Manolo for the Big Girl

Well y’all it’s Friday and I think we could all use a little inspiration. Inspiration, like a tick or your grandmother’s giant anchor tattoo,  is often found in the strangest places. Beloved reader Amazon Angelle commented on my last entry about by asking:

Is it at all sad that I looked past the dress and am currently trying to come with a cocktail that I shall dub “Frog Water?”

It may be the first time I’ve ever said this with any tenderness but: Honey, No.  In fact, I’m surprised it’s taken us this long to come up with a Manolo for the Big Girl cocktail in the first place! I feel like I’ve failed you. But now I want to know, what would go in a Frog Water Cocktail?

Might I suggest filling a glass with dry champagne, dribbling in a just a hint of Benoit Serres Liqueur de Violette and finish off by dropping a sugar cube that has been soaked in Green Chartreuse in the glass right before serving.  The violet liqueur, aside from being delicious in champagne, plays into the joke that “frog water” used to be slang for perfume. The Green Chartreuse-soaked sugar cube could represent the little frog and has the added benefit of –like champagne and Liqueur de Violette also being from France.

Setting the poor little sugar amphibian on fire before submerging is also an option, if you particularly like your grenouilles en flambé.

Francesca is heading for a vacation in England, and is thinking that a meet-n’-greet over cocktails with our British readers would be superfantastic!

So, how about it, ladies? Shout if you live in London and would be available to meet with Francesca on March 25 or 26! More detailed time, date and place TBA. (In fact, Francesca will gladly take recommendations for a nice, sophisticated cocktail bar in London, preferably within easy distance of Russell Square, where she will be staying.)

xoxo!

Our internet friend Marnie asks a Very Good Question:

It seems like every single big-girl catalog pic I see, the models have long full wavy tresses.  Am I, like, forbidden to have a bob?  Do I need to spend my time worrying about pig face?  Can we talk about flattering hairstyles for the full of face and appled of cheek?  Because honestly, I really don’t feel like spending a year growing out my locks, or dropping major $$$ on some horrible America’s Next Top Model-esque extensions.

Dear Marnie,

The first rule of looking good is feeling good. Nothing, nothing is ever “forbidden,” and you should wear your hair however it looks and feels good for you, yourself.

Why do the plus-size models tend to have long hair?

First, Francesca submits that most models in general have long hair. Some have short hair, but, seriously, most grow their hair because they have great hair. Great hair, great skin, great teeth . . . that is why they are models. And because they are models, they make the time and financial investment to keep their hair primped and pampered and coiffed just so every day, no matter how long it is, and to have a professional stylist make their hair look incredible before they have their photos taken. Because they are models.  If we base our ideas of what looks good from the models, well then, we’d want to be thin, too, you know? Forget about what looks good on the models, even the plus-size models. Let us talk about us, the people who live lives that involve blowing the hair dry in the two minutes between gulping down a glass of Sunny Delight for breakfast and getting the kids into the car at 7:35 a.m.

Indeed for many (but not all) of the larger women, cutting the hair very short CAN (but does not NECESSARILY) emphasize the roundness of face, or the double chin, or could make the head appear proportionately smaller in relation to the bigger body. Many women grow their hair bigger on top to balance out the amazonian proportions down below.

But again, so much depends on you, your body, your hair, and of course your style and your way of life. Do you have thin, curly hair which becomes limper and less curly the longer it gets? Then perhaps a chin-length style which maximizes the volume and curls is best for you. Have your friends been giving you hints that your “big hair” went out of style in the 80’s, and just makes you look “big” all around, and besides you work as a litigator and maybe a shorter, sleeker style would be more professional? Then it is time for a haircut.

Francesca’s hair advice for the big girl is this: Take stock of your hairstyle every few years to make sure it is still working for you; color it at home or professionally if you are not absolutely thrilled with the color; beware of using too much bleach, too much henna, or too much “product”; use low necklines to elongate your face and shoulders if your hair cannot do it for you; and do whatever you can within the limits of your time, budget, and hair realities to make your hair look superfantastic every day. Do not skimp on the cut or forego the blow-drying in the morning if that is what you need to do to look your best. Remember, being fat and superfantastic can be hard, expensive work. Absolutely do the very best you can with what you’ve got!

After that, do not spend any time at all “worrying about pig face” or anything else. You’ve got living to do.

xoxo,

Francesca

PS Here are plus-size models with short or medium-length hair (and links to their clothes):

Avenue 

Torrid

Igigi

Anna Scholz 

Swimsuits for All 

Francesca’s last couple of posts, and the comments to them, leave her with an important question: For purposes of this blog, just how big constitutes big?

In recommending plus-size fashions, Francesca’s rule of thumb is that an item of clothing is fair game if it is available in a Size 16 and/or higher. Size 14 is often available in “regular” stores, albeit not as often as size 12, while Size 16 is usually the smallest size available in the plus-size stores. Francesca knows that one could write an entire blog on the travails of the girls who wear size 14, which is often considered too big for the regular stores and too small for the plus-size stores. But she has to make a mental border for herself somewhere. So, for this blog, size 16 is usually it. That is why she sometimes recommends clothing by J. Crew, who are not exactly known for catering to fat girls, because they do have an entire Size 16 section on their site (as well as fashions for the Tall girls, to whom Francesca sometimes wishes to nod and wink), though their failure to offer sizes 18 and up makes Francesca feel a bit squeamish about referring to them too often.

Then we come to the selections for the posts on “Big Girls in Art.” Several readers said that they do not believe that the woman (apparently Salome) in this painting is actually big:

Oh, oh, oh, now we have come straight into the hornet’s nest! For, though this woman  probably does wear a Size 16 or 18 on the bottom (she is a beautiful and voluptuous Pear, and very aesthetically pleasing, and probably has a hard time finding skirts and pants which fit her hips but are not too wide at the waist) Francesca fears, some readers may have looked at this image and thought “if that girl is big, what am I?” They may also have thought “Why is Francesca buying into the Big Bad Media idea that a woman with any fat on her is Big?”

Francesca will answer the second question first. In an ideal world, the Big Bad Media would not categorize people by their size at all. But the whole point of this blog is that our world is not ideal, and women’s whose hips or tummies or breasts are more than an arbitrary size are considered “Big” either in terms of where they can find clothes, or whether they are considered “too big” or “too fat” by others, or both.

The point of Big Girls in Art is to show that indeed that mysterious fault line (and Francesca chooses that term on purpose) is indeed arbitrary. There was a time when the woman with very generous hips was considered the ideal, and was celebrated in what was then The Media. There was a time when having a large butt was so attractive that women wore bustles to make theirs reach out to Indiana. In other words, Francesca wants to demonstrate that the problem is not us, it is this strange, arbitrary idea that thinner is better - an idea started, Francesca thinks, partly because thin women serve as better hangers on which to model the fashions on runways, and partly because having the time and money to maintain a perfectly flat belly indicates wealth in our age. The problem is not us or our genes or our class, it is the time.  Not so long ago, the woman whose genes made her predisposed to the waif-like frame was the one with the problem.

And in answer to the first question . . . if the woman in this painting is big, do you know what you are?

Beautiful.

Yesterday I posted about one of my favorite sites for historical reproduction clothing/fantasywear. Reader Margo contacted me and gave me a resource I hadn’t run across: her line of patterns for Renaissance clothing for both men and women. The women’s patterns are made to fit sizes from 2 to 30. The men’s go from 34 to 56. They cover everything from farthingales to doublets to standing ruffs and French hoods.
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If you are fat and single this Valentine’s day, get thee right now to Shapely Prose to read this post and all the comments.

Francesca hath spoken.

Five minutes and 58 seconds into her amazing first Fat Rant video, Joy Nash points out that sometimes, we blame things on our fat that are really not about our fat, but about others of our flaws (we all have them), or about factors that have nothing to do with us at all.

And, when we finally admit that not everything revolves around our fat, it can be quite liberating. Paradoxically, admitting that we’re flawed and make mistakes and turn people off for reasons like, say, our bitchiness, is actually quite freeing and empowering . . . more empowering than blaming everything on being fat, just to avoid the pain of examining what else might be “wrong” with ourselves.

Here is Manheim’s take on this idea, from her book “Wake Up, I’m Fat!” (a.k.a. The Best Fat Girl Book Ever):

What if I stopped blaming [my anthropomorphized fat] for everything? What if I stopped using him as an excuse? What if I stopped hiding behind him and entered into a covenant with myself that if I failed as an actor or a lover, it was my fault, my responsibility? It wouldn’t be easy. I would have so much more at stake, which meant I was going to have to work harder, prepare more thoroughly, and redouble my commitment to my art. From that point forward I wouldn’t let myself off the hook so easily with a simple “They didn’t choose me because I’m fat.” No, if they didn’t choose me, it was because I didn’t wow them. I stopped relying on my ever-present alibi and put all my energies into wowing them. These were my first baby steps on the journey of self-acceptance. And a funny thing happened on the way to the self-love forum: I learned that confidence, courage, and a little bit of sass can be very seductive.

Francesca has mixed feelings about this idea.

On the one hand, it ignores the fact that there are many, many people who — consciously or subconsciously — do indeed deny jobs or service or love to fat people, no matter how confident, talented, and giving the fat person may be.

On the other hand, there’s no denying that confidence, talent, and generosity of spirit go a long way, and that sometimes, the reasons people deny us what we want are not about our fat. They are about something else entirely, like our messiness or lateness or our having blonde hair when the guy likes brunettes.

Or they are about the frown we put on, the negative vibes we emit, when we worry and fret about how much our fat might stand in our way, instead of focusing with a smile on our gifts.

Francesca is back!

Oh, kissie kissie, it is so good to be here! Kissies on both cheeks! xoxo!

Where has Francesca been, you ask?

Francesca has been sick.

Francesca was so sick, my friends, that she did not even have the energy to crawl to her shoe closet in order to admire and caress her new Vaneli boots.

Can you imagine?

And all this time, Francesca has been thinking of her dear readers. In the depth of her feverish haze, she cried out repeatedly “I did not mean that one should say it out loud!” Because, you see, in my last post, oh so many days ago, when I suggested that the “question,” when a friend loses weight, should be

“did you lose the weight in a healthy way? Are you actually healthier now than you were before? If so, congratulations! If not, is worrying about your (subjective) beauty more important than worrying about your mental, emotional, and physical health? How can I support you in what you really need?”

Francesca did not mean that you should necessarily say these thing aloud! No, no, she meant that this would be the best attitude to take, and she wishes that our society in general took this approach. As to what to actually say to a good friend or a mere acquaintance who has lost weight . . . well, perhaps we can open that up for a discussion in a future post!

And the second thing I wish to say, in response to Plumcake’s last post, is that it is no secret that Francesca is a fan of the fantasy literature, and of the Rennaissance Faire clothing, and of the flowy, wispy, feminine clothing in general. But as many readers stated, there is good wispy clothing and bad wispy clothing; flowy clothing that shows off one’s style and coloring and shape to advantage, and flowy clothing that only serves to make one look like a cow; there are times to wear the Renaissance clothes and times to wear the Renaissance-inspired clothes and times to wear neither. And in general, a good rule of thumb is to aspire to look like the Renaissance Lady of Good Breeding, and not the Renaissance Lady of Ill Repute.

Francesca has noticed that a disproportionate percentage of the sci-fi/fantasy female fandom world is made up of our Big Sisters, and wonders why that is . . . it is an interesting social question. But do not mock the clothing out of hand! You would never believe how many compliments Francesca receives on her LOTR cape, which was only $12.99 on sale at Size Appeal but is coveted by most of her skinny, non-fanfic friends. Random people on the street stop to tell her how much they love her cape.

But she would not wear it to a red-carpet event.

In the mood for a good parody of the sort of ‘experts’ that often get trotted out in the War On Obesity? I know I am. Luckily, the superfantastic Alexandra Erin has created just such a parody site that has had me getting a great workout with all the belly laughs.

The Health Institute of Nutrition (THIN) is a scienterrific source of ‘good facts’ about the ease and healthiness of staying skinny at any cost. Read a few of these entries, and have a good laugh. Oh, and be sure to comment with descriptions of your efforts to help the cause and links to your favorite ‘good fact’ articles about weight and body image.

Need an example? Here’s a favorite of mine on the importance of BMI:

With just two statistics—height and weight—a physician can determine who is healthy and who is not. Everything about you as an individual—your exercise habits, eating patterns, lifestyle, and general moral rectitude—is laid bare with a single table.

It works like this: imagine for a moment that you are 5′10″ and weigh 173 pounds. You have a Body Mass Index of 24.9, which falls within the normal range. Good! Now imagine instead that you weigh 174 pounds. At a Body Mass Index of 25, you are overweight. Thus, you are an unsightly burden on society, you lazy, stupid cow. You are also going to die of complications from diabetes and heart disease.

Remember, parody is the sincerest form of poking logic holes in a bad argument. Poke away and have fun.

Francesca is feeling down in the dumps. The weather is, for lack of a better description, yucky, and she is inside, alone at home with her computer and her plants, feeling very blah.

But not to worry, the feeling is nothing that a little retail therapy cannot fix!

Here we have a very sweet cocktail dress with hand-beaded lace from Sydney’s Closet:

And here is a beautiful taffeta party dress from Saks Fifth Avenue. It does not work for Francesca’s particular body shape, but it might be darling on yours. And Francesca enjoys looking at it because it is so very pretty:

And, thinking ahead to spring, and colors, and every-day wear, Francesca is eyeing this feminine and affordable outfit from Silhouettes:

Ah, Francesca feels better already!

xoxo