Junk mail

It´s that time of the year again.
Almost every day, another catalogue featuring spring and summer wardrobe for "plus size" women hits my letter box.
On leafing through those catalogues, there are two things that immediately catch the eye.
One is the size of the models.
Here they are, trying to sell fashion to big women, and the models they present it on look like - well, models. Thin ones, tall ones.
I´m almost certain they make "standard-size" versions in something like the infamous size zero just for those pictures- no plus-size garment would fit any of these young ladies.
Of course, they look gorgeous.
The only thing one should not assume is that the clothes would look anything like that on a live plus-size female body.
Because that´s the second thing to catch the eye.
It seems that there are a lot of designers around who must really hate fat women.
What other explanation is there for them designing clothes that make even the models in the catalogues look, well, overweight. Or elderly. Nothing against old ladies, but these catalogues have stuff in them so drab that even a twentysomething looks like some senior citizen in them.
Most of the other stuff is of the "even a slim person shouldn´t wear this on pain of adding at least ten visual pounds"-variety. Horizontally striped shirts, sleeveless tops (let´s face it, there are just not that many overweight women with perfect upper arms), and, my pet peeve, those abominable 7/8 pants that visually bisect the legs at midcalf, making them appear even shorter than they probably are.
Did you ever notice that these of all pants (or trouser) styles are what is most often offered in plus sizes for summer?
Actually, the most-offered combination for summer in plus sizes is 7/8 pants with an extra large t-shirt and something like flipflops. The kicker is that almost every overweight person wearing that looks a lot heavier than they are. For most of us, that´s not the look we want.
This year, it´s even worse. The culprit this time? Those sausage-skin-like things called, depending on their color, leggings, jeggings, or whatever. These used to be made of opaque materials and were bad enough back then. Nowadays, they are made of the same stretchy stuff that is used for pantyhose. And this material stretches, especially over the biggest parts of the leg. So, anyone who would like to have smaller thighs will find exactly the offending portion of said limbs literally highlighted by skin shining through the fabric, unless they are fortunate enough to find a pair of leggings that matches their skintone exactly. Not so easy with so-called jeggings- they come in shades of blue, after all :). And that´s what sticks out from under the big t-shirts.

So, this year´s look is a real classic. Classic shlumpadinka, as Oprah likes to call it. Who, by the way, certainly even at her heaviest didn´t order from those catalogues.
And I won´t, either.
Even at my heaviest, I wanted clothes to fit the body I had, not clothes to make me look bigger than I was.

I have a  a receptacle ready for that mail junk. It´s round and has "recycling" written on it. I just pity the poor trees that were cut down to make the paper they printed it on. 

-rant over and out-

Julia