I have to run, but wanted to quickly applaud you ALL on keeping the comments to this highly emotive and prickly subject civil, respectful and informative. It was my hope that we would learn from this thread - and I know I have.

Thank you, Fabbers. You inspire me daily.

Alexandra--weight and fashion have a complex relationship, don't they? To start with weight... my entire family has been large for generations, and they were hard-working folk. Just saying there is a genetic component. I was slimmer as a young woman who was VERY physically active. Even then, I was a size 12. My ex-husband called me fat. He also called Princess Diana fat. Every once in a while I would starve myself down to size 8-10 so I could wear the same higher-end clothing as my slimmer social circle and earn my ex's approval. That yo-yo dieting did me no favors. Others have quoted the studies that show what happens with that.

Yo-yo dieting programs the metabolism to slow way, way down.

Now, thirty years later, I eat 1100 calories a day, every day, and I don't lose weight. I also don't gain it. I stay a size 16. To lose weight, I would need to eat only 900 calories a day, every day (my Fitbit and I have proven this number) or I would have to spend two hours in the gym, or walking 5 miles, every day. That's not undoable, but it isn't exactly productive for me to starve. The hours spent walking aren't possible because of soon-to-be-replaced knees. Swimming is better, but timing my day around trips to the nearest health club pool isn't exactly productive, either, since it cuts into my job and/or the care and feeding of my family. Changing myself is possible, of course it is, but it's far from easy and would require major, not minor, life changes.

As for fashion, here's the thing. I like to look good. Fashion makes me happy and more socially confident. I like color. I like quality. I have disposable income and I'm willing to spend it on things to wear. So where do I find clothing that fits and flatters? It's trial and error, but there are brands that do sell what I'm looking for. Less selection, to be sure, and often on the costly side, but good, beautiful clothing. I lurk here on YLF looking for new "finds". I try to share those I find so other plus gals can benefit.

Do I wish every fashion designer created clothing for women like me? You bet. Who wouldnt? Do I want to force them to design things they don't want to design? Absolutely not. I like to think $$$$ would do the persuading. There's a significant market for plus-sized women. Look at me and all the other fashionable women over size 12. There are more and more designers willing to cater to our buying power. Also, it's worth considering that plus-sized MEN have problems finding stylish clothing also. It's not just us gals. We just talk about it more.

All in all, I think there's less complaining than there used to be.

What ChewySpaghetti said, to a tee. Also LeDonna.
I realize I've have been whining lately about sizing....but my weight gain is due to a combination of physical injury, things in my private life & work.
But even when I was skinnier I was still sized out of some designers.
And like others have said you can be a size 12, healthy & sized out.

I keep typing & deleting words, so I will stop now.

Again I did not want to hurt feelings. I apologize if I have. I appreciate the question and the post topic. I also have great respect for differing opinions. Espically here where we can ask the difficult questions.

I find myself nodding in agreement with so many varied comments and this is why I keep coming back to ylf. Well that and the fashion. I LOVE Seeing somones style journey.

I've had a yo-yoing weight problem since my son was born--a swing of 80-100 lbs. I feel SO strongly that there is something metabolic motivating the weight gain that is beyond normal (or even very diligent and committed) ability to manage. I'm under the care of an endocrinologist, now, but things are on a good (weight-loss) swing and she's not optimistic that it even sounds like an endocrinological issue. What to do???!!!

Anyway, I do have some sympathy for manufacturers because it seems like there are so many ways in which a woman might gain weight (in different amounts and in different places) that it becomes increasingly hard to make a standard "fit" that will address the issues of more than a few--the fit differences between hourglass, pear, and apple that can be accommodated in small sizes get totally out of hand at bigger sizes. So, in the effort to serve everybody, all the clothing becomes tent like, over-big everywhere, and shapeless.

On the other hand, it seems like manufacturers think that women lose their eyesight or discernment as their weight goes up. Once you are shopping in the plus-size department, the fabrics often all feel cheap, the patterns are super-lurid, and there's a sort of tackiness (like applied sequin detail or embroidered ladybugs) that infects nearly everything. Where is the acknowledgement that a woman who wore minimalistic, tailored clothes in natural fibers when she was a size 2/4, may STILL want the same overall style and access to good fabrics when she is a size 14 or 16 or 20?

I got fat! My eyeballs still work, though!!!!

I love this thread, and wish we could have a group "break out" session with each other in person to do a deep dig into these issues. I relate to so many of the comments--- particularly AuthorLinda. I'm not a complainer, and certainly not about clothing availability. If an item is not carried in my size, or doesn't fit in "my size", it's easy for me to release it and decide,"that's not my sweater!" I learned a very painful lesson when I reached my "goal weight" many years ago: I had been heavy/obese since I was a teen, and I had a core belief that when I reached a certain weight/size, I would be able to shop in ANY store and buy ANY article of clothing and it would FIT ME. Obviously, that's wrong---but when a person is "sized out" their entire life, they IMAGINE that it would all be so easy if they had the opportunity to shop off the rack in EVERY store. What I found was 1) It is even MORE difficult to find properly fitting clothes, probably because plus size clothing typically has more ease built into it, and 2) the selection is absolutely overwhelming. A department store, which had been my happy shopping home in their Encore/Salon Z...became a nightmare for me. I lost 90 pounds and kept it off for about 5 years, and then my father became ill and died, and I became responsible for my 101 year old grandmother. I no longer have the time or desire to dedicate to the eating restrictions necessary to lose or even maintain weight. Spending every day with my grandmother, who has "love goggles" for me reminds me that my value comes from within, not with my size/weight. It's still a daily struggle though.

One more thought, though. I know availability is better than when I was a young teen/pre-teen. My dear, sweet mother who somehow managed to NEVER complain about her body weight or my body size throughout my childhood drove me at least 60 miles each way to a "specialty shop" in Dallas which carried "plus size" clothing for girls, and made sure I had a couple of cute store-bought outfits to go with the ones she made for me every school year. I so wish she was here so I could thank her again---at the time, going to that tiny little store for overweight children felt like such a punishment, but it was truly an (expensive)act of love.

Ok, I reread what you wrote, you weren't flippant, and possibly trying to be well meaning, but it smacks of living in a privileged bubble.

I too found it offensive and really don't know what to say but i keep coming back and reading all of the responses.

So...it's one of the great spiritual lessons not to stew in your own anger, thereby punishing yourself further and achieving nothing...and therein, I think, lies the answer to the question to the matter of sizing. Changing to the fit the mould can be very harmful, and women would like to stop harming themselves. The cost, the 'fix,' is often not reasonable but, rather, punishing. Or not even possible, actually, depending on your underlying physiology and shape. 'Not easy' is, in fact, often a lot more than that...all the way to impossible.

Think corsets and rearranging your internal organs. Think anorexia and bullimia. Think silicon breast implants that cause cancer and slip down through your whole body to your feet. Think about the severity of gastric bypass, having a part of your digestive system removed. Of dying from lipo.

Think about just the cost of sewing your own clothes or a diet plan.

Also, you still need something to wear through all that and we don't live in a subsistence economy anymore where things like clothing are something we provide for ourselves seriously. We don't do that with food either.

Also a side note: I'm a type 1 diabetic. People, even medical people, confuse that with type 2 and I've learned a lot about it. Let me tell you, people are brutal to type 2s. 8 hours of exercise a day and a meal plan of lettuce and being attacked ('helpfully advised') for using a packet of sugar (totally irrelevant and without impact except to the taste of your coffee it's so small)...that's just a No.

But Alexandra, don't get me wrong. I agree with Gaylene (surprise, Gaylene ) - this is an excellent and important question to ask. Because it's a question about punishing oneself not only needlessly but to one's detriment. And punishing others too accidentally. Sometimes I'm the problem, but sometimes I'm not.

Also I have to repeat my story about going to China: I'm a big fat heffer there. I thought I could go shopping, because everything is made in China. Not so. And I'll add, because I've got some Chinese genes, my doctor would be happier if I disappeared when I turned sideways. But those darned German genes get in the way of that.

There's a big question of 'whose standard.'

To look at this from another perspective, I'm a small-sized person who started seriously lifting weights 6 years ago and in that time has managed to (purposely) pack on a good amount of muscle mass. Concurrently, I've also participated on a few online fitness forums for women who lift and, let me tell you, one of the most common questions/comments/rants among women who've started putting on muscle is, "OMG, shopping is suddenly a nightmare! Any jeans that fit over my quads/calves are way too big in the waist. Forget about buying a jacket that I can get my lats and shoulders in. Any why are the sleeves on everything so small? Am I doomed to wear nothing but leggings again for the rest of my life?!?!"

Should these women stop complaining and just, y'know, quit going to the gym so much, let their muscle atrophy, and re-obtain a more societally-approved non-athletic body type that fits more easily into what the clothing manufacturers want to sell them? (That seems to me the parallel to what you are suggesting for plus-sized women, Alexandra.) Or should they enjoy the bodies they have while finding ways to dress them--getting tips from other athletically-built women about which mainstream jeans brands are most likely to fit over their quads, glutes, and calves, suggestions that all their business clothes are sadly going to need a trip to the tailor, etc--while also agitating for clothing manufactures to realize that more and more women are seriously working out and that athletically-built women want to buy clothes too? The latter seems more productive to me. (And there are a few niche companies that have listened and sprung up to meet this market, like Barbell Apparel. Whether they'll be profitable enough to survive is yet to be seen of course.)

What my long-winded analogy is meant to convey is that I personally don't think it's unreasonable at all for consumers to, instead of trying to change their bodies, say "hey! I look like THIS, other people also look like THIS, please provide us with nice things that fit these bodies and perhaps we'll buy them!"

Thank you, everyone, for your considered responses. I'm grateful for YLF. It's the only place I know on the internet where members are both open-minded and open (in terms of sharing thoughts and experiences) enough that I could ask this question.

Nadya, thank you for the link. It was educational. Also, I had no idea that advertising open positions by gender was once the norm.

Kaelyn, interesting point of view. Do people really have a "right to feel good" and a "right to have clothing they like"? I can buy the first one, it sort of goes with our pursuit of happiness. I could even buy the second one as long as it didn't involve placing the responsibility for producing said clothing on someone else.

Chewy, I'm sorry you found my post offensive. I didn't intend for it to be and I tried very hard to choose the right words to convey that. I do not assume that "plus sized women were once average sized women". What I know is that we were all born as little babies, generally under 10 lbs. Everyone's growth, however much of it there is, is then fueled by food. Some people are fed foods that don't work for their bodies. When this is obvious, with symptoms like instant vomiting and diarrhea, it is usually quickly corrected by elimination of the offending food. When the connection is less obvious, with perhaps the only symptom being that the kid (or adult) is overweight, the elimination is harder to make and often not even considered. Maybe because obesity is not considered a symptom of food sensitivity. I think it should be. Because then we could divorce the emotional/shame thing from this and treat the underlying issue.

Angie, I'm trying to wrap my head around what you said and what I'm coming up against is the fashion/fashionable part. Who decides what is fashionable? Is it the fashion industry itself? Is it consumers voting with their money? (Again, I'm not being flippant, just feeling a little dense and trying to figure out where these puzzle pieces go, so if there is a thread about this already, please point me to it.) Because what I'm thinking is that it goes beyond clothes, no? So there is a fashionable figure - the neat hourglass these days and in this society, but different elsewhere and at other times in history, right? From that point of view, it makes sense that most fashionable clothes would be designed for this figure and everybody else gets just the basics. I'm not saying it's fair, just that logically the argument works. So who can change things so that fashionable includes everyone? And would it then still be fashionable? Because it seems to me that the whole premise of fashion is exclusivity.

Aziraphale, thank you. I didn't mean to make it sound like obesity is shameful. Far from it. What I am questioning is why so many people consider obesity a given, rather than treating it as a symptom. Yes, there are people who are heavy on purpose and happy about it, but it seems like for every one of them, there's a hundred of those who have all sorts of emotional baggage about it. Wouldn't it be better for this second group to figure out what it is that's causing their obesity? (I'm an INTJ and a nurse so for me, it all comes down to logic, symptoms, interventions, and everybody being healthy because my main shtick is prevention.) Those pictures from a hundred years ago actually support my theory that what people eat matters. Because those plump working class people may have been eating foods that for them were like wheat is for me.

You made a point about people trying to make ends meet and not having enough time to scrutinize their diet. Maybe this should not be left for so late in life. Maybe it should be taught in schools - nutrition, cooking, that kind of stuff. I mean, when is the last time a non-math major used what they learned about sine, cosine, and tangent? (I know I hadn't given it a single thought for at least a decade and a half, until my sister's step-kid needed help with his homework.) Maybe that time would be better spent on life skills.

Suz, thank you for the paradigm shift. Social change. I can get with that. It takes a lot of people to get that to happen. So what can we skinny people do to help this come about? How do we help?

Xtabay, yes, I agree that"looking good in your clothes should be something that's reasonably attainable for all bodies". I'm not sure that RTW is the answer though. Maybe if it's seen as what it really is, namely ready-to-alter, we can get closer.

Ledonna, thank you for sharing your experiences so openly and eloquently.

ElCee, hmm, ok, that was a new one for me. I usually shop Lands' End and L.L.Bean where the regular sizes go to 18 and plus sizes start at 38" waist. Even on Nordstrom, regular sizes seem to include 12 and 14 (I checked Eileen Fisher, Tory Burch, and Tahari sizing charts but I'm not sure how representative they are of other brands sold there). I get the shoe thing. My feet are narrow and low volume, and few companies cater to that.

Gaylene, thank you. You have a good point about benefit to one vs. benefit to many.

Anna, yes, I live in a bubble. We all have our own. The only way out that I can think of is to ask questions, listen, and try to understand. Not just accept, but truly understand.

Rachy, I was hoping you would chime in Whose standard, exactly.

I don't believe designers are morally obligated to serve all sizes. It would be nice, convenient, and inclusive, but let's face it: if a critical mass felt strongly enough, they could boycott certain brands or individuals or fund more inclusive designers. I don't like being sized out any more than the next person, but unless it's a uniform, or mandatory gear, I still see shopping brands of my choosing to be a luxury, not a right.

That said, for a non-specialist, I'm quite well read on nutritional and metabolic literature and feel that weight--not health-- is often beyond our control, in terms of both genetics and epigenetics For ex., my grandmother's life-long heavy smoking habit and my mother's obesity likely made me more predisposed to weighing more, independent of my own lifestyle habits.
Even if obese individuals lose weight, there's no guarantee that their optimally healthy bodies will be able to sustain a normal weight long-term. An abundance of literature shows the challenges individuals have in maintaining weight and it's simplistic to believe that most people succumb to bad habits.

Moreover, yo-yo dieting within a 10lb range is considered more unhealthy than simply maintaining excess weight and leading an otherwise healthy lifestyle. Thankfully, research in the past two decades has helped dispel the idea that fat tissue is passive and is simply filled or emptied; on the contrary, fat tissue is hormonally active and in some people, will exert tremendous hormonal influence in preventing weight regulation.

By the way, I've done elimination diets and am physically active and cannot lose weight, even when weighing my food and tracking every morsel at 1300 calories/day.

Tl;dr: Placing the onus on individuals to lose weight assumes that it's something that can easily and readily be done, when research suggests otherwise.

I don't believe designers are morally obligated to serve all sizes. It would be nice, convenient, and inclusive, but let's face it: if a critical mass felt strongly enough, they could boycott certain brands or individuals or fund more inclusive designers. I don't like being sized out any more than the next person, but unless it's a uniform, or mandatory gear, I still see shopping brands of my choosing to be a luxury, not a right.

That said, for a non-specialist, I'm quite well read on nutritional and metabolic literature and feel that weight--not health-- is often beyond our control, in terms of both genetics and epigenetics. For ex., my grandmother's life-long heavy smoking habit and my mother's obesity likely made me more predisposed to weighing more, independent of my own lifestyle habits.
Even if obese individuals lose weight, there's no guarantee that their optimally healthy bodies will be able to sustain a normal weight long-term. An abundance of literature shows the challenges individuals have in maintaining weight and it's simplistic to believe that most people succumb to bad habits.

Moreover, yo-yo dieting within a 10lb range is considered more unhealthy than simply maintaining excess weight and leading an otherwise healthy lifestyle. Thankfully, research in the past two decades has helped dispel the idea that fat tissue is passive and is simply filled or emptied; on the contrary, fat tissue is hormonally active and in some people, will exert tremendous hormonal influence in preventing weight regulation.

By the way, I've done elimination diets and am physically active and cannot lose weight, even when weighing my food and tracking every morsel at 1300 calories/day.

Tl;dr: Placing the onus on individuals to lose weight assumes that it's something that can easily and readily be done, when research suggests otherwise.

All I can say is, WOW, I love the women on this forum!

This is interesting. I think of weight in an entirely different way.

I've always been within the "off the rack" size range, so I've never had to personally face the plus size clothing desert. However, my sister is plus sized. We were both taught and modeled the same concepts of healthy eating and activity, and more or less adhere to them, but my sister has always been larger than me. She simply was predestined to be a heavier person. I suspect she could go through extreme measures to fit into non-plus sizes, but I doubt she could do it without extreme measures. I've seen her struggle with weight loss using the same techniques that work for me and others. Minor weight loss is relatively easy, but we know that significant weight loss is very difficult and almost always doomed to failure. It has taken a really long time to start understanding that. Frankly, my sister would probably need bariatric surgery to be a non-plus size person. Which makes me ask: why should she be forced to extreme measures to accommodate a societal bias that doesn't reflect the truth of the body she and a large segment of our population have?

Looking at it from another angle, I am a rectangle body type. I don't have much of a waist. That makes it challenging to fit clothing that is cut for a more classically hourglass shape. I can diet and slim my waist somewhat, but my hips get smaller too, so I'll never have a proportionately smaller waist. To get a truly smaller waist, I would need surgery to remove my floating ribs. Obviously, I'm not doing that. My luck is that my physical deviation from the standard is within what is culturally accepted as fine, so I am accommodated by retailers. My sister's deviation from the standard is also very common but is less culturally acceptable and therefore not as commonly accommodated. If you'd agree that it would be unreasonable to expect that I would have ribs removed to fit into an hourglass standard, why is it that extreme weight loss seems less significant?

I am struck by this statement.

"What I am questioning is why so many people
consider obesity a given, rather than treating it as a symptom. Yes, there are
people who are heavy on purpose and happy about it, but it seems like for every
one of them, there's a hundred of those who have all sorts of emotional baggage
about it. Wouldn't it be better for this second group to figure out what it is
that's causing their obesity?"

The reason that so many people have emotional baggage around being overweight, is that we are told from a very early age that we, as women, are not ok unless we are thin. That message comes from absolutely everywhere. Viewing obesity as a symptom suggests that there is a behavioral problem to be addressed. Increasingly in fact, many women simply don't feel that way. Maybe what needs to be addressed is our feelings of self worth as well as cultural attitudes towards size. I am another one that does not feel that women should have to take up sewing in order to dress themselves. While I am not overweight myself, I have been at several times in my life. As for most women, the reasons for it were complicated. I happen to have a life that allows my to run daily and the resources to eat a relatively "healthy" diet but that's just my life and I'm certainly not interested in trying to win anyone over. I don't think my way of eating is better than anyone else's.

Not everyone has the same values around weight and I think that has to be respected. I love seeing plus size women who seem confident and happy and who take as much pleasure in clothes as anyone else. They project as much beauty as thin women. I do think that the clothing industry needs to address women of all sizes--I don't really understand the other argument and particularly don't like the idea that any woman who is plus sized should necessarily be on a mission to become something else.

As for health issues and weight -- I also don't think these are questions that we get to decide for other people. Again, life is too complex. What we put in our mouths is a very personal decision and sometimes not a top priority -- no one should be judged for that.

In summary, I guess what bothers me most is the idea that being overweight should only rationally be a temporary state of being -- that the only rational goal is to be "slim." We as women have been sold that forever and as others have pointed out, at great cost.

YLF -- you all are much more calm, kind and sane in the wake of Alexandra's initial post and edit than I could ever be.

This is going to be wordy, but I promise not to turn it into the bleep fest that is raging in my head. It is a sensitive issue, even for people who aren't plus size.

I've seen a lot of people mention how medications, stress, menopause, and other factors can cause weight gain. It's spot on. Absolutely spot on.

As somebody with COPD who can't exercise strenuously, I've just learned to love myself where I am, extra fluff and all. Part of my extra fluff is related to the hysterectomy that doctors deemed medically necessary before I was 40. The hormonal changes were brutal.

While I am not plus sized, I'm also not the ideal body type that is catered to in stores. I have strong shoulders and strong arms, and they are hard to fit. I was a stagehand for a number of years, and stagehands have muscles. I'm fortunate that my COPD isn't so advanced that I can't be just active enough (if I pace myself) to maintain my wonderful strong shoulders and arms that I freaking earned the hard way. Had I been able to STAY a stagehand, I'm fairly certain that my arms and shoulders would have kept getting bigger and stronger until I was sized out of many brands. Now that I'm not a stagehand, and I have to have steroids a couple of times a year to knock out infections before I literally cannot breathe, I've added a few pounds to the middle and my butt that maybe I could lose if I quit eating or something. I already eat pretty healthy, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give up anything else because life is too short. COPD has taken enough from me, I'm not giving it anything else before I just have to if I want to live.

If I'm having problems in the 8-10 size range (and have to buy overcoats in the size 14 range and good luck with that at many retailers), I can't even begin to imagine my mom's frustration with trying to find cute clothes now that her RA meds have caused her to go from the high end of standard sizing into solid plus size territory. And there's not much she can do about the weight gain if she wants to maintain some sort of pain-free quality of life. So I think it is absolute bullshit that retailers don't make nice clothes easier to obtain for my mom. My mom deserves to feel good about herself regardless of what the rheumatoid arthritis and the medicine has done to her body.

When even the ever polite and always elegant (and non-confrontational) Tim Gunn has gone off about the issue, it might be a problem that needs to be addressed.

And as it was said earlier, what if women had just changed their attitudes instead of demanding the right to vote? What if Martin Luther King Jr had convinced people to change their attitudes instead of demanding equality for blacks? What if everybody had just changed their attitudes about Jews instead of making the Germans stop exterminating them? Great social change doesn't happen by changing my attitude about social injustice; it comes from forcing change so that social injustice doesn't happen.

Lastly, I will also say that many women who could potentially lose the weight and wear standard sizes once again aren't helped by a constant barrage of negative messaging. If I bought into all the messaging about what is the ideal body type, I wouldn't feel I was worthy of existing, much less looking good at my current size 8-10. If plus sized women aren't afforded the opportunity to feel good about themselves as they are, where the hell are they supposed to find the self-worth and motivation to even think about trying to lose weight?

I commend all your civil responses to Alexandra's post.

Brie, I think Alexandra's response to Anna speaks for many of us on the forum:

"Anna, yes, I live in a bubble. We all have our own. The only way out that I can think of is to ask questions, listen, and try to understand. Not just accept, but truly understand."

Asking questions leads to responses which help break the bubbles in which we all exist. Breaking out of our bubbles can help us understand other perspectives which, hopefully, results in greater empathy. Attacking someone for daring to ask a question stops that process in its tracks.

The YLF forum is unique because most of the women here try to understand each other instead of bashing someone into submission. That's due to Angie's influence and insistence on civility. Sad to think it's so rare.

I guess I really don't understand what is so unreasonable about wanting clothing designers/manufacturers to produce clothing in a wider range of sizes. I don't even see why it would be difficult really. Clothing is already produced in a range of sizes--why not just increase the range?

Also, to the comment,
"Because it seems to me that the whole premise of fashion is exclusivity."
I actually feel the exact opposite of this. I would hope that fashion in one form or another is entirely inclusive. I've certainly always thought of it that way and actually feel it now more than ever.

"Anna, yes, I live in a bubble. We all have our own. The only way out that I can think of is to ask questions, listen, and try to understand. Not just accept, but truly understand."

YLF is probably the safest place there is to ask this kind of question, with this goal.

One problem with the "so, educate me!" approach to gaining awareness of our own privilege, and one explanation for some of the push-back you've been getting here, is that asking others to explain the world outside our particular bubble shifts the burden of educating ourselves onto those who are already burdened by their relative lack of privilege.

Race is not really comparable to body size, but I'm going to use it as an example of privilege and the problem with raising one's own awareness by asking questions.

A woman of color lives that reality inescapably every single day. She's already forced to explain (or to keep quiet to keep the peace) in all different situations. Asking her to spend time educating me in Race Relations 101, with no compensation, would come out of a place of blind privilege on my part and *further* disadvantage her by, at the very least, costing her the energy of declining to provide this. What, exactly, would I be providing in return?

Fortunately, there are lots of articles and other publications and forums on-line that facilitate raising one's own awareness. If you're interested, I'd be happy to provide some links to initial sources.

If there is such a thing as a "plus size mentality" perhaps it exists because so often we are forced to defend the size of our bodies, over and over again. Rarely are plus sized bodies allowed to just be, and be the size they are.

What can "skinny" people do to facilitate social change? It will depend on individual circumstances and abilities and interests, of course. But for starters:

We can accept that being thin is not a virtue, but probably a result of genes and a certain amount of privilege, and it in turn confers additional privileges.

If we find that we harbour prejudice towards larger sized people, we can try to examine the causes of that prejudice and consider whether it has any basis in reality. No doubt this prejudice lurks in many of us because of the cultural pressures we're all put under, but that doesn't mean we have to give it room to grow.

We can educate ourselves on the relationship between weight and health, which is not as straightforward or obvious as we are often led to believe.

(And again, I say this as someone who worked for a nutrition counselling/ fitness business and who did achieve positive health benefits from losing weight. While it's true that obesity is associated with a number of diseases, that doesn't mean obesity causes those diseases. Meanwhile, it is perfectly possible to be fat and healthy or thin and unhealthy. So to look down on larger people as "unhealthy" or indifferent to their own health is to make an unfair generalization. One of my largest friends is also one of my fittest friends, at least from a cardiovascular standpoint. Another is a superb weightlifter, so is anaerobically fit.)

We can believe that style is not a size and beauty comes in many shapes.

We can warmly communicate those beliefs in the way we interact with other women.

We can acknowledge their frustrations when they cannot find beautiful clothes that make them feel terrific.

We might write to manufacturers and ask why they don't make clothing for our larger-sized friends. We can also buy gifts for our friends from the manufacturers who do a good job for them.

In public, we can speak up and correct mistaken ideas or intervene when someone is body-shaming -- much as we might correct mistaken ideas about climate change or speak up against racism or ableism.

We can support our larger sized friends in their goals whether those goals include weight loss or not, and we can assure them that we see them as beautiful.

And some of us, perhaps, can take up the challenge to design and make beautiful plus sized clothing. I can't do it, because I'm not a designer or sewist, but I hope that many more people will.

These aren't the links I offered Alexandra about better ways of raising one's own awareness without burdening people who are already disadvantaged.

But they might be useful for anyone faced with this same question elsewhere.

22 Examples of Thin Privilege
http://everydayfeminism.com/20.....privilege/

Yes, You Still Have Thin Privilege If You ‘Worked For’ Your Body – Here’s Why
http://everydayfeminism.com/20.....-for-body/

Wow, I love this forum. There are so many good answers here that I don't really have anything to add, just want to echo that often weight isn't a choice or decision at all. We are all different and in my opinion all deserve to dress in a way that makes us happy. And it isn't really too much to ask the people who supply the clothes to be more inclusive after all, it would also help their business.

I have to admit that I found the initial post quite frustrating, and I commend YLF for being so polite and respectful in response! The most frustrating part for me wasn't so much the question "why don't plus size women concentrate on losing weight over complaining about unavailability of fashionable clothes", but the further dichotomy of "losing weight" = productive activity, and "agitating for fashionable clothes" = unproductive, when it was based on false premises. Nadya and a few others beat me to mentioning it, but the medical evidence is quite strong that very few people actually both lose weight and keep the weight off for a sustained period of time. In something like 80% or more of cases, people gain it all back within 5 years even if they're temporarily successful in losing the weight. So it seems to me that taking drastic weight loss as a goal isn't very productive at all. Especially given that the evidence between mortality (premature death) and higher BMIs isn't very clear (and sometimes seems to indicate that there's a protective effect in older age to being mildly overweight)--there's a lot we don't know about nutrition, body weight, and its relation to health. I'd also argue that the reasons for increasing body mass in modern society isn't so clear cut, either.

Also, even if a plus-size person is trying to lose weight, that process takes time. Does that mean that a plus-size woman should put off goals like dating, getting married, taking high-level business or law positions, etc. (as examples occasions which often call for well-fitting, stylish clothing)? That seems wrong to me.

Finally, I don't think the suggestion to turn to sewing is that helpful. One of the best parts of modern society is that we don't have to spend all our time on achieving just the basic necessities of life and can focus more on the things that we are good at and enjoy. For some people that very well might be clothes sewing and dress-making, but for a lot of people it's not! As an analogy, I enjoy cooking but I find the suggestions of "grow your own food and make everything from scratch, mill your own flour, etc.--it's the only way to know what you're eating" fairly frustrating--it shouldn't require subsistence farming to eat healthfully. And compared to cooking, clothes-making is an even more specialized and time-consuming skill.

Here's an article along the lines of Suz's excellent, empathic points:
https://thebodyisnotanapology......terrorism/

I am truly impressed by this conversation. Alexandra voiced what I assume many people think and I think it is wonderful that there have been so many heartfelt posts explaining what is wrong with that mentality. I am not going to try to restate what has been said so eloquently above but will just affirm that as consumers we do have every right to demand suppliers respond to our needs. Otherwise we take our money elsewhere, and slowly, it seems, some suppliers are waking up to that.