Bridging A Gap
l.m. cole
I spend every morning rifling through my closet for something to wear. Some days I feel like wearing a dress, maybe something sparkling and shimmering. Some days I want something a little more casual, cute, or classic. Some days call for something a little costumey. I try out different outfits, pairing and rejecting from a closet filled with hundreds of pieces of clothing. I skim past 1920’s flapper dresses in shimmering silver and beaded black. I pause over pink ruffled skirts and tops inspired by the fashion of Marie Antoinette. I consider floor length gowns and lacy crop tops to assemble a cohesive look for the day. I settle on a crimson bowed top, high-waisted black patent pants, and matching heels. I carefully arrange my hair into loose waves that frame my face, apply my makeup, smoky eyes and a bold red lip. I make sure everything is sitting exactly right on my frame. Then I hit save. In reality, I’m wearing the same outfit I always do: a pair of stretchy leggings and a baggy men’s t-shirt, and my hair is attempting to escape a messy ponytail. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t own high heels. When I go out of the house, I throw on an oversized plaid flannel and some black slip-on shoes. The formerly depicted, fashionable alternate reality exists for me only in my phone, in various dress-up mobile games, where I can be “sample sized” and wear couture, my makeup is flawless, and the clothing options are unending. There is a cavernous gap between the fashion accessible to me in these games and the fashion available to me in reality.
Dress-up games have been around for a long time, but I largely ignored them. Until I didn’t. For me, the draw of these games is clear; a different body that represents you, that you can dress and style in any way you choose. It’s as easy as clicking on your closet, sorting by color or style, and hitting save. It’s appealing for a lot of reasons. It’s more financially attainable, more space savvy, and there’s no size stress. Between the lack of inclusive sizing in many major retailers and brands, the variation of fit between brands, and the financial cost of trendy or fashionable clothing, the average fat person can start to feel really hemmed in and without any real choice in how they dress. Mobile dress up games can bridge the gap.
I fall into the category of people who can’t easily shop for their size in clothing stores. I’ve been fat almost my whole life, since first grade, really, and one of the biggest struggles in my life has been reconciling my desire for cute clothes with my inability to find my size in stores. In addition to being fat for as long as I can remember, I have also loved fashion. I loved dressing up my dolls, I loved looking at clothes in stores, I would spend hours flipping through catalogs and inspecting sewing patterns in the basement of my childhood home. When Project Runway began airing, I was hooked (and still am.) This is all to say that my love for fashion has also experienced a seemingly insurmountable disconnect from my ability to experience fashion for myself and for my own body.
The last memory I have of really enjoying shopping for clothes was when I was in fourth grade. Even then, my mom would take me to special plus-size stores to find clothes, and many of these types of stores didn’t carry what I would consider fashionable, but they had the clothes that fit. She took me one weekend to a store called DOT, which had a side for “normal sizes” and a side for plus sizes. While I was trying on clothes in the fitting room, one of the store employees asked my mom if I could participate in a fashion show they were planning in a couple of hours. She asked me, I agreed, and the employees helped me put together some outfits. I fell in love with a pair of purple flared jeans, a purple turtleneck sweater, and a denim trench coat. I felt equally attached to a knee-length beige cardigan. The fashion show was the first and only time I can remember feeling beautiful or stylish, and I absolutely loved the experience. I never experienced anything like it again, but there’s a weekly themed fashion show in one of the mobile games I play, and that’s the closest I have gotten to recreating the real-life fashion show I loved as a child. Every week I am voted at the top of the fashion show, I feel a kind of comfort with fashion and style that I don’t experience in my real life.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more comfortable wearing whatever is comfortable. I’ve stopped dreaming of couture and learning to apply makeup. I’m comfortable with my flannel, my mismatched socks, and flat-soled skate shoes. I’ve come to grips with the reality of the fashion gap that exists for fat folks, but every day I log into the game I’ve been playing, look through the hoard of clothing I’ve collected, become a princess, or a pirate, or a party-girl, and hit save. It’s almost enough to make me feel like I’ve found a way to bridge the gap. Almost.
