The idea for our September issue began the way any great conversation with friends happens: over wine. I had recently moved from a size 10 to 12 into plus sizes and was bitching to my colleagues about the hell that was shopping now. It was the first time I’d really—honestly—opened up to anyone about my 60-pound weight gain. In the few times I had offhandedly mentioned it to people, the conversation usually went something along the lines of, “Don’t worry, you’ll lose it!” or “You look great!” Others would quickly change the subject.
Three rosés in, I admitted to my co-workers I was sick of feeling like size was a four-letter word. After months of following plus-size influencers and body-positive activists on Instagram, I was finally feeling OK with my size. These women were happy with—and proud of!—their bodies and they unabashedly discussed the challenges that came with being a plus-size woman. I wanted to be one of them. But everyone else, outside that online community I’d been lurking in, didn’t seem like they wanted to participate; either because we’ve been conditioned to think that commenting on other women’s weight—especially if it’s not weight loss—is unacceptable or because they, too, had hangups but weren’t ready to talk about them.
And so The “F” Word was born.
If you haven’t caught on, the “F” stands for fat. Yes, fat, and I don’t mean that pejoratively. Women in the body-positive space are reclaiming the term for what it is, simply an adjective that describes their physical attributes, just the way you’d talk about someone who is thin. No longer is it—or should it be—a dirty word, the other “F” word.
All week long, we’ll be digging into the various issues women have to navigate when they live in bigger bodies—starting, obviously, with fashion. It’s difficult to feel good in your body when you don’t have the clothes to express yourself the way you want to be seen, which the 40 people I spoke with for our feature titled “The Fashion Industry Has a Plus-Size Problem” will tell you all about. For three months, I sat down with models, editors, influencers, photographers, and designers to have a candid talk about the real frustrations and elations plus women have with the fashion industry as it stands today.
With each conversation, it became clear it’s not just a visibility issue with ad campaigns or a need for more shopping options in stores (although those are two vastly huge problems). The need for more plus discourse goes all the way to the top. Not just in boardrooms, where execs make calls on how to price clothing for plus-size women, a controversy we explore called the “Fat Tax,” but also with venture capital funding so more plus women can actually make the pieces we want to wear.
Speaking of cool clothes, tomorrow we’ll be unveiling our first-ever Plus-Size Fashion Awards. In an ideal world—hell, even one where designers would just like to make money—we wouldn’t have the need to celebrate brands doing plus right. But until that point, we have this shopping resource, which was expertly curated by 10 plus-size fashion experts (our awards judges) and informed by a survey more than 1,300 readers weighed in on.
Also, that term: “plus size.” As we were planning this package we had a lot of conversations around whether we should take a stand and abolish the word. Women have argued for years that it makes no sense to ostracize what is actually the majority of shoppers; 68% of women in the U.S. today wear a size 14 or above.
