Here’s The Skinny On Big, Beautiful Fashions
How many times have we all been tempted to rip out the pictures of ultrathin models from fashion magazine? Yet more than half the women in America wear plus-size clothes size 14 or larger. Still, it took a family crisis for us to realize how to love the bodies we were born with.
The thing is, our family’s physical heritage tends to run large. We’re descended from sturdy peasant farmer stock - tall men with broad shoulders and tall women with big hips. This is great when you’re plowing fields and having lots of babies to be farm hands, but it can be a disadvantage in our time of highly processed foods and much less physical labor.
Anyway, about six months ago our cousin Celia got engaged. Since we’re a close family, Celia wanted nearly everyone to be in the wedding party. The trouble started when she began looking through popular bridal magazines. Before we knew it, we were constantly arguing about how to lose fat so that everybody could get supermodel-slim for the wedding. It wasn’t a happy time.
Our fights over diet and exercise were reaching nuclear proportions when the bride-to-be’s mother had her fill of it. She came up with a plan to save both the wedding and repair our family ties.
Our aunt consulted with a good friend of hers who operates a bridal shop in town. The dress shop owner said she saw our kind of problem all the time. The best solution, she told our aunt, was to show the bride-to-be how a plus size wedding dress could be the perfect solution to her worries about looking fabulous on her wedding day. Once the bride-to-be was convinced, the bridesmaids would have an easier time choosing gowns as well, she told our aunt.
Then Marge got all the ladies in the family together on the pretext of a gathering to look at party jewelry. We looked at jewelry all right, but she also showed everyone her friend’s catalog with those stunning bridal gowns in them. Celia couldn’t believe her eyes, and neither could the rest of us.
The amazing thing is that Auntie’s scheme worked! In fact, we had a ball looking over those beautiful pictures, taking our body measurements and deciding what type of dresses looked best on which shape. Almost before we knew it, we had outfitted the bride, the bridesmaids and the mother of the bride in gorgeous gowns!
Our cousin was a romantic vision on her wedding day in a fabulous gown that fit perfectly. And the rest of us, her bridesmaids, were just as beautiful, because we chose fashions that suited who we are.
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Tags: self-esteem, wedding, weight loss
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