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By Amanda Richards
It’s a component of thank you notes, a series of thank you letters to other people, and the things that motivate us the most. Like many others, Allure has spent this summer inwards, the position from which, as they say, good looks emerge. We have discovered pain, love, humor and deep gratitude for the other people we know and the world in which we live. Then we write.
With legs
I’ll never do it the first time I saw you sneaking through the steamy slit of a beautiful dress. I was sloping on my most sensible lap in the middle of the night, browsing the trendy blogs. You belonged to a very tall and charming woman. The photo gave the impression of belonging to a magazine; the subject was in the most sensitive of an outdoor staircase, posing triumphantly as the dress floated around it. The opening showed her legs, heavier than ever, and the expression on her face meant she was satisfied by it.
At first, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I had never noticed a tall woman dressed as sheArray inhabiting her body so confidently and posing in such assertive ways. I looked at the picture for hours, only to realize it was a symbol I’d been looking for all my life.
I have felt the desire to draw attention to what I wear, to participate in fashion trends, to dress up in the kind of garments that do not have the number one service to hide my body. But for most of my life, I couldn’t find the clothes I was actually looking to wear, and if I did, they never made it to my size. I was the greatest woman in my class, and the lack of wear features combined with the relentless harassment I’ve experienced over the years has made me feel away from others and completely disconnected from myself. I went through films, books, magazines, music videos and advertisements to locate photographs of women who not only looked like me, but looked like the ambitious edition of myself that I sought to be: not thin, but elegant; self-confident and happy. At the time, the fats that other people presented through popular culture were contrary to those things; they were portrayed as bums, hot shit, cover photos, fellow risa who could sit and be brave, while encouraging skinny friends trying to dance dresses.
But after seeing those legs in this photo, I spent hours digging deeper and deeper into the global fashion of big sizes. Every day I discovered new blogs, new bodies, new features for shopping. I began experimenting with garments that showed my structure in each and every way I thought maybe ever. I bought things too long, a silhouette I had enjoyed but from which I had gone away from worrying about looking bigger; in fact, I was looking bigger. I bought bikinis and lingerie, and I didn’t hesitate to ask someone to take a picture of me. Finally, I abandoned the concept that a woman with a fat body like mine had to do each and every one of the things I could do to make femininity tasty.
Then I started writing about everything. My writing led me to have my first task offered in the fashion media, then another, then another. Seeing other fats that other people inhabit in their bodies without shame, hiding or looking to shrink, helped me break with my past understanding of what was imaginable and to make my way to an area I assumed was forbidden. Without those legs and the sense of choice they represented, none of this would have happened. For those legs, and all the legs like them, I’m grateful. They helped me move forward in a way I never thought I could.
Amanda Richards is one in New York. An edition of this story originally gave the impression on the Allure factor of August 2020. Read the rest of Allure’s thank-you notes here.
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