![]() ![]() Lauren made clear that it has not always been so. Nobody is posting photos of their precisely fitted basic underwear and I’m just not seeing enough discussion of how the hottest new underwear fits (or does not fit) a FUPA.Īs I contemplated the effects of Instagram and fast fashion on my gusset, I considered whether my underwear woes were a contemporary problem or if women of size throughout the ages had suffered the same humiliations. Likes go to the shiny, the new, the mesh, the colors, the patterns. In our age of social media I can see this being especially true. Especially since they are literally less visible since they are worn under our clothing. Lauren Downing Peters, PhD, assistant professor of fashion studies and director of the fashion study collection at Columbia College, Chicago and author of the forthcoming Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industryīrands that are not truly invested in the causes of body diversity and inclusivity are not going to put the money and sweat equity into creating properly fitting undergarments. ![]() “Therefore they don't look at our bodies or look at how our belly interacts with the top of our thigh, or how that fold of your belly overhang then integrates into your hip.” “I don't think people can basically bear to look at fat bodies,” she said. When I talked to Leila Kelleher, PhD, assistant professor of fashion design and social justice at Parsons School of Design and co-founder of Muna & Broad plus sized sewing patterns, she confirmed a lot of the complaints I heard from folks on SellTradePlus. ![]() And yet, if you look at enough fat people wearing underwear, you’re going to see the same issues cropping up. To be fair, there are infinite and seemingly exponential variations on fatness with every body having slightly different proportions. My underwear fits like it was designed by someone who has never really looked at a fat person. When I did a very scientific study about underwear fit issues for fat folks on Instagram, I saw the same complaints cropping up again and again, many of which boiled down to how underwear fits over our bellies: “Gaps in coverage in the gusset area, even in the granniest of panties” “I want there to be fabric between my lower belly and legs” “Belly protruding through leg holes” “Front panel is too narrow to fully cover my apron belly leaving me with the lil side belly flappies” “too high in the back and too low in the front.” Maybe $28 is not too high of a price for something I’d wear comfortably every day for years, but it started to feel too high for something that wasn’t really doing its job. At $28 a pair, I also felt like I was paying too much. I wobble between two sizes, the smaller of which feels a little tight and the bigger of which feels very loose, with the back waistband going almost all the way up to my bra band. ![]() They don’t cause me physical pain, but they aren’t perfect either. I eventually mostly settled on Arq because there was a lot to like: Cotton, cute colors, very high rise, lots of sizes. The kind that protects your skin from friction, protects your clothes from body stuff, keeps your organs cozy and supported. And while everyone deserves whatever lacy, sheer, fantastical underwear they want, I was looking for the functional kind. Even the most frivolous, frilly clothing has some kind of usefulness: Keeping out the cold, the dirt, whatever. I’ve always been interested in the utilitarian nature of clothing. Many seemed to fit very strangely in the lower belly so that the exact parts of myself I was trying to protect with underwear poked through. Some had leg holes that were too wide and others had leg holes that were too tight. Some were too low and rolled down, some were high enough in the back but the front dipped down below my belly button. I feel like I’ve tried everything (that comes in my size) from Cacique to Torrid to TomBoyX to Skims to Yitty to Period Aisle to Thunderpants to various makers on Etsy and I will always regret not getting some from when they were still available. And after that breakup, I found it really hard to settle on anything else. ![]()
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