Dress Responsibly

If I close my eyes, I can still feel it.

Cashmere worn thin and itchy from repetitive wear. Too-long sleeves rolled up to my elbows. Extra fabric everywhere that hangs like wings when I move my arms. This sweater’s too big, and that’s why I like it. That’s why it’s the only thing I’ll wear. That’s why I, a stringent rule-follower, am breaking my school’s dress code and wearing the color brown—because this sweater camouflages my stomach.

360 Cashmere is a brand that makes lovely sweaters. I hate mine, because I feel chained to it. I fixate, as I always have, on the bit of stomach below my belly button. I wish it were flatter, firmer, more toned, more like a Victoria’s Secret model’s stomach. It disgusts me.

So I wear this sweater whenever I wake up in the morning and feel bloated. I pull this sumptuous brown cloak over my head and it hugs me. And it covers me. And at first, it’s a comfort.

Then, suddenly, it isn’t. I’m wearing it more often—almost every day. I’m sick of the color. I’m tired of rolling up my sleeves all the time. I’m aching to shed it as winter turns to spring and wearing cashmere means overheating. I’m longing for the courage it would take to wear something that fits. But I can’t wrench this suffocating sheath off of my body.

I’ve told myself that this is the only thing I look good in, and now I can’t feel beautiful in anything else.

If I close my eyes, I can still feel it.

My searing waistband cuts with every step. In the streets of an old French beach town, I’m sucking in my stomach too much to talk or enjoy the new culture. I’m focusing on the way my pants feel—restrictive, claustrophobic, too tight—instead of laughing with my study-abroad peers.

The black pants I’ve brought with me on this trip are too small. It’s been a while since I wore them last, and even as I pulled them on over my calves three hours earlier, I knew they didn’t fit like they used to. “Maybe I’ve just grown a bit,” I thought to myself.

But when I found that I couldn’t button them comfortably over my stomach, I blamed my wardrobe troubles on an imperfection that always seems glaring to me. “It’s your stomach,” an internal voice hisses. “You’re gross.”

This outfit is uncomfortable by design. I’m torturing myself, wearing jeans that are too tight as if to punish myself for letting them get too tight. As a result, I’m fixating on my outfit, using clothes to heighten my own insecurities. I’m trying to teach myself a lesson, trying to guilt myself into working out more or eating fewer desserts.

In doing so, I’m telling myself in every second of my evening that my worth can be quantified by a number like my jean size. I’m teaching myself that other people care about my looks more than my personality. I’m succumbing to superficiality, and my clothes are helping me do it.

I’ve written before and will write again about the times my outfit has made me feel like I could conquer the world. It’s true: A pair of heels can uplift you. An ensemble can make you feel so great that you stop worrying about how you look and start focusing on how you feel, what you think, and what you want to do to change the world. I know these things are true, because there’s research to prove some of it, and I’ve lived the rest.

But in order to talk responsibly about fashion and why I love it, I need to acknowledge that clothing is a tool with considerable inherent power. Like a brick or a saw or a knife, it can be used to create something new and good. But in the hands of a self-conscious girl, it can turn into a violent weapon.

While the bodies in magazines today are certainly beautiful, they all look similar. As a result, the fashion industry teaches by example that clothing looks good on only one type of body. Maybe we need to add more magazines to newsstands, diversify the look of the models on runways, or make room for a more diverse legion of fashion decision-makers. In the meantime, we need to talk about the types of bodies and faces that we don’t see on runways, in magazines, or in ads. We need to talk about how those people are beautiful too.

If I don’t talk about these things, I’ll forget that they’re true, and I’ll let my jeans squeeze me to death.

Lily K. Calcagnini ’18, a Crimson editorial writer, is a History & Literature concentrator living in Dunster House. Follow her on Twitter @lilmisscalc.