The Personal Behind the Professional

or, why I'll never stop yapping about size inclusivity in fashion.

I have been at war with my body for as long as I can remember.

It is disobedient: soft where I want it to be sharp, round where I want it to be flat, and, lately, wrinkled where I want it to be smooth.

I have fought and punished it in nearly every way imaginable. I have given up, defeated and sobbing in a pile of my own clothes. I have pretended to be neutral about it, hoping that ignoring the problem might make it go away. Thanks to lots of therapy and work with a nutritionist, we are mostly at a cease fire these days, my body and I. But it’s tenuous at best, one too-tight garment away from breaking down.

I can remember exactly one occasion in my entire adult life when the war fell silent. Last year, I accidentally got high on shrooms (a story for another day) and, to calm myself, I took a bath. When I got out, I was smoothing lotion over my legs and I realized that in that moment, I felt completely at peace with my body. I was able to appreciate what it truly does for me, instead of the myriad ways society tells me it fails me.

That feeling was so unfamiliar and radical that I immediately burst into sobs.

This is a story I tell people now as a humorous anecdote – how funny, how high I was to start crying over something so silly! – because the sincerity of it is too bright to look at directly.

I say all of this to preface the next thought, which is: I most definitely understand the appeal of taking a GLP-1 for the sole purpose of forcing your body into submission. I look around and see influencers and fashion tastemakers who have suddenly lost ten pounds they didn’t really need to lose in the first place, celebrities who have shrunken down thanks to, I don’t know, “water” and “walking.” The idea that I could win the war one shot at a time is so tempting that I don’t think a single week went by all of last year where I didn’t think to myself, “Fuck it, I should just call my doctor and tell her I want to be on Ozempic.”

(And actually, at my last visit, I did ask about GLP-1s for a valid health issue. She wrinkled her nose and told me that I didn’t need to be on those drugs, that she didn’t like them, and that was that. I felt both profound relief and disappointment at the same time.)

It would be ignorant to deny that in our society, thinness is cultural currency. The closer to sample size, the closer to God, or something like that. Who could blame anyone for wanting access to that power?

The trouble is that, now that anyone could theoretically become skinny with a few thousand spare dollars and a handful of needles, people in positions of power believe that anyone should do just that. And if you can’t, or, god forbid, don’t want to? Too bad, so sad.

That’s where the fashion industry is today. After several years of mostly half-assed attempts at size inclusivity – the headlines might as well have been “Here, We Hired One Plus Model and We Put Her in a Black Sack, and If You Want an Ugly Sweater or Baggy Jeans, We Have That in a 16 Now, Be Happy With What You Get” – almost everyone has gone full mask-off.

I poked around to figure out why that might be in a story for Refinery29. And while there are many reasons, the main driver certainly seems to be that the proliferation of GLP-1s like Ozempic has shifted the conversation. (I’m tempted to say that it also shifted standards, but I’m hard-pressed to claim that anything other than a thin body was ever truly the standard for women.)

Again: I understand the desire to pursue thinness. Individuals have a right to do whatever they’d like with their bodies.

But today, it feels like the fashion industry (amongst others) wants to decide for you. Get thin or get fucked. And that, I have a problem with. I don’t want to give up the meager gains that were scraped together, and I don’t think we should have to. I don’t think women should be at war with their bodies. Fashion can’t fix that completely, but it shouldn’t deny its role in it, either.

It’s a complicated conversation. Let’s keep having it.