I bought more clothes today. I vowed at the end of last week after a few splurges that I wouldn’t buy any more clothes for a while but I bought a pair of 3/4 length pants and yet another a-line skirt. I know in previous years I haven’t bought that many clothes because I hated the fabric or the cut.
This season I love the cotton a-line skirts. The last few summers the fashion seemed to be polyester or other man-made fabrics and the skirts were quite figure hugging and looked quite appalling on me. I’ve got one sitting in my wardrobe and it’s pretty hidden because I usually choose the comfortable cotton a-line skirt before this one.
Back to the a-line though. For a girl with a waist and a, I quote, ‘…arse with a mind of its own’ the a-line skirt is my friend. It hugs my waist which still isn’t too bad. I would like to diminish the little overhang that’s beginning above my belly-button, but apart from that my waist is not too bad. And the a-line skirts skims nicely over that arse with a life of its own. I figure I’ll buy up on the cotton a-line and next season when the straight cut skirt comes back (it’s gotta come back some time) I won’t need to bother cause I’ve already spent my wardrobe budget. Perhaps once the trend is over I can spend my clothes budget (what’s left of it) in op-shops buying someone elses last season’s clothing.
The other thing I like about the a-line is I can buy a size smaller than I would normally because my lower half consists of two dress sizes, only because I don’t fit the mould of a stick figure but have a waist and an arse.
On the other hand there are the low waist pants – the bane of my life. In some cases I can’t even pull em up to my low waist region. Because I have that arse with a mind of its own, and these pants are made for the stick figure, a size that should normally fit me and would if it was my friend, the a-line skirt, doesn’t cover my arse.
I’ve realised that these pants that I can’t pull up are mainly in the shops where an extra large is in actual fact a size 14. This does nothing for my self-esteem. Being mostly a size 14 makes me an average sized woman in Australia and probably most of the developed world and a lot of shops are telling me that I’m not average but extra large. To me, extra large is obese and I don’t consider myself obese, just curvy.
Why is it that ‘women’s fashion’ is made for a young and skinny girl who is an impossible size 8? What about the real and more mature woman (not necessarily more mature though) who is the average? I’ve said it in the past and I’ll say it again here, there has to be a market for decent, not too expensive clothing that flatters a woman with a bottom and a waist, and also women with the waist and no bottom. And I won’t even begin on women with large chests because that’s not me but I’m sure it’s hard for them to find well-fitting and trendy clothes.
Can I say to the younger woman, who is not the skinny size 8 that clothes manufacturers would have us be, who wear low-rise pants and not cover much tops that bit that hangs out in the middle is not very attractive at all. Another little anecdote while I’m on my fashion police bandwagon – I saw a woman one day hop into the lift who’d obvioiusly just had a baby, and she (the woman) was bearing her midriff and showing all of us her full-on stretch marks. There is no need for this.
