So Salon is running a feature article on the teen plus-size store Torrid today. While it’s more balanced than most stories I’ve seen, pretty much all the press coverage of Torrid has touched on the pros and cons and cultural implications of a store that lets America’s surly young fat girls have miniskirts. And every time I read some handwringing comment about how size 20 halter tops can only encourage rampant epidemic statistical-life-expectancy-altering morbid obesity, I can’t help but think the concern is a little misplaced: that it’s not so much about the size of the damn halter top but who it’s for.
Maybe Torrid is revolutionary and all that, but it needs to be said that it’s one of the first stores of its kind for girls–nobody ever seems to consider that equivalent stores for guys don’t really exist, because guys have had far less trouble finding larger sizes in mainstream stores. I grew up understanding that in a typical department store I’d have to tear apart the racks to find an Esprit shirt in a tight size 16 but that the thrasher skateboard t-shirts across the aisle in the young men’s department were as big as tents, even on me. Seriously, I remember being fourteen and watching Just One of The Guys on cable and thinking that should I ever be passed over for an important high school journalism prize and thus be forced to switch schools and pass myself off as a guy in order for my talents to be taken seriously, it wouldn’t be so fucking hard to buy clothes anymore. I’m not glad there’s a rise in obesity statistics, but I would have liked a store like Torrid twenty years ago.
I guess it’s no wonder that out of all the different kinds of plus size markets out there, the store that most consistently sets off Fat Apocalyptic alarms is the store for young white girls, because really, hot young white chicks are among our most precious national resources, and without them America’s reality shows and porn would suffer. When I read an an article like this where, in the first paragraph, the writer conveys the genteel moral dismay he felt when he passed by a Torrid store and noticed “there were a lot of–how should I put it–well, fat teenage girls inside,” the cynic in me can’t help but wonder why in the hell Lawrence Goodman, Esteemed Newsweek International Commentator, was paying so much–how should I put it–attention to a girly teen mall store in the first place. Maybe he just wanted to see if the shrug was catching on? And I kind of doubt he could have mistaken the place for a Radio Shack.
I know I’m being a little extreme here, but I’m pretty sure that the problem people have with the Torrid girls is not that they’re “unhealthy” or “might have their life expectancy diminished by as much as two years.” Nope, it’s something else, and don’t think that the girls don’t know what it is. Don’t think that wearing a plus-sized hot pink bustier is just about helping themselves feel better, because for every bit of restored self-esteem they might experience when they wear it, there’s likely a little bit of fuck you, world mixed in, too.
Which is exactly how it should be when you’re sixteen, so there.
This is probably a wasted comment because I assume you already know this, but I thought it was apropos that your book (and Wendy Shanker’s) are being sold on torrid.com.
Here’s what I think. We should just stop making clothes past a size 8. Especially for teenaged girls. Actually we should probably restrict it to size 6 for teenagers, since they don’t have the slowing metabolism or baby weight to deal with.
If clothes weren’t available in larger sizes, then we wouldn’t have larger sized girls. That’s just common sense. Isn’t that the flip side of the Torrids, Lane Bryants, Catherines, and those ungodly Dove billboards encouraging obesity?
Some people are honestly so damn stupid that I feel slightly embarrassed for them.
When I can’t find cute clothes to fit my age (and my body) I feel fat(ter) and repulsive. When I feel extremely fat and ugly, I get depressed and eat the shit out of a Wal-Mart HoHo Cake. When I look cute, my self destructive behavior is much less self destructive.
The point to that is that hot clothes to fit all sizes will probably not “encourage obesity”, but improve self image, which leads to happier, healthier person.
So all of those concerned men out there can breathe a collective sigh of relief.
to Jacqui
are you serious girl?! what makes you think that stopping clothes sizes at size 6 would stop people from growing over size 6? i mean people respond to tings differently, not everyone is is in the same page psychologically. If you feel fat and you eat more then thats you, some people like me and a couple other people i know, eat less when depressed and eat more when happy. Some people work out more when depressed, some people cry it out in bed, some people go for a walk, some people lock themselves in their room, the point is stopping clothes at a certain size isnt going to motivate everyone to try to fit in it. i think your trying to create deppressed young girls with your stupid idea. and btw, i dont think that having less larger sized clothes would mean less larger sized girls. it just mean more larger girls trying to fit in a medium with their rolls and asses hanging out of their medium sized mini’s and i dont think anyone wants to see that, and i dont think larger girls would want to be made fun off like that anyways. hence Torrid.
Oh, sweetie. You need to learn how to read sarcasm. And date stamps on comment posts.
hahha, i know Wendy. too funny.
are you fucming serious to all the people who think being fat is a problem let me tell you something your fuckin dumb it doesnt matter what you do some people can’t help being big i come from a big family my father is black and my mom is Guamanian and are family has big asses bit as boobs and big thighs i can’t help it i aint never gonna be skinny and be some effin stick its ridiculos the way girls look these days i mean honestly who wants to be so thin that when they turn to the side they go invisible? its sad and then they complain while standing next to me that there fat! all i can say is honey you dont no fat!!! its not like i like being big but its not because i sat around and ate a shit load of food its because my family is big and i just so happened to get there genes. And a plus i think that by having these stores make clothes that are cuter for bigger women it makes them have mor confidence and then maybe they can lose wieght but if we are constantly looked down on because we are fat then we aren’t going to wanna lose wieght because of the stress.