Why You "Can't" Wear Horizontal Stripes

This is a common thing I hear all people of all genders, of all ages, talk about. Well, not this specifically, but talking about the dressing choices of other woman with particular body types.

It is more than evident that fashion trends change over time. I wasn’t around in the 80s, but I hear it was pretty rough. I understand that we don’t only dress in a way to attract the preferred sex, or friends or other people in general. There are many factors such as a political movement, social status, special occasions, conforming to fashion trends of the era and far too many others to name. However, it is pretty common to choose to dress in a way that makes us feel good about our body. Obviously, people like to feel good about the way they look, and this can be enhanced by what we choose to dress our bodies in. And this goes beyond the sexes, I am speaking as someone who identifies as female.

However, if you don’t accept the way someone dresses, there is no reason to criticise that person’s body.

While the social movement of body positivity, fat acceptance, and self-love are on the heroic upwards trend, so is #fitspo and crash celebrity weight loss diets and endless marketing campaigns designed to point out our flaws (or make up new ones) in order to sell us some weight loss/beauty product (that either doesn’t work or make things worse), that we essentially don’t need!

Magazines laden with “Get your bikini body” slogans plastered on the front cover of every magazine for months on end may actually be thoughtful entrepreneurs who have discovered a legitimate way to get the “Perfect Body” while doing absolutely nothing, but it is most likely not. It is most likely a load of unsolicited advice from someone who has no recognised qualification in this area that is damaging to the self-esteem of its audience, regardless of weight or health. Whether it’s a subliminal thought or the match that starts the fire of an eating disorder, the effects are dangerous.

"I don’t look like the girl on the cover. She has the body to wear a bikini. I don’t have the body for a bikini. I can’t wear a bikini!"

The super fun day at the beach you planned instantly ruined.

I heard a lot of this in retail, working in a formal dress shop.

“We need something that poofs out at the waist to hide her stomach.” “I need a dress with sleeves to hide my old-woman arms.” Even if they were drawn to a particular dress, often easy to tell, the women (or their entourage of critiques) would refuse to try it on.

A big one that was also quite common in my private, all-girls school, was that young women of a certain size (although I am sure the sentiment extended to women of all ages), should not wear short dresses. Sometimes the victims of the school-uniform or weekend party-wear body critiques actually were of a ”healthy” weight (BMI does not read health, just the relationship between your height and weight) but athletically built, tall, and of any number of other unique body types. As we matured into the more “adult” years, this talk extends beyond the school gates. Unless you are stick thin or the right amount of curvy in the right places (thank you, Kardashians), the donning of the bra-shaped “outfit” (i.e. the crop top) was scrutinised by every sideways glancing eye.

In the end, this trend phased out. The shaming of body types, sadly, did not.

Although people assume that the “beautiful” or “fashionable” styles are meant exclusively for people of a select body type, why is it that we don’t get a say in what is beautiful? Why don’t we get to feel beautiful? The millions of photoshopped images and overused slogans urging us to change nearly every part of our body—from the dry skin at the bottom of our feet to the split ends in our hair—is not because you don’t look fabulous in those skinny jeans, but so you can doubt yourself enough to invest in a *insert product here* to look EXACTLY like the created picture (or “Model”), posing next to it. In cases I have mentioned, such as the bikini, the purchasing of these *miracle*products will change your body enough to wear your favourite outfit.

My mother used to say, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” If you see someone’s body and you don’t like what they are wearing, or you are threatened by their confidence in an outfit that you are doubting you could pull off as well, learn from it and grow from it, be the bigger person. They are not hurting you, mind your own business. It’s really not your problem.