There is a myth I swallowed young, that somewhere out there were correct clothes. A sacred wardrobe of items that would finally make sense of my shape, my limbs, my mutinous meat. The right jeans. The right color palette. The right neckline for my "body type": a term that always made me feel like a specimen, something clinical, a frog being cut open in a biology class of the soul. But I could never figure it out. Not once. Not when I was skinny. Not when I grew. Not when I tried to mimic the girls on Tumblr with collarbones like wings and thigh gaps like exits. Not when I shifted to soft, womaned flesh and tried to summon power from silhouettes I didn’t believe in. Every outfit felt like a costume. Every mirror, a jury. What is the correct way to dress a loopy lump of shame? No one ever told me. They just told me when I got it wrong. The fitting room is not a space. It is a crucible. A small, fluorescent-lit cathedral where women go to flagellate their flesh in polyester and denim. I have cried in more dressing rooms than churches. Not because the clothes didn’t fit but because I didn’t.
Too big here. Too tight there.
Too visible. Too real. Too me.
Then came adulthood like an unwanted bloom, unplanned inheritance, grotesque in its naturalness, a body softening, widening, shifting into its own story. I did not consent to it, but I also did not fight hard enough to stop it. I grew. My body curved unapologetically, softly, stubbornly. There’s a quiet betrayal in realizing your bones have decided on curves without your permission. Your body, like a tree trunk, adding rings. No amount of running or regretting could smooth the new lines, the roundness that erupted like rebellion. Suddenly, my body was no longer an illusion I could control, it was an entity, with its own gravitational pull, its own hunger. What is the correct dress for a body that betrays the very myth of static femininity? The world offers rules. Silhouettes for apple shapes. Tips for minimizing arms. Ways to look thinner, taller, flatter, smaller. The implication: you are not correct. But here’s a trick to fake it. And the worst part? I tried. I really tried. I starved. I cinched. I flattered. I punished. I bought the shaping underwear and the “investment pieces.” And still, the clothes wore me like a costume of failure.
Even now, I walk through shops with the caution of a ghost. I don’t browse. I haunt. The clothes hang, smug and confident, whispering "Not for you. Not like that." The mannequins are calm. They know how to wear themselves. I never did. I still don’t know what my "style" is. I know what hides me best on bad days. I know what fabrics make me itch with self-disgust. I know which tops I’ve thrown into laundry baskets like surrender flags after a single wear. But style? That elusive, shimmering self-expression? I’ve been looking for it like a lost twin in a crowd. Clothing, in my youth, was not protection nor expression, it was performance. A fabric theatre of denial. I wore loose cotton like armor, denim like penance. Everything I chose was curated not to show what I had, but to pretend I had nothing. Breasts? A betrayal. Hips? A crime scene. The more I shrank, the more they smiled. And so, I starved myself on praise, measuring my worth in waistbands, hiding my shame in layers. Fashion, they told me, was freedom, but for girls like me, it was a cage with silk bars.
I watched myself thicken like a story too long to be trimmed. The mirror began to mock me. Not for what I was, but for what I no longer was: thin, praised, easy to dress. Clothing, once the tool of invisibility, now became confrontation. Nothing fit, everything hugged. My shape shouted. And society does not like loud bodies.
To conform, I would have to contort. To be desirable, I would have to disappear again. It is to nod along as they hand you the corset and the caution tape and the spreadsheet of acceptable appearances. But how do you un-grow? How do you unsay your own biology? I found myself in fitting rooms turned confessionals, whispering apologies to my reflection. The seams of societal expectation dug into my skin like teeth. But conformity comes at a cost. And it’s not just money or modesty or comfort. It is selfhood. To be palatable is to be partially erased. And I don’t want to live as an acceptable excerpt of myself.
They don’t want curves. They want control.
To conform is to consent to distortion. To be palatable is to be partially erased. And I no longer want to live as an acceptable excerpt of myself. But not all distortions come from magazines or mannequins. Some come from the mouths of people we love. Sometimes the cruelty doesn’t come from strangers. Sometimes it sounds like family, laughing in the kitchen. "You’re becoming fat," my sister says, with that casual sharpness, like she's tossing a pebble into still water not knowing it echoes like thunder in my chest. Like a joke. Like a warning. But I’m not becoming fat. I’m becoming. I’m growing into the body I was always meant to have: a body that is not small, or shrinking, or apologetic. A body that breathes louder than approval. A body that eats. And still, I want to scream: Please stop making fun of me. Please stop measuring me like a threat. Please make space for me. Not in your beauty hierarchy. Not in your ranking of who wore it best. Just in the room. In the conversation. In the world. Sometimes I want to snap back: “You’re just projecting.” Because maybe she is. Maybe she sees something in me she was never allowed to become. Maybe the joke is a deflection. But I remind myself: I’m not that mean. Not out loud. I remind myself: she’s had to carry the bad end of this body bargain too. She’s suffered, pinched, tugged, hidden, endured. I know. I saw. So I don’t bite back. I swallow the comment, let it slink down into the soft rot corners of my mind, where other jokes have pooled, congealed, tucked in the crooks and hooks of my inner architecture like rust. But silence is not forgiveness. It’s just delay.
We are told to love our bodies, but also to discipline them. To be sexy, but not fat. To own our curves, but only if they’re curated: hourglass, not hurricane. Fashion taught me that femininity is an aesthetic, not an experience. You are allowed curves, but only the ones that fit a dress.
But here’s the quiet revolution: I got tired of the performance. I started dressing for sensation, not surveillance. For softness, not strategy. I wore things that clung, not to hide, but to hug. To remind me that my body is not a sin to be forgiven, but a geography to be lived in. My thighs speak of miles walked. My belly tells tales of laughter and full meals and survival. My arms hold: not just objects or others, but me. Clothes are no longer a sentence. They are punctuation. They help me say what I want or choose to say nothing at all. In the end, conformity is a costume. One that itches, pinches, shrinks. But I no longer audition. Let the world try to fit me into its ready-to-wear ideology. I’ll be in the corner, wearing poetry, dressing for a truth too full-bodied to be zipped up. So now, sometimes, on good days, I wear things that do not make sense to anyone but me. A skirt that rides up. A crop top on soft flesh. A dress that hugs my belly like a secret. I do not always feel brave. But I do feel mine. There are still days I whisper apologies to my reflection. Still mornings when nothing feels like the right second skin. But increasingly, I remember this: there is no correct way to be clothed. There is only this strange, flawed, magnificent act of dressing the truth. Some days, I want to be invisible. Others, I want to dress like a reckoning. But now, I choose.
The body is not a problem to be solved, nor a mannequin to be corrected. It is an unfinished poem. A sentence that changes meaning depending on where you stand. Clothes are not the solution. But they are part of the metaphor. They do not define me but they can translate something I can’t yet speak. And I am learning to wear myself in full. No more "correct clothes." Only the sacred act of claiming the skin I’m in with seams that stretch and shirts that rebel, and a mirror that, some days, finally nods back.
But here’s the quiet revolution: I got tired of the performance. I started dressing for sensation, not surveillance. For softness, not strategy. I wore things that clung, not to hide, but to hug. To remind me that my body is not a sin to be forgiven, but a geography to be lived in. My thighs speak of miles walked. My belly tells tales of laughter and full meals and survival. My arms hold: not just objects or others, but me. Clothes are no longer a sentence. They are punctuation. They help me say what I want or choose to say nothing at all. In the end, conformity is a costume. One that itches, pinches, shrinks. But I no longer audition. Let the world try to fit me into its ready-to-wear ideology. I’ll be in the corner, wearing poetry, dressing for a truth too full-bodied to be zipped up. So now, sometimes, on good days, I wear things that do not make sense to anyone but me. A skirt that rides up. A crop top on soft flesh. A dress that hugs my belly like a secret. I do not always feel brave. But I do feel mine. There are still days I whisper apologies to my reflection. Still mornings when nothing feels like the right second skin. But increasingly, I remember this: there is no correct way to be clothed. There is only this strange, flawed, magnificent act of dressing the truth. Some days, I want to be invisible. Others, I want to dress like a reckoning. But now, I choose.
The body is not a problem to be solved, nor a mannequin to be corrected. It is an unfinished poem. A sentence that changes meaning depending on where you stand. Clothes are not the solution. But they are part of the metaphor. They do not define me but they can translate something I can’t yet speak. And I am learning to wear myself in full. No more "correct clothes." Only the sacred act of claiming the skin I’m in with seams that stretch and shirts that rebel, and a mirror that, some days, finally nods back.