How to Try on Dresses without Judging Your Body

In which I try to practice the body reflexivity which I preach

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Last time, I wrote, somewhat despairingly, about finding a black tie dress to wear to the National Book Award ceremony where Unshrinking is a finalist in non-fiction. Talk about champagne problems, especially given my current levels of body privilege as a small fat or perhaps even borderline fat woman. Still, it brought up a lot of stuff for me—twenty years of shopping pain as a fat, femme person, specifically—and I appreciate your kindness. In this post, I wanted to walk through the process of trying on several dresses and finding something that worked for me without hating on my body. Or praising my body. Or even being neutral about it.

Probably the most important new idea in my book is that of body reflexivity: my body is for me, your body is for you, and so on. Making this my mantra has worked better for me, personally, than trying to be relentlessly upbeat about my appearance or even resolutely neutral: the idea of transcending the mode of judgment is what has stuck with me as appealing. I don’t get a positive or negative number, or even a zero, on any kind of numerical scale. None of us does. We can appreciate our bodies much like we do elements in the natural world—moss, rocks, sunsets, flowers, dogs—without having to be positive or neutral or assign ourselves any kind of numerical value. (Can you imagine being encouraged to be positive or neutral about any of the above items? There’s a reason We Rate Dogs is a parody account on X, with every adorable creature garnering more than a 10 out of 10. For similar reasons, “dog neutrality” is not a thing either.) If there’s no prospect of negativity, or any judgment whatsoever, about our bodies, then the idea of comparison with each other or ourselves (past or future) becomes otiose, redundant. Our bodies are not for correction or consumption or colonization, either.

Our bodies just are. There is no bad—or good, or even neutral—way of having one. Their existence is for, and only for, their possessor. And we do not have to have one monolithic or consistent evaluative attitude toward them. We can revel in them, enjoy them, or lament them and rue them, at the times or in the ways they get in our way in an irrevocable manner. It’s OK to feel ambivalent about or even disappointed or angry at your body when it causes you pain or breaks down or makes living your best life unfeasible.

But one thing I do not believe should be getting in our way is our clothing. It does, of course, with plus size fashion still woefully inaccessible and unaffordable and simply bad, sometimes. But everyone deserves access to clothes that fit them well in their various needs and contexts. Remember: it’s our clothes’ job to fit our bodies, not the other way around. Nobody should have to dread a wedding or an awards ceremony or any other joyous occasion because it’s so hard to find a fancy dress that fits. (Still worse might be having to worry about what you’re wearing in times of grief, when you just need a black dress for a funeral or memorial service or similar.)

My body is not that hard to dress anymore, as it was when I was much larger. But it’s still not that easy, either. Behold my attempts to order and find a plausible dress to fit in and look vaguely elegant at my upcoming event, while speaking nicely to myself about what felt good and what didn’t. And why it didn’t. It’s never my body’s fault—and often, it’s not the clothing’s fault either. It’s just that being short and borderline fat and short-waisted can be a tricky combination that makes for some frustration in the changing room. Or the bedroom, in case of online orders.

Here’s the first dress I tried on, from the Sak’s website. It retails for $288 (which is a lot to spend by my standards), and I ordered a 10P.

Let’s see how it looked on me, along with all of the other options.