Taking up space.

Recently New Look announced that they would be pulling the Inspire range from a number of their stores across the country. The reason? To make space.

Understandably, and myself among them, many people were outraged and took to social media to make their feelings known. There was a some back peddling on New Looks part and some ranges would not be pulled, such as the Oxford Street store. However that's all well and good for Londoners, but what about those of us in smaller towns with even less choice for shopping?

I'll be honest, I slowly stopped shopping instore with New Look some time ago. Every time I went in I felt myself becoming angry for many reasons. Firstly, nine times out fo ten, the range of pieces is VERY limited, with some stores having maybe one or two rails on offer and often the rails were a MESS. Clearly no one was invested in making this section presentable and atractive. Which I suppose lends itself to the attitude that New Look seem to have towards the plus size shopper. I stopped going because I would legitimatly spoil my day.
Here it was obvious that this company, and many others, simply don't care about fat people. The clothes are drab and thoughtless, the sections are hidden away and extremely limited, and often an unkempt mess mixed in with maternity wear and stuck at the back of the store.

Artists impression of a typical Inspire section

So when New Look made their announcement it was the final straw. I was baffled at how a comany can claim they need to make space in their stores when the Inspire range took up virtually no space anyway. New Look are happy to take our money but they don't want us taking up space in their stores.

So what to do? Immediatly my thoughts turned to boycotting New Look. There are plenty of brands out there that have good relationships with their customers and actually care about the clothes they produce. But then I realised that as someone who is not exactly flush with cash my options suddenly became much less. Being fat is limiting, being fat and poor is something else. I live vicariously through the beautiful bloggers in their gorgeous Simply Be and Anna Scholtz pieces but the fact of the matter, for me, is that I'm stuck on high street. So am I really in a position to stop shopping in places that limit me when I'm already down to a few choices?

The sad fact is most of us who canot afford the more expensive brands are in a bind. We have to put up or shut up.

So I've been on a bit of a hiatus..

When I started fatshion blogging it was on the heels of an eye opening day at my first Plus North in 2013. I was flattered to have so many people encourage me to start because they really dug my look. It worked hand in hand with my ever developing interest in fat politics and fat visibility. I was intrigued to explore the concept of being a visible fat person and focusing on the clothes I wore, the way I looked.

My armor.

Through that I have met a lot of great people whom I would not have otherwise met. But I know that I haven’t jumped in with both feet. I know that I’m sitting against the wall at the dance here. I found keeping up with trends, hell being into the trends to begin with, difficult. Often I didn’t have the time to take the picture. Even more I found that with my job as a carer I was not wearing anything worth talking about and when I wasn’t at work I was in my comfy, slobbing out clothes.

Then I injured my back and have since been on long term sick. For many weeks I wasn’t even able to get out of bed, let alone get dressed. When I was up and about all I wanted was the bare minimum that was acceptable for when I hobbled outside on my crutch. Blogging ideas dissipated through my painkiller haze.

What started out as a potential for adventure very quickly became a chore. I felt I was missing the mark. It seemed to snowball very quickly considering that I have blogged for little.

Then I saw a post by my friend Elena where she touched upon something briefly here that I too had been thinking about. Fashion blogging is about YOU. What you like, what makes you tick, what you enjoy and mostly what you look like. Why should I try to be something that I’m not?

No wonder this was all such hard work for me. It wasn’t in any way authentic to me.