Let's all call a truce with our bodies
Body neutrality can change how you interact with your body, clothes, and the fashion system
Welcome to the Esther Studio newsletter! Thank you so much for being here. I’m Carly, PhD, an artist living in the Midwest. I like talking about personal style, and I spend a lot of time making jewelry. In this post, I’m speaking about body image and clothing from my vantage point as a consumer sociologist. In my day job, I study gender, bodies, and mental health, and advocate for healthy body image in sportswomen. If you’d like to keep this kind of conversation going, leave me a comment below with your questions, and consider subscribing so you don’t miss a newsletter!
Earlier this month, I wrote about the self compassion I extended myself when my beloved faux shearling vest became too small for me. Instead of declaring war against my changing body, as I might have in the past, I recognized that so much about this season of my life is going well. Dieting or over-exercising to fit into this vest would compromise that harmony.
I re-purchased the item secondhand in a bigger size and moved on with my life.
My ability to quickly process the Vest Incident is the result of a years-long mental shift. In this post, I want to explain body neutrality, the framework that has helped me improve my relationship with my body. I’ll also apply this framework to the process of buying and wearing clothes. My hope is that we can all be a little gentler towards ourselves, and each other, when we learn new ways of thinking and talking about bodies.
Introducing body neutrality
Body neutrality is the slightly less rah-rah cousin of body positivity. While body positivity asks us to love our bodies, body neutrality suggests that if loving your body feels like a big task, feeling neutral towards it - accepting it as it is - might be more manageable. Being body neutral means honoring your body for what it can do, not what it looks like.
This stance has drawn worthy critique for glorifying movement and fitness, but I prefer to think of bodily abilities in a different way. To me, our bodies are the vessel through which we experience the world - all its ups and downs. The thoughts, feelings, and relationships that color our days are only possible with and through our bodies. Honestly, I think that’s pretty cool.
One of the biggest lessons that body neutrality can teach us is that our weight has no moral value. Being slim doesn’t make someone virtuous and being fat doesn’t make them deviant. This is a hard one to grasp, because we’re taught through media, school, and the medical system that to exist in a larger body is to be wrong in some fundamental way. Fat people are assumed to be lazy, greedy, or some other negatively charged adjective.
This kind of assumption affects how we treat each other and how we care for ourselves, and I hate it. For example, many people live in fear of gaining weight because they have internalized that to do so would make them a failure. Conversely, accepting that your body size has no bearing on your worth opens up so many possibilities. You deserve to feel at home in your body, but those inevitable dips in your body image don’t define you. Body neutrality means you are valid just as you are. Your body works hard and deserves compassion.
Easier said than done? Absolutely. But let’s see what we can do when it comes to buying and wearing clothes.
Clothing sizes are fictional
If body weight is a loaded topic, so is clothing. Our closets and retailers’ dressing rooms are often emotionally fraught spaces, while online shopping can be a confusing mess of size charts and educated guesses. When an item of clothing doesn’t fit or doesn’t have the effect we intended, it can often seem like a negative statement about our bodies, which is a real shame.
Clothing sizes - the numbers on the tags - loom large in our cultural imagination, which means as individuals we often put a lot of stock into the size(s) we wear. Growing up in the 2000s, I knew there was a benchmark size that was acceptable, and anything above that size was scary. I gave those little sizing tags so much power, and it has taken me half my life to grab that power back.
These days, I like to think of the time I tried on a pair of size 12 pants in Banana Republic and they were too small, but 30 seconds later I tried on a pair of size 8 pants in that same Banana Republic and they fit just right. Neither of those sizes are my “usual size.” It didn’t make any sense at the time, and it never will. Clothing sizes are fictional.
Here’s just one example of the absolute mayhem going on in the fashion system that makes this kind of baffling experience possible. Companies have their individual size charts that may or may not bear resemblance to one another. The clothes themselves are based on “fit models,” literal humans who act as a blank canvas for each company to style. Then, companies scale different sizes up and down from there. This means one brand’s size 8 is fundamentally different than another brand’s size 8. Each line has been tailored to a different body.
If one company’s clothes tend fit you well, it could be that their fit model’s proportions are close enough to yours that this inexact science worked in your favor. If another company’s clothes tend to not fit you well, it could be that your fit model’s body bears little resemblance to yours. In either case, it’s somewhat of an accident. Imagine, if you are a brand, trying to clothe the masses. What a wild job! Everyone’s body is different, which is beautiful, but now as consumers we’re all out here trying on the same Banana Republic pants and hoping for the best.
If this process feels frustrating, how could it ever be anything else? I’m frustrated just writing this out, but on some level I find comfort in realizing that I’m not the problem here (and neither are you).
Using clothes as tools
Adopting some body-neutral mindset shifts can help us take the pressure off buying clothes and getting dressed. A good place to start is acknowledging that clothes are tools. We don’t need clothing to make us better people - we’re already good enough. We don’t need clothing to make us hotter - we’re already hot enough.
As pieces of fabric stitched together, clothes do not get the final say over our bodies’ value. We can, however, use clothes to express ourselves, and even to comfort ourselves. Thinking of clothes as tools puts us in a position of power, releasing the hold companies and their size charts, size zero models, and airbrushing have on us.
If clothes are tools, then clothes need to fit you, not the other way around. It’s not your responsibility to whittle yourself down to fit into a piece of clothing you want to buy or already own. You deserve to feel comfortable in your clothing, today, in the body you have now.
Below, I’ll offer some mindsets and activities you can take into clothing stores (and your closet) for a bit of peace and clarity when it comes to clothing size and fit. I’m not saying these will cure you of every negative thought you’ve ever had about yourself, but if even one nugget of information helps you approach your body with more compassion, we’re doing great.
When you’re shopping
Release yourself from the idea that you are a particular clothing size. Yes, you might be able to spot broad patterns in your closet, but that’s about the clothes, not you. You are a body, and you happen to wear clothes.
View the try-on process as gathering information about clothes, not information about your body. For that reason, consider trying on clothes in multiple sizes: your usual size, a size smaller, and a size larger.
Instead of committing to your usual size in a garment, stop to consider how you feel in an item of clothing. Stop, close your eyes, and take deep breaths. Does the fabric feel good? Is there any pinching and pulling? Now, open your eyes and walk around the fitting room. Sit down. Bend. Twist. The proper clothing size isn’t just for standing in a fitting room. The proper clothing size will move with you throughout the day, allowing you to live your entire life. Size up or down as needed.
As stylist Paul Julch says, “Fitting into a smaller size isn’t a win. Wearing clothes that fit well is the win.” And - another gem from Paul - unless you’re wearing your clothes inside out, no one knows what size you’re wearing. (Remove the tags, even! Free yourself!)
If shopping is emotional for you, be gentle with yourself. Let yourself feel your feelings. Have a little cry. Know that feelings about our bodies come and go, and it’s okay not enjoy trying to navigate a broken and confusing fashion system.
If you want to experience the joy that is clothing size agnosticism, try playing with oversized clothing just to see the effect. Take a size or two up from your usual size and marvel in the new vibe you’ve created. For example, your usual-sized sweater might look neat and polished, while a size or two bigger might look chill and effortless. When we shirk the fear of sizing up, we gain self expression and creative freedom with our clothes.
Similarly, try going vintage shopping where none of the old-school sizing tags mean anything in today’s world. Pick something up because it looks cool, try it on, and if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, leave it on the rack for someone else to discover.
When you’re at home
Create a list of clothing brands that work for you, and even a shadow list of clothing brands that don’t work for you. Consider that one brand’s tops might be fantastic, but the same brand’s bottoms are not right for you. Use this list to guide (and simplify) future purchases.
Acknowledge that our bodies change over time, and may even fluctuate from day to day or month to month. While we’ve been told to get rid of clothing items that no longer fit us, but if you have the storage space, keep a set of clothes in a variety of sizes so you have something nice to wear no matter what size you happen to be at a given time.
In the same vein, don’t scold yourself is something that normally fits is a little tight. Break out a less restrictive garment for the day and reassess later.
Keep your closet (and imagination) stocked with visible, go-to outfits that you know make you feel great. This can mean items that make you feel powerful at work, items that you know work for a dinner out with friends, or items that work well for running errands. It doesn’t matter. When you know what works, on a wobbly day, you won’t have to think about what to wear, you can just head straight for your tried-and-true items.
To help with this process, consider taking daily outfit photos. I’ve shown in a previous post how this practice has helped me identify my preferences over time. I can look back at a batch of photos and really pinpoint which outfits or pieces worked and didn’t.
We’re not done yet
I hope that body neutrality, and these tips, can help you see the possibilities ahead of you in terms of accepting your body as it is, and using clothes as tools. I mean it sincerely when I say that I’m rooting for you, and I’m hopeful for you.
That being said, I would be shortchanging this conversation if I didn’t admit that body neutrality isn’t enough. A key flaw in this framework is that it’s incredibly focused on the individual, rather than the collective. While body neutrality offers us many useful tools to change our outlooks on our bodies and the world around us, it isn’t doing much to actually change the world around us.
The fashion system is incredibly exclusionary, catering to folks in a narrow range of shapes and sizes. As much as I can shout about the importance of shopping with comfort and ease in mind, plenty of people in larger bodies, or bodies that fall outside the norm in other ways, do not have that luxury. Most clothing lines are not nearly as inclusive as they could be, which is an issue of marketplace exclusion. This means some folks can’t find the clothes they need to participate fully in public life. While brands have made small inroads in recent years, Corinne Fay recently wrote that some brands are quietly doing away with their plus-size lines. It’s tough out there.
These days, with the growing ubiquity of weight loss drugs and the return of skin-and-bones as an It Girl aesthetic, I don’t feel very optimistic about the fashion system. I’m tempted to write about the importance of voting with your dollar, and so on, but right now that feels trite. Instead, my very relationship-focused brain is urging you to extend body-neutral compassion to others. Family members, friends, colleagues, and strangers deserve the peace of non-judgement.
The most productive expression of body neutrality is to work on yourself, then repair the world.