fatshionistas, there was a troll who on another board said that all fat people eat Two whole cakes a day (at my worst binging (i.e. not eating normally), I only managed to get most of one and I got really sick afterwards). One particular story I shared with Leslie was about going to Jenny Craig (in my case Nutrisystem) eating the gross food, losing weight in the beginning than tapering off. For me and for Leslie, both the tapering off and the hungry were the reasons we "gave" up (or our bodies did.) In Leslie's case she walked away, in mine Nutrisystem went "out of business". I got a whole refund of $89.  

So recommend this Earth day that you buy Leslie's book (available as an ebook) and fat people tell the fashion industry to stick it, you are consuming less of their crappy badly made clothes. 

 *(Note: purple shirt, Fat girl's flea market,  Pink Jacket, Re/Dress)

Dead end mall

I was getting Starbucks at my local mall. And when I say my mall, I have been going to this mall since I was a teenager. It became my second home when I had to get out of the house and none of my friends were around. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with malls. On one hand I find them to be an urban and suburban blight, on the other hand, this mall allowed me an escape for a few hours at a time.

Today this mall offers me little except for the occasional Starbucks and my credit union is next door.  The mall opens at 10 but Starbucks and Gloria Jean coffee opens for commuters before that. I got to traverse the mall with no pedestrian traffic thinking this might be a good place to walk during hot or cold days. The mall is mostly small chic clothing stores such as Banana Republic, White House, Black Market (stupidest name for a store ever), Bebe, Charlotte Russe, Guess, Forever 21, H&M. If you see one suburban mall you should know all the stores. Despite the fact these stores sell overpriced crap, this mall is one of the most successful malls in the country and that disturbs me considering that the neighborhoods around it are all working class, median income people.

Oh yeah about almost none of the stores carry plus sizes. At last count out of the 33 stores in the mall that carry clothes for woman, only 4 carry plus sizes and of those 4, only one carries a variety of selections. For example Hot Topic which owns Torrid has plus sized t-shirts but nothing else. So what does that leave us in the mall? Not the food court because fat people aren’t supposed to eat.<

I often hear comments that the reason stores don’t carry plus sizes is that fat people never buy clothing but a small study shows that might not be the point. In this study a random sampling of people of difference sizes went to stores in a Houston mall. Casually dressed fat people were discriminated more than the others, even well dressed fat people. Fat people who held a diet drink and talked about how they exercised were treated better than fat people who held an ice cream drink, talked about not dieting and being unable to do exercise. Average size shoppers who carried different drinks did not suffer discrimination.

So if you walked in a store that didn't have your size and if they did they had terrible selection and limited sizes (And if you are over a size 26, don't even bother looking) and they treat you like dirt,would you shop there?  I wouldn’t. There is a reason I am now only shopping regularly at two stores, Re/Dress which is unique to New York and Marshals because I can shop with anonymity. Department stores no longer carry the selection and style I need. In fact many have gone downhill since I published my book. While Fashion bug, the Avenue and Lane Bryant carry style, sizes and selection, I find their quality of clothes substandard and in the case of Avenue and Lane Bryant overpriced.

So what does a fat person get? Lack of quality, quantity and selection or nothing at all. So my fat sisters and brothers. What do we do? First things first, if you like a store's style, but they don't have your size. Let them know. Let them know that until they carry your size in the store (Not the Old Navy BS that has plus sizes online but not in their stores) you will never shop there for anything and you will encourage other friends to not shop there as well. If you do find a store you like that has what you need, patronize it as much as possible. I go to Re/Dress as much as I can despite the long trip and I go to Marshals despite the long lines. Don't give any money to a store that won't give you respect!