Ah, reme
Aliexpress, a division of huge import company Alibaba Holding Group Limited, is selling leggings up to 5x, which is totally awesome, often “plus sizes” (or, as I like to call them, sizes) only go up to 2x or 3x so it’s great to see a company carrying clothing in larger sizes. Except…no… it turns out that the 5x is about the same as a lululemon “straight sizes” (or, as I like to call them, sizes) Large. (Aliexpress’s 5x: Waist: 30.4, Hips: 41.8 (converted from centimeters) – Lululemon Large waist 30.5, hip 41) Right.
But that’s not all, they chose to advertise these leggings by having a thin model stand with both of her legs in one leg of pants, stretching the waistband with the opposite hand, like so:
Now, in pieces that I’ve read about this in mainstream news, the authors seem to think that I should be insulted that they showed that there are people who can fit both their legs into one leg of my pants. I’m not insulted by that at all, I celebrate the diversity of body sizes that exist.
I’m insulted that I can’t swing an internet “news” article without hitting a television “news” story about how many of us are fat, but somehow clothing companies can’t seem to find a single fat person to model the clothes that they want fat people to buy from them.
While it’s difficult to tell what clothing will look like on me when I see it on a thin woman who is sealed into it by industrial sized clamps all down her back, it’s downright impossible to tell how leggings will look on me when a thin woman is wearing them as a skirt. Companies that want my fat money will have to do better than this.
Women who wear plus sizes (or, as I like to call them, sizes) face a number of difficulties buying clothes: from companies who market their refusal to make clothes for us as a sign that they are “cool” (*cough* Abercrombie *cough*,) to clothing that is much more expensive than that of our friends who wear straight sizes (or, as I like to call them, sizes,) to stores that sell clothes in plus sizes (or, as I like to call them, sizes) only online meaning that we have even more expense in the form of shipping, and then return shipping since we don’t get to try on our clothes and we have to guess based on pictures of the clothes being worn models far too small to fit into them.
At an absolute least we deserve to see the clothes that we wear modeled by people who actually fit in the clothes (and companies should be creating jobs for plus size models (or, as I like to call them, models), before we fork over our hard-earned money to buy the clothes. According to all the news stories, there are tons and tons of fat people running around, if companies want to sell clothes to us, they need to find some fat people to model them.
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