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Reality Check - Blog Posts
This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.
It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.
I always act like I don’t care what people think.
I think I shouldn’t care… but I think I’m starting to.
Because I weirdly care what he thinks, what’s on his mind when he looks my way and laughs.
One side of my brain says it’s because he’s making fun of me, the other says it’s because he gets fluttery thoughts when he sees me too.
Because I weirdly care what she thinks, what’s on her mind when we tease each other in class.
One side of my brain says she finds me annoying and pities me to the point where she doesn’t say anything, the other says her brain goes fuzzy when I smile just like mine does when she laughs.
Because I weirdly care what they think, when me and my friends laugh loudly during morning time.
One side of my brain says they think we’re funny, the other side says we’re annoying and should shut up.
And my thoughts get so loud sometimes…
So loud I even wonder what I think of myself.
I hate that I care what people think.
It makes everything so much harder.
i had at least three dreams i shifted last night
shifting diary entry #12
as per usual i’m asking things like “ why do i keep dreaming about shifting ” or “ why do reality checks fail me sometimes ” feel free to analyze this for me because i have no idea…
the first that i can remember… i don’t know if i unconsciously tried to shift in a dream and then believed that i shifted or what, but i do remember waking up in a bed with purple sheets and thinking that i shifted because of them ( i don’t have purple sheets here ) and i remember thinking to myself that even though this one thing changed im sure i shifted, but i was in a completely different room yet under the impression this was my room here just with purple sheets.
and here’s the craziest part, i did reality checks and they failed… i looked at my hand and counted my fingers and all ten were normally there. this isn’t the first time it had happened either, reality checks have failed me multiple times before. now, some people might think that it’s possible that i actually shifted but i know for certain it was just a dream.
after counting my fingers i started freaking out and thinking to myself that i actually did it and pinched myself just to be sure and i “ felt ” it. but i also remember thinking to myself that things didn’t feel as real as i thought they would. i mean it’s just another reality right ? i remember thinking that maybe people were lying or something because this doesn’t feel as real as life here. i thought maybe i just needed to be grounded more but as time passed the weird hazy sensations of dreams stayed.
for some context my sister was sleeping in my bed with me and when i woke up in my dream she was there too and im pretty sure i told her that i shifted. but eventually she just kinda disappeared from the dream and i started thinking to myself that i can’t stay long bc i need to tell her that i shifted… which also has happened to me before.
the dream ended up turning into one where i was around people in my intended reality and this is where it gets really fuzzy and i’m having a hard time recalling what went down, but im not sure it’s important anyways. but i do remember that this dream was long as hell.
the next one i really can’t remember at all but i do know it happened bc i vaguely recall trying to shift in a dream and then it “ worked ”. but i think the dream was really short and i woke up really confused with what i just dreamt about and why, why do i keep dreaming about shifting ?
the last one is also confusing. i remember there was a person in the dream i was talking to about shifting and trying to figure out why i haven’t shifted yet, but she gave me awful advice lol. things that would just make things more complicated than they needed to be. i also wasn’t even telling her things that were true, things that weren’t correct about where i was shifting to and where i was gonna wake up? the dream turned really weird and had like 1578 sub plots going on but this girl seemed determined to help me, im not sure if she did though.
also, two days ago i took a nap and ended up in a lucid dream and then tried to shifting in it like a billion times…
reality check! hugh jackman and logan howlett are not, in fact, the same person.
remember that, please and thank you.