Month November 2020

Things I Shouldn’t Wear: A Lookbook

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Hello, my name is Krys and I am a fat woman. I don’t use that term in a self-pitying way, it’s just a descriptor for the shape of my body. I’m fortunate that I generally don’t interact with people who make disparaging comments about my size, but posting pictures of myself on social media means risking that happening. Back in the summer, I posted a picture of myself in an outfit that I thought was really cute and received a comment from a man (because it’s often men who feel the need to voice negative thoughts about women’s bodies) saying something like “that’s disgusting.” It didn’t bother me because honestly, the negative opinions of anonymous internet people mean nothing to me. But it did inspire me to put together a plus size fashion lookbook featuring outfits that some people might think I shouldn’t wear as a fat person, but that I have totally worn anyway. It took me months to finally get around to it, but finally here we are!

I styled all of these outfits as I would wear them out of the house were there not a pandemic, down to accessories and makeup. Also, these photos are unedited, except for cropping them because shooting photos alone is tricky and I wound up with way too much headroom, lol.

OUTFIT 1: Easy, Breezy, Summery

WHY I SHOULDN’T WEAR IT: A bit of my stomach is showing, plus I’m exposing a lot of leg and upper arm, body parts that overweight people often feel self conscious about.

So let’s start with the outfit that kicked everything off, this crop top and shorts combo, which was really just an experiment for a warm summery day spent hanging around at home. For ages I didn’t understand why companies made crop tops in plus sizes, but I like the fit of this one a lot. However, it does have the unfortunate habit of riding up in the front, because my stomach is larger than my bust, which is why I usually wear this top with a high waisted skirt. I did make one improvement over the version of this outfit I posted in the summer and that is the belt. I bought these shorts a couple summers ago in the size 24 I buy all my pants in, but because clothing sizes make no sense they turned out to be a bit too big. The belt holds up the shorts so I don’t show more belly than I want to in an everyday outfit. (I love this belt, btw, because it is reversible! I’m wearing it brown side out here, but usually wear it black with my work pants.)

OUTFIT 2: Let’s Go For a Swim

WHY I SHOULDN’T WEAR IT: A fat woman in a two piece bathing suit that exposes her midriff? Preposterous!

I hopped on the “fatkini” trend before I gave in to crop tops because I was sick of hanging around waiting for damp tankini fabric to dry. It just can get kind of clammy and gross. I like a skirt bottom not because I’m self conscious about my hips/butt, but because I just think it’s cute! This top and bottom were both bought at Torrid a few years ago. The top is maybe a little too cleavage-y to wear at a pool where children might be, but no one has criticized me to my face yet. The top does ride up on me in the front because it’s in that “long line bra” style, but I appreciate that it isn’t a halter top because so many swimsuits are built that way and I haven’t found a way to wear one without being strangled.

OUTFIT 3: I’d Wear This On a Date If There Wasn’t a Plague

WHY I SHOULDN’T WEAR IT: Horizontal stripes! And also here are my legs again.

I’m a big lover of stripes, and there was a point in my life where I had so many I had to literally make a rule that I couldn’t buy any more. This particular top is about decade old and it’s got this button detailing on the long cuffs that I just adore. The skirt is a newer acquisition from Torrid and I love the slightly vintage vibe to it and that it has pockets. Some people may think that blue and red is a weird color combination, but I’m quite fond of it and wear it often. I think this particular outfit would also be cute with some black tights and boots, but I felt showing my legs was more thematically appropriate for this post.

OUTFIT 4: Glam Time!

WHY I SHOULDN’T WEAR IT: It’s very tight and look! There are my upper arms and legs!

Because of the size differential between my stomach and my bust I struggle with dresses sometimes, but this one is thankfully not awkwardly loose in the bust. I love this teal color and gravitate towards it a lot, especially for fancy party clothes. I would absolutely wear tights with this if I was going to be leaving my house in it because it is so short there is a serious risk of flashing people, but even with tights I consider this the sexiest dress I own. It’s still relatively modest though thanks to the bars of fabric across the neckline. A funny story about this dress is that one time I was wearing it while out with friends and one of them looked at me and said, “It looks like your boobs are in prison.”

So if by now it isn’t apparent to you, I’m a big believer in wearing whatever it is you want to and feel comfortable in. Some people spend way too much of their time policing the things other people wear when it really isn’t any of their fucking business. I just thought that maybe posting these outfits might help someone else to realize, “if that person can wear that thing I’ve been wanting to try then I can too, regardless of what assholes want to say!”

In many aspects of life I have yet to master the art of not giving a fuck about other people’s opinions, but when it comes to clothing, I’m pretty much there. So why not try something new you’ve been wanting to try?

Apple Picking in a Pandemic

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It feels like a fact of life that if you grew up anywhere near an orchard someone took you apple picking at least once as a child. My own childhood apple picking memories are not my favorite. Us kids were grumpy about getting up super early, usually there was at least one dramatic squabble, and we always wound up coming home with what felt like Way Too Many Apples. Oh, and as the morning progressed and warmed up So Many Bees would terrorize the orchard seeking the sweet juice of apples that had fallen on the ground.

I believe these are Jonagolds, a variety of apple that I didn’t know existed before this trip.

So it’s probably not surprising that as an adult I’ve largely had an aversion to apple picking and have turned down several invitations from my friends over the years. The only time I said yes the weather was terrible and we drove all the way out to the orchard only to decide it was too awful out to go apple picking, so we wound up exploring the downtown of a nearby town instead. But this fall when I received an apple picking invite I jumped at it because I was quite desperate to see my friends. Because of covid and the United States’ awful response to it I haven’t spent any time with my friends since March. We’ve been keeping in touch, but it’s not really the same as being able to hang out together in person.

Many of the rows of apple trees led up to this area of mostly leafless trees that were spread out in such a circular way that I joked it looked like a ritual would be done there, lol. My plant-loving mom thinks they’re cherry trees.

It was an exciting moment when we realized that apple picking was a viable option for a socially distanced hangout activity and we quickly arranged a date. The date happened to coincide with my mom being away at her little house in upstate New York, so I invited everyone to come hang out in my backyard afterwards. It -also- happened to be our friend B’s birthday that weekend, so he planned a whole menu of food and entertainment for our little group of six.

Our group setting off an an apple adventure!

And before you cry “social distancing!” we played this gathering really safe. We generally kept a good distance between ourselves (there was no hugging, even though we really wanted to!) and except for eating, which we did sitting apart from each other, we all wore masks the whole time. There was also liberal use of hand sanitizer and hand washing. Everyone had their own sanitizer because 2020, but I also set up a little table that I called the Sanitation Station. Perhaps some people would find this gathering a bit risky, but thankfully we and our immediate circles have been covid-free so far, so we decided to go ahead with the gathering.

Sanitation Station set up in the backyard of my house.

The orchard we went to is called Melick Orchard, which is about an hour from where we live, but was well worth the drive, I think. It was a really beautiful morning to be outside, sunny and just a little warm, and we took a lot of pleasure just from being outside and being together in person instead of over video chat. We made a reservation for 9:30 a.m., which turned out to be a very good choice because by the time we left about an hour and a half later the amount of people around was starting to increase dramatically. It wasn’t quite so many people that social distancing was impossible, but it was starting to perhaps be a little more crowded by the entry areas/little store than we were comfortable with. But out in the orchard there is a lot of space and there are many varieties of apples in long, wide rows. Each type of apples was available in multiple rows so if, for instance, we saw a family taking up a lot of space in one of the rows we could simply choose another one.

If you look closely you can see cows at the farm across the road, which we were very excited to see.

There was also a pumpkin patch in the back corner of the property, in a corner at the end of the apple area, but it looked a little sad and picked over, and none of use were super interested in pumpkins anyway, so we didn’t peruse it at all. Plus I doubted that any of us really wanted to lug a pumpkin over the considerable distance back to the entry area. Melick Orchards also has pick your own fruit during other seasons and on our way back to the front of the property we passed some rows of peach trees that I thought had a certain magical charm.

One of the enchanting rows of peach trees.

Once we paid for our apples we piled back into our cars and drove to my house where we quickly set up a production area for preparing apples for pie, under B’s supervision. Somehow we wound up with an obscene amount of apples cut up! Luckily B had accidentally bought four bottom crusts instead of just two (but only two top crusts). However, even after filling all of the crusts and improvising tops for all of them there were still So Many Apples left. (Don’t worry, the leftovers went home with party guests and did not go to waste!)

This is what we had left -after- I filled the four pie shells. I’m not sure how this happened.

Our original plan was to stay outside and rig up a TV on my family’s picnic table to play an obscure Wii game called Fortune Street that B wanted to show us, but just when I thought this apple picking day would be devoid of bees since we hadn’t seen any at the orchard, we were driven inside by them because one of our group is allergic. My house fortunately has a good amount of room for sitting spaced out, and we opened all the windows and doors so there would be good safe ventilation while we settled in to play.

I turned my back for one second and of course one of the pies suddenly had something lewd cut into it, lol.

Fortune Street is a game that’s kind of like a cross between Mario Party and Monopoly, but there’s a stock market? And all kinds of weird business types? I don’t know, I only got the vaguest sense of it because I didn’t play. Instead, I was fussing about with the pies, trying to make use of the Too Many Apples that had been prepared as I mentioned above. I didn’t mind missing out on Fortune Street, because to be honest, it seemed really confusing. Apart from B, who really really loves the game, my other friends who were playing seemed to be enjoying the experience of playing together more than they enjoyed the actual gameplay itself.

I don’t have any photos from this part of the day, so here’s a dried up cornfield at the orchard that I thought was pretty!

Fortune Street took so long that we were losing daylight fast by the time it was done. So B heated up the spaghetti squash he brought us to have for dinner (and I boiled some spaghetti for those who didn’t want the squash), and we ate in my quickly darkening backyard. By the time we were done it was getting too dark to be out in my unlit backyard so instead of eating pie together we split them up and everyone went on their merry way. Instead of hugging goodbye like we would have in the Before Times we all took turns clunking ankles with each other, which my friend L came up with earlier this year as as a weird, slightly cursed covid handshake.

My friend S looking determinedly for apples that sparked joy.

It was really nice to see everyone, but equally unpleasant to say goodbye. The sadness I felt immediately after everyone left me alone in my house almost made me wish we hadn’t met up at all. It felt a bit cruel of the universe to let me have a taste of the time with friends I should have been getting to indulge in all year, only to have to swiftly return to the interminable question — “When will I get to spend time like this with them again?” Don’t get me wrong, I had an extremely lovely day and I’m very glad we were able to have our little gathering, our beautiful warm golden autumn day. But in the immediate aftermath the silence of my house was very loud and very lonely.

A family photo. ^_^

I hate to end this post about a happy day on a downer, but also I prefer to be honest about my feelings and I just miss my friends so damn much! So our day of apple picking turned out a bit bittersweet for me in the end. But I definitely don’t regret doing it, and wish I could live it again now as the cold, dark part of the year creeps over my area and makes me feel pandemic loneliness even more strongly than I did before.

A bin of pumpkins for sale near the orchard entrance that was simultaneously reassuring and disconcerting. “It’s Harvest Time…try”

Putting Pen to Page (or How I Write Best)

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In September and October I missed posting blogs again and somehow that makes me feel like trash. It shouldn’t. I’m the only one who cares. One post a month was a self-imposed goal I set at the start of the year, a desperate attempt to introduce a little discipline into my meandering life of picked up and dropped hobbies. I like writing. I’m constantly creating stories and even portions of potential blog posts in my head. And yet somehow I have now for the third time this year missed posting. At least in July I had a good excuse. I was in a car accident in the last third of the month that wound up totaling my vehicle and I was too stressed dealing with the fallout from that to even consider trying to post anything. But for September and October I have no such excuse besides the fact that every time I set up at my laptop to try and put something together the words only reluctantly, awkwardly come out. It’s a fight every time.

The handwritten draft of this post.

Most nights I get home from work and wind up doing nothing more productive than, say, taking a shower or watering my pumpkins in Animal Crossing. For nearly two months this summer I played Red Dead Online every day, saving up imaginary gold to buy an imaginary horse, putting off doing anything in the real world that might improve me in some way like playing one of the instruments I own again, doing one of the crafts I keep meaning to do, or yes, writing down any of the things I have in my head, even if they’re not destined to be read by anyone who isn’t me.

Starting in middle school and continuing up through my college graduation at the end of 2012 I filled multiple notebooks with scrawled stories. Yes they are largely messes that no one should ever read (and my handwriting is such that they’d have trouble trying anyway), but I had fun writing it all down. Even now connecting a pen to paper is the most natural way for me to write and that is the only reason this post exists at all. I pulled myself out of the well of self loathing and guilt I fall into when I know I could be doing something productive instead of looping between the same three or four apps on my phone by hauling myself to my desk and grabbing a notebook and pen, breaking the nightly cycle that I somehow so often find unbreakable.

One of my high school notebooks from my collaging things phase, edited to hide personal information I’d written on the front.

I know I will clean up and potentially rearrange my thoughts before they’re available for you to read on my blog, but I’m realizing that my brain apparently does not like my inner words to exist outside of my head unless it is in some kind of ink. In about half an hour I wrote so much more than in an equivalent time on the computer and what I wrote sounds better overall. Somehow a pen in my hand opens more creative phrasing pathways in my brain than computer keys under my fingers.

So maybe this is how I’ll have to blog from now on, drafting all of my posts by hand first and then typing them up after. And if that’s what it’s going to take, then fine. Because I set myself a goal, made myself a promise, and if I accomplish nothing else in 2020, at least I’ll be able to look back and see that I wrote, see that I didn’t totally waste all of my time due to my persistent lack of discipline because I made 12 little things. I don’t give a shit if anyone reads any of it. I give a shit about fulfilling a commitment that isn’t strictly required and, for once in what feels like a very long time, following through.