(originally posted here )
One of my most humiliating memories is during seventh grade. Near the end of the year, we had a sizzling heat wave, something not too common in Berkeley. I was a chubby kid and always had been, never wearing shorts or tank tops and always afraid of my body being judged. My mom had bought me a long skirt, black with big yellow sunflowers (de rigeur for 1998), and in the heat, I decided to throw fear to the wind and wear the skirt to school.
There are two ways people guess that this story ends. One has me realizing how freeing the skirt is, feeling beautiful, and discovering something resembling self worth. The other has me shamed in front of my peers, made to feel fat and even more worthless.
Neither of those happened.
No one called me fat. There were no snicker comments or sidelong leers. I was, in fact, rather well liked and recall a number of friends complementing the outfit. But inside, I was profoundly uncomfortable and embarrassed because I could feel my thighs chafing. Walking home, I remember wanting to cry because I couldn't swish the way skinny girls did and instead felt like a plodding, bedazzled plow horse. I just simply hated myself for being who I was.
It took me a long time to learn the lesson of that day. The truth is, as cruel as children can be to each other, they are infinitely worse to themselves. I was my own biggest bully, my own harshest critic. I was the one rubbing my face in the mud and daring myself to do something about it.
Fifteen years later, I have done something about it. I am still a chubby woman and I always will be. I use that word, with all it's negative inferences and blubbery sounds, because it is true and I refuse to feel it is some sort of stigma or disability. I am soft, round, and strong, and, though I don't always hold on to it (especially in the face of a Vogue, Elle, or W haute couture spread), I have pretty damn good self confidence.
I attribute my self confidence to a gradual process of coming to terms with my thighs. After that fateful middle-school day, I doubt I wore a skirt or dress anywhere other than synagogue for years. Then, when I was 16, I lost a lot of weight. Suddenly thin and ostensibly suddenly pretty, I bedecked myself in short skirts and felt sexy for the first time. Drunk with power, I lost way too much weight, felt like crap for a few months, and was told by a doctor to gain a little. I was a weird year and as I gained enough weight to be back to a healthy size, I started hating my body again.
It wasn't until I was 20 that my hatred and internal conviction that unless I was underweight there was no way I was attractive began to go away. It was while I lived in Holland, biking in skirts and trying on European clothing, that I realized that there was something fundamentally wrong about the way I viewed my figure. European men and women complemented me on my strong legs and I impressed myself with long bike rides and tons of walking. Coming home, I felt so good about myself that I started this blog, began embracing my love of fashion and self expression through style. I read other amazing bloggers with myriad body types and massive spunk. I realized that what is most beautiful is honesty and, to be honest, I am chubby. And if I love that, too, then I might be pretty damn beautiful.
In short, I decided to like myself, thighs and all.
And this is where my manifesto comes in: I am not going to wear pants .
I don't mean this literally because, hey, who doesn't love a good trouser sometimes? But I am not going to resign myself to pants, not going to be afraid to walk around my own home without sweats on.
This past year has been about putting these new-found ideals to the test. I wear short skirts. I try on clothing in front of my girlfriends. I embrace my bathing suit. And the more I flaunt who and what I am, the more I feel my body and test it's limits, the more I like myself. The more I like that body.
So sometimes I don't wear pants around the house. I walk around in my underwear and finally I enjoy the feeling of my thighs touching, enjoy the body I built, and enjoy the woman I am. It's so different at home than at the beach or in costume. When I'm at home, I am me, doing my me things, without any trappings or pretend. So if I can just be me, at home, with my most hated body part, then I can be a lot more honest with how I feel. And I can feel, well, a lot more at home in my body.
So here is my challenge to you, to myself, to all of us: for one week, do not wear pants when you're at home. Let's be reasonable about it (I am not advocating scaring house guests, the mailman, or your neighbors) but, when possible, take your pants off and explore what it feels like to be comfortable just being with your body, in your most normal setting, when you're most yourself.
What do you find about yourself? What do you feel about your physical self? Does it help to have awesome underpants and really cute toenail polish? Do you feel best when you're crafting (pants-less)? In short, I want to know what makes you feel like not like a goddess, but like the fallible, flawed, squishy, and absolutely perfect human you are.
Because honestly, we all need to start loving and respecting our human selves a whole lot more because maybe if we do that, we'll really start to respect each other.
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Hee hee. I am almost never fully dressed at home - and my windows overlook a restaurant. I'm pretty sure the wait staff is tired of looking at my ass.
Geez Leweeze. If I can't
be nekked at home, I don't
want to be in your revolution.
I love your idea. As one who grew up wearing only a swim suit for the majority of my life, I understand how great it is to embrace your body, no matter what is on it, and not have to think of it as anything but your own for a while.
this was really powerful and moving. thank you so much for putting this blog on feministing or else i would never have found it. right now being a freshman in college i find myself constantly pulling down my shirt and pulling up my pants so that no one can see the fat that lies underneath. but now today while i'm at work in the school library, i'll take the lesson your post has given me and try to embolden myself with confidence. once again, thanks!
For me, the hangup is hair. My hair grows in dark, and fast. And my skin is sensitive enough that I can only shave every few days.
I often shy away from capris or skirts unless I'm on "day one," and I confess I've chosen pajama pants vs. shorts, even when it's warm at night. So walking around the house without pants on will be a good personal growth and acceptance tactic for me. Thank you for sharing your story!
The truth is, as cruel as children can be to each other, they are infinitely worse to themselves. I was my own biggest bully, my own harshest critic. I was the one rubbing my face in the mud and daring myself to do something about it.
Amen to this. I'm in the never-ending "recovery" phase of an eating disorder. In unguarded moments on bad days, something of my attitude toward my body will slip out, and friends will ask what I heard growing up or what cultural influences made me feel that way. Those have probably been factors in some sense, but ultimately, it comes from within.
On a sunnier note: I, too, have always been a rabid fan of skirts! I prefer long ones for the way they swoosh... and I remember the mid-to-late-'90s sunflower-motif fad with a mix of bemusement and horror.
I'm naked most of the time at home anyway. In the summer I sleep naked (or almost so, in underwear and maybe a camisole) most nights. I actually feel much sexier when naked, because I'm not worried about whether my clothing is too tight or causing me to bulge - it's just the lines of my body flowing naturally. I highly recommend that everyone hang out naked as often as possible!
Wow, I'm really glad you guys liked what I had to say. If you go to my blog (the link is at the top of the post), there are pictures that I couldn't put in my post here.
I remember quite distinctly the first (and one of few) skirts I bought as an adult. I was always a fat kid and a tomboy, so I've always shunned skirts and dresses for those two reasons. I did wear a skirt to my high school graduation, but that was only because school officials told us girls that if we didn't wear a skirt under our white robes, that we would be barred from participating. I bought my first skirt as an adult after developing an eating disorder that caused me to lose 60 percent of my body weight in a year. As with you, they were somewhat of a novelty to me so I bought a few more. I never did feel comfortable in them though and I quickly went back to wearing pants, which I have always preferred, fat or thin.
For you, it was skirts; for me, it was always shorts. I stopped wearing shorts when I decided that I looked too fat in them and I still to this day do not own a pair. I do, however, regularly relax in my skivvies and a t-shirt at home with my husband, who doesn't mind in the slightest that his wife is prowling the house half-naked.
I, for the longest time, have hated pants. I was that kid in elementary school who didn't own a pair of jeans. In college, all of my friends knew to knock before entering my dorm room because the first thing I did each time I got home was to take off my pants. I, too, love skirts, but hate the way my thighs chafe painfully in the summer - the blessing and curse of dance training is absurdly muscular thighs.
But my personal battleground of physique right now is in the fetish community. I am horribly shy, so before I go to a party, i get incredibly nervous and cranky, far more than for any other social event. do i look fat? i've gained weight. my hair is disgusting. i don't have any good shoes for this. one time my hair was disobeying me and i almost ripped out a chunk. but the thing is, this is even sillier than freaking out over a normal party. no matter how i think i look, i always get compliments. indeed, so does everyone. by being a place where everyone (male and female, you should see some of the things guys wear) is encouraged to display their body, everyone's body becomes a thing of beauty, a living artwork to be admired. it is not the treatment i know to expect from others, but my own harsh judgment of myself that holds me back.
Sorry about the length, it's something i was already thinking about.
The BDSM community is certainly not without flaws, but the body ideals are less restrictive, that's for sure. One of the critiques of using larger models in fashion magazines has been that it merely substitutes one set of body ideals for another; my experience with kinksters is that the body types for both men and women that are recognized as "acceptably sexual," whatever that is, are widely varied.
My thighs have never NOT touched. They are in constant contact with one another and I have worn shorts only as a child. I hate shorts. I don't like most pants. I LOVE skirts and dresses and just had to put a skirt on now just to get tomatoes from out back. Otherwise- I share in your love of wandering around the house pants-less and skirt-less.
Thank you for writing what you did, it was a very enjoyable read and it's nice to know there are others in their underpants doing work at home!
But the thigh-chafing really friggin' hurts! How do you get around that? I for one am glad we're getting more fall-like weather here in Chicago because now I can wear tights and therefore skirts again.
I've found that putting deodorant (the roll-over kind) on the inside of the thighs does wonders!
It's saved me for the last three NY summers since I've started my own skirt/dress revolution!
yes, thigh chafing is so uncomfortable and would drive me nuts. luckily a friend of mine who played football in high school filled me in on a great secret - unscented antiperspirant. now i know people avoid this stuff because of the chemicals but it really works SO WELL. just apply to your legs where they touch and the antiperspirant minimizes the sweating which is what causes the chafing. it's made my summer so much better to not have to worry that i might walk a lot and chafe and be super uncomfortable all day.
Depending on the length of your skirt, bike shorts are a good chub-rub prevention. They're hard to find now, but not impossible.
http://www.teamestrogen.com/product/cycling/apparel/bottoms/shorts/fitted/c0-atsport_01-c1-c24-c117-c118.html
Just buy legit bike shorts sans chamois.
My mom also wears faux bike shorts under her wind breaker-y gym shorts. I think she buys them at the Academy.
Thank you for that link! I've been looking for a place to buy bike shorts ever since Title 9 decided to stop selling most of their athletic clothing and become yet another casualwear store.
I discovered split slips (like my grandmother used to wear) and absolutely love them for preventing thigh chafing. The polyester ones wick like athletic technical fabric so I stay cooler in the summer than if I didn't wear anything underneath a skirt. In the winter, I switch to tightly knit silk ones that keep me warm. I think they make the skirt fall better, on my body at least. No sticking to skin or stubble. They are brilliant.
I find that baby powder works wonders, if you don't want to use antiperspirant.
hey I have really large thighs (which I honestly do LOVE because it proves what a strong dancer I am and that I have spent my entire life doing just that embrace the curves ladies) and I suffer from the same problem. There are two things that you can use to prevent the chafing, one: baby powder two: deoderant/antiperspirant. I know a lot of woman don't use the antiperspirant but in this case it isn't about smell blocking, its about keeping your legs dry so that they don't get like that, the sweat which your legs produce from rubbing together for long periods of time is what causes the chafing and that will prevent it from occurring.
I'm a dancer too but my thighs have always been chub not muscle. When I was in 13-hour a week dancer training mode they got thin enough not to rub, but that's definitely not my natural state. I do have super calves though; those never go away:)
so glad that you have come out of your shell. I wear nothing but skirts and I am a very curvy woman. I too suffered from an eating disorder for a long time because of my body shape. I have now embraced the fact that my body will never be like a stick, that that's just not the way I am built, and I really do love my body. I love my large thighs, they show the hard work I have done to dance well. I love my stomach, it bears the marks of a uterine cancer survivor, and that in itself empowers me. I love my saggy breasts, they show what the weight of the world resting on a woman does to her. I am so happy when I hear posts on here of other women going through the same experience and learning to love my body. Thanks for this, it helped me out today.
There is a product called "body glide" in most sports stores. It is for distance runners. It works better than deodorant because its non-scented and doesn't clump
i love this post! I read somewhere that it's good for your self esteem to walk around your house nekkid, so i've been doing this for awhile, and i love it:) as for chaffing, i heard on fatshonista that coco butter or shea butter is the best for longevity and non-greasiness. i have yet to test them..
What is thigh chafing? What does it look like? I honestly have no idea.
Okay, just did a Google search. Got it.
thigh chafing is a rash that forms when damp skin rubs agains skin. it's similar to a baby's diaper rash. it's red and irritated and sometimes the skin gets raised and bumpy. it stings and is very uncomfortable.
thigh chafing is a rash that forms when damp skin rubs against skin. it's similar to a baby's diaper rash. it's red and irritated and sometimes the skin gets raised and bumpy. it stings and is very uncomfortable.
Growing up living with my mom and sister, I thought it was no big deal to walk around the house naked - it was just us gals. Although I am very comfortable being naked and very much enjoy not wearing clothing, I found that it made my sister very uncomfortable to see me cruising around the house with nothing on. She told me one time, "I don't want to see that shit!" And it was really quite sad, because I knew that it came from a place of immense insecurity on her behalf. She was so uncomfortable with her own body that even seeing me naked while walking from the bathroom to my bedroom made her feel upset. :(
I, too, was a master at beating myself up for no good reason but much of this is due to the anxiety disorder for which I currently take medication. Now that I am properly medicated, my neuroses rarely concave in on each other the way they used to.
As I am a man, I admit that I am not as inclined to hate my body as women unfortunately do, but rest assured I had (and still have) plenty of internal ammunition to hate other things about myself. Since I work from home these days, I sometimes barely get out of boxers until it's time to go to the gym, and even then it's shorts rather than long pants for me.
As for that whole self-esteem thing, well, I have to say I'm a work in progress. What do I do to feel thoroughly comfortable as the flawed creature I am, you ask? Mostly try not to take myself too seriously and recognize that my personal concerns are not nearly as important as the ways in which I help other people.
I'm really interested to see a male perspective on this issue. I know from watching my boyfriend, who has what I (and most fashion magazines) consider an absolutely perfect body, stress about the size of his love handles or width of his biceps that there are considerable, though different, pressures on the male form.
So yeah, what is different for men, in your experience, than what you've heard described by women? As some have pointed out, my neuroses are around skirts while other women worry about shorts. Is there a clothing choice that particularly sets you on edge? What would be a "pants-off" challenge for you?
I send this question out to all men and, for that matter, wonder about the different for cis versus trans people. What particular issues arise in our differing views of our bodies based upon whether we identify with the gender we were assigned at birth?
Hee, the first thing I do when I get home is take of my bra and my pants/shorts/skirt. I don't like waistbands or anything constricting around my torso for some reason. I'm just so much more comfortable with out them.
I'm not fat or even chubby, but my thighs have always rubbed together. I think it's a more common phenomenon than most people realize.
BTW, does anyone have any suggestions for posts like this aimed at men? My partner, who suffers from depression, has SEVERE body image issues/fat-self-loathing. He thinks he's the most disgusting thing on earth because he's 250 lbs, and it breaks my heart. He doesn't even like going out because he worries people are judging his looks. It's true that women are more prone to that, but it's also true that as far as I can tell, the vast majority of body-acceptance stuff is aimed at women. I wish I knew something I could direct him to to make him stop hating himself and his body so much.
I have wondered the same thing! My guy has lost nearly 100 pounds over about the past 2 years or so, but he can't stop himself from seeing his body as corpulent and unattractive, despite my assurances that I find him attractive in every way.
I found some links:
http://www.msoe.edu/life_at_msoe/current_student_resources/student_resources/counseling_services/newsletters_for_mental_health/body_image_dissatisfaction.shtml
http://ca.askmen.com/money/body_and_mind_150/163_better_living.html
http://www.doilookfatthemovie.com/
I wish there were more that I could find.
I've always had large, muscular thighs that have always touched. Some years ago I started running and had to wear bike short type pants to keep them from chafing too much. When I wore skirts, i put on bike shorts or Spanx or something along those lines to prevent the rubbing. Then I found the answer: BODY GLIDE. It is the best stuff. It's not a sex aid, it's for athletes--runners use it constantly. It doesn't stain, it's not sticky and you forget you have it on except for the fact that your thighs aren't chafing. I wear skirts now with nothing on underneath except my bikini briefs. It's not the cheapest stuff ever, but it's worth every penny. http://www.bodyglide.com/
(No, I don't work for them! I'm just a fan.)
Amen amen I love you i love you this was wonderful. *breathe*
Thank you =)
In terms of leaving the house, count me in with the chafing faction. I hate it, it hurts, and I've tried all of the anti-chafe methods people have listed with minimal success. But I'm totally on board with the overall sentiment of the OP, and I'm all about wearing less when it's not physically uncomfortable. I do, indeed, find that having cute underwear helps. I hated it as a teenager when the only thing available in my size was granny panties- I think it's gotten a lot better in recent years. There's more available. One thing that is driving me crazy is the length of shorts. I love wearing less when it's hot out, but I have to have board shorts (knee length) for my own comfort. Anything higher increases the chafing, rides up, and makes me have to do that extra-wide sidestep every third step I take, which is just a crappy situation. So when board shorts are in style I'm good to go, but every few years it's back to Daisy Dukes and I have to make my own cutoffs or suffer.
I just got home from class and the first thing I did was take off my jeans. And I live with 3 guys. I did put on boxers cause the maintenance man is here, but still, it's a very freeing and comfortable feeling.
to deal with the chaffing, try something like Body Glide from a running or walking store.
It's look like clear deodorant and it really helps.
Thanks for your post. It spoke to me on so many levels.