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not shaped like a human
Mar. 4th, 2019 01:54 amvia https://ift.tt/2SEXGOf
ughhhhh i follow sewqueer on instagram and mostly I love it but a lot of times it just reminds me that I don’t sew like normal people, even like forget-about-normal queer people, and also my body is Extreme even among plus-size sewists, and I get it, it’s not as bad as if I was Death Fat, that’s absolutely a struggle I don’t know, but sometimes I just.
I get tired.
Well, there was a post asking about bra pattern recs for big busts, and I eagerly followed along and looked at all the recs, because like, that’s a problem I have. and. I mean. Of course none of them are natively in my size? Of course not. I’m not shaped like a human.
Most of them, I’d just have to grade up because their Size Enormous goes ALL THE WAY UP to a HUUUUUGE… 42″ bust, ha ha ha ha ha that’s fucking cute, or they’re genuinely plus-size and good for them but uh… I’d have to hack a size L rib (why is that “underbust” when it’s just… your ribcage? whatever) with a size 4X full-bust measurement, and grade it, and of course I’d have to do that, most people aren’t shaped like this and it’s frankly stupid to expect to be accommodated, especially when the whole point of sewing your own is that you can do shit like that?
But I ended up getting really upset at myself that it’s been literally a decade since I got my sisters to team up and buy me an expensive book on customizing bra patterns for my birthday (christ it was like…. my twenty-sixth or some shit) and I have made about a dozen muslins in an astonishing array of fabrics, and I still have not actually, successfully, made myself so much as a shelf-bra tank that actually fits me. Because I’m not shaped like a human.
Listen. Mostly, I just. I don’t buy patterns. Why the fuck should I pay someone money to buy a pattern that I’m then going to have to redraw to fit me?
Well, because I’m not going to draw my own from scratch, is what it boils down to. But listen, i can’t follow a pattern to save myself, so why the fuck should I bother? I’m going to keep on as I began, and keep hacking shit to semi-work, and never actually make anything I’m proud of, and I should really, really unfollow all the sewing blogs I keep suckering myself into.
I just get so tired of being reminded that my body is impossible and so on and so forth. (And I occasionally go get myself professionally sized and they’re like “ha ha no big deal you are normal human sized (just a little fat, aww don’t feel bad)!” and put me in something and instantly the back of it fwumps straight up to my neck, and they’re like oh I guess we need to go… down like uhhhhhh… one or two oh five band sizes, gosh you didn’t look that… weird… but this is the largest cup size we have so we have to sister-size you so we can’t actually reduce the band at all… and uh if you get this professionally tailored they can take the requisite uhhhh eight inches out of the band so it’ll fit you but oh then your breasts will be in your armpits so uh. Sorry to inform you, you’re not shaped like a human after all. Toodles!)
(No lie though I have actually owned a number of (hundred-dollar) bras where they super-obviously had a Plus Size fit model that was like, a 44D, and so to make it fit a 34 back size they just. Cut the band shorter. And didn’t, like, take into account the fact that a bra should have the cups on the front of the band only. They literally wrapped halfway around to the back.(*coughWACOALcough*) Needless to say, there was enough volume in the cups for me, theoretically, but I could only get one boob to stay in at once, because, and I didn’t think this was unusual, my breasts are, exclusively, on the front of my body. Who knew that was weird!)
It should not be as demoralizing as it is, but it is my entire adult life at this point; every time I have to think about it, I am reminded that I am a fucking freak of nature. And it’s not just that clothes don’t fit, it’s that those great online bra-sizing services (for everybody!) have smugly told me my measurements “don’t work” because they trip the error filter [yes that was the helpful error message, verbatim, seared into my consciousness, “those numbers don’t work” fucking thank you, assholes]; my mother tried to sew me a bathing suit when I was 15 because nothing commercial was remotely adequate for me, and gave up in frustration because my body was “impossible”, Land’s End every fucking year sends me a catalog of “suits for every body” that really pointedly does not include my body, a professional tailor once at a camping event drunkenly made me a duct tape pattern of my upper torso and spent the whole thing sweetly, but genuinely, astonished at me ( “I don’t think fabric can… do this,” she said, as she flattened the duct tape and traced the resulting really sharp curve onto heavy-duty paper), people on the Internet have furiously insisted I don’t belong in a plus-size group with a back size as small as mine, and yet I’m undeniably fat; I was eventually accused of lying. I was literally laughed out of a Lane Bryant when I was 20, and came back later in triumph delighted that I’d finally gained enough weight to shop there, but their bras don’t go down enough in back size to fit me (and if they did, the cups wouldn’t be big enough; don’t forget every time you go down a back size you have to go up a cup to stay the same volume, and oh, it doesn’t go up any more sizes).
People assume I’m bragging. I promise you, I am the fuck not. There is nothing here to brag about: I’m just fat, in general and also, bonus, in specific. I did turn to looking at big-boobs f*tish p*rnography, for a while, because at least someone was happy about all the accidents of anatomy going on there, but it was fairly hollow; it all boiled down to what freaks these women are, right, when they have bodies that just… look… like… me. And my body is not inherently sexual, and by now I’m just too tired to take it as a compliment anymore. Maybe that’s the only time I can feel validated, when someone is clearly turned on by me. But I just want to live, I just want to be comfortable, I just want to feel like I look respectable, so people will let me live my life. I really don’t need you to jerk off about it, that was just the only validation I could find for a while there.
What size are you, someone asks, and I just shrug: it’s been so long since I found something that actually fucking fit, that I have no idea. I’m wearing a shitty saggy Glamorise 38G/H that doesn’t fit, I need both a smaller band and a larger cup and I literally have no idea what size that would be but it doesn’t fucking matter because nobody fucking makes it.
I am not shaped like a human. And that shouldn’t matter, and mostly it doesn’t, to be honest, I just live my life and whatever, I don’t care.
But I wish I didn’t have to notice all the goddamn time that I’m not shaped like a human. Boy is that upsetting. Because, honestly, I am one, I swear, and I want to just. Be one.
(Your picture was not posted)
ughhhhh i follow sewqueer on instagram and mostly I love it but a lot of times it just reminds me that I don’t sew like normal people, even like forget-about-normal queer people, and also my body is Extreme even among plus-size sewists, and I get it, it’s not as bad as if I was Death Fat, that’s absolutely a struggle I don’t know, but sometimes I just.
I get tired.
Well, there was a post asking about bra pattern recs for big busts, and I eagerly followed along and looked at all the recs, because like, that’s a problem I have. and. I mean. Of course none of them are natively in my size? Of course not. I’m not shaped like a human.
Most of them, I’d just have to grade up because their Size Enormous goes ALL THE WAY UP to a HUUUUUGE… 42″ bust, ha ha ha ha ha that’s fucking cute, or they’re genuinely plus-size and good for them but uh… I’d have to hack a size L rib (why is that “underbust” when it’s just… your ribcage? whatever) with a size 4X full-bust measurement, and grade it, and of course I’d have to do that, most people aren’t shaped like this and it’s frankly stupid to expect to be accommodated, especially when the whole point of sewing your own is that you can do shit like that?
But I ended up getting really upset at myself that it’s been literally a decade since I got my sisters to team up and buy me an expensive book on customizing bra patterns for my birthday (christ it was like…. my twenty-sixth or some shit) and I have made about a dozen muslins in an astonishing array of fabrics, and I still have not actually, successfully, made myself so much as a shelf-bra tank that actually fits me. Because I’m not shaped like a human.
Listen. Mostly, I just. I don’t buy patterns. Why the fuck should I pay someone money to buy a pattern that I’m then going to have to redraw to fit me?
Well, because I’m not going to draw my own from scratch, is what it boils down to. But listen, i can’t follow a pattern to save myself, so why the fuck should I bother? I’m going to keep on as I began, and keep hacking shit to semi-work, and never actually make anything I’m proud of, and I should really, really unfollow all the sewing blogs I keep suckering myself into.
I just get so tired of being reminded that my body is impossible and so on and so forth. (And I occasionally go get myself professionally sized and they’re like “ha ha no big deal you are normal human sized (just a little fat, aww don’t feel bad)!” and put me in something and instantly the back of it fwumps straight up to my neck, and they’re like oh I guess we need to go… down like uhhhhhh… one or two oh five band sizes, gosh you didn’t look that… weird… but this is the largest cup size we have so we have to sister-size you so we can’t actually reduce the band at all… and uh if you get this professionally tailored they can take the requisite uhhhh eight inches out of the band so it’ll fit you but oh then your breasts will be in your armpits so uh. Sorry to inform you, you’re not shaped like a human after all. Toodles!)
(No lie though I have actually owned a number of (hundred-dollar) bras where they super-obviously had a Plus Size fit model that was like, a 44D, and so to make it fit a 34 back size they just. Cut the band shorter. And didn’t, like, take into account the fact that a bra should have the cups on the front of the band only. They literally wrapped halfway around to the back.(*coughWACOALcough*) Needless to say, there was enough volume in the cups for me, theoretically, but I could only get one boob to stay in at once, because, and I didn’t think this was unusual, my breasts are, exclusively, on the front of my body. Who knew that was weird!)
It should not be as demoralizing as it is, but it is my entire adult life at this point; every time I have to think about it, I am reminded that I am a fucking freak of nature. And it’s not just that clothes don’t fit, it’s that those great online bra-sizing services (for everybody!) have smugly told me my measurements “don’t work” because they trip the error filter [yes that was the helpful error message, verbatim, seared into my consciousness, “those numbers don’t work” fucking thank you, assholes]; my mother tried to sew me a bathing suit when I was 15 because nothing commercial was remotely adequate for me, and gave up in frustration because my body was “impossible”, Land’s End every fucking year sends me a catalog of “suits for every body” that really pointedly does not include my body, a professional tailor once at a camping event drunkenly made me a duct tape pattern of my upper torso and spent the whole thing sweetly, but genuinely, astonished at me ( “I don’t think fabric can… do this,” she said, as she flattened the duct tape and traced the resulting really sharp curve onto heavy-duty paper), people on the Internet have furiously insisted I don’t belong in a plus-size group with a back size as small as mine, and yet I’m undeniably fat; I was eventually accused of lying. I was literally laughed out of a Lane Bryant when I was 20, and came back later in triumph delighted that I’d finally gained enough weight to shop there, but their bras don’t go down enough in back size to fit me (and if they did, the cups wouldn’t be big enough; don’t forget every time you go down a back size you have to go up a cup to stay the same volume, and oh, it doesn’t go up any more sizes).
People assume I’m bragging. I promise you, I am the fuck not. There is nothing here to brag about: I’m just fat, in general and also, bonus, in specific. I did turn to looking at big-boobs f*tish p*rnography, for a while, because at least someone was happy about all the accidents of anatomy going on there, but it was fairly hollow; it all boiled down to what freaks these women are, right, when they have bodies that just… look… like… me. And my body is not inherently sexual, and by now I’m just too tired to take it as a compliment anymore. Maybe that’s the only time I can feel validated, when someone is clearly turned on by me. But I just want to live, I just want to be comfortable, I just want to feel like I look respectable, so people will let me live my life. I really don’t need you to jerk off about it, that was just the only validation I could find for a while there.
What size are you, someone asks, and I just shrug: it’s been so long since I found something that actually fucking fit, that I have no idea. I’m wearing a shitty saggy Glamorise 38G/H that doesn’t fit, I need both a smaller band and a larger cup and I literally have no idea what size that would be but it doesn’t fucking matter because nobody fucking makes it.
I am not shaped like a human. And that shouldn’t matter, and mostly it doesn’t, to be honest, I just live my life and whatever, I don’t care.
But I wish I didn’t have to notice all the goddamn time that I’m not shaped like a human. Boy is that upsetting. Because, honestly, I am one, I swear, and I want to just. Be one.
(Your picture was not posted)
