BBW as seen by fashion stores

[mothwing]

While shopping and online-shopping lately, I've been seeing more and more stores with sections which pregnant women and fatties are herded off to, and those sections gave me valuable insights into the demands and needs of plus-size customers.

Fat women,

• Don't like clothes, or shopping, anyway, so there's really no need to waste a lot of space on them.
• Are never shorter or taller than the norm.
• Don't need a large variety of clothes, if their condition is temporary, and if it's permanent, they obviously don't care about looks and just need something to cover themselves up.
• Don't need clothes accentuating their body shape. Instead, clothes for those should still look like those for normal woman, just larger, or wide, tent-like, and flowing to hide their shapes as best as possible.
• Don't need a large variety of colours.
• Don't need clothes in vibrant colours, as fat and other undesirable people don't like to draw attention to themselves.
• Really love huge patterns.
• Don't need swimwear, obviously. Unless it's the temporarily-undesirable variety - there should always be one swimsuit for those.
• Obviously have money to spare judging from all the food they're always eating, so it's fine to charge €10 extra if the clothes are over the fatty limit.
• Don't need bigger bras than normal women.
• Don't need a large variety of lingerie, or particularly pretty lingerie. Changes in colour are enough, as any change from those white cotton panties is probably exciting enough a change for a fat person.
• Don't wear belts.
• Don't need office wear.
• Aren't really interested in stylish or modern clothes, because it's not as though they pay attention to looks in the first place.

Similar things are true for the men's department, where the colours are few, and the shapes are large and flowing.

Comments

[onthetide.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[onthetide.livejournal.com]

Also, apparently we fat women LOVE PATTERNS. The BIGGER THE BETTER.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Oh, the patterns. I forgot about the patterns, gotta love patterns. So many tops either have those, or stupid prints centred in the middle of the chest, where they're awkward and look bent out of shape if you have large breasts. I'm also especially fond of the prints on tees in the men's department, which usually look like the prints from the boy's department and emphasise the cute.

[utter-pirate.livejournal.com]

The other week, Marks & Spencer decided to stop charging more for oversized bras than for 'normal' sizes after a customer-led campaign.

At first, they were quite adamant it was justified, since bigger bras mean more material (cloth etc.) is used.

When I heard about it, I was genuinely astonished that someone might have to pay more for the same item of clothing just because it's a bigger size.

There's no difference in price bewteen a size 6 and a size 14, so why should there be any difference between other sizes. Sounds like discrimination to me...

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I was so happy when I heard that that campaign had won through.

The extra charge is probably a combination of a fraction more for extra material (and I wouldn't be surprised if the higher prices for sizes above the limit paid for the extra material needed for the difference between size 0 and 2, too, to be honest), fat shaming, a need to educate customers and to "motivate them to lose weight". They wouldn't be the first ones who think that they're on a mission to educate, RyanAir comes to mind, too (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6146887.ece). It is discrimination, but seeing as being over weight is still seen as mostly the outcome of an ill-organised and sloppy lifestyle and the thousand other causes are marginalised, it's accepted, because fat people are asking for it (especially given the fact that depression and obesity seem to be linked in some way I don't doubt that RyanAir's "Would you care to step on the scales over here, please, while the other customers wait and watch? You look grossly obese and should be paying for two seats!"-campaign is really helping).

And bra sizes and prizes - it's ridiculous. Even before I started spending the vast majority of my time sitting and got increasingly chubby, when I was still well in the middle of "normal weight", I still had to go shopping for bras in specialised stores or mail-order them because bras larger than D are really, really rare and I didn't fancy a breast reduction.