Conquering Back to School Dressing Room Woes

Almost exactly ten years ago to the day, I started my first day of college. I don’t remember what classes I had that day, but I remember what I wore: wedges, a white fitted t-shirt with a vintage navy belt around my natural waist, a necklace with oversized geometric shapes, and flare jeans. At the time, I was a size 12. Thinking back on it, this may have been one of the last years that I wore jeans with any regularity.

When I think about wearing jeans or any kind of fitted pant, I am still taken back to years of back to school shopping trips that ended with me crying in the dressing room. By the 7th grade, I was a women’s size 16 and 5’1†so finding pants that weren’t too long and also fit my fat body was not easy. For years, every late August/early September, my mom, sister and I trekked two hours to a shopping mall in Columbus in hopes that I would find what we called “school pants.†These were pants that I didn’t really want to wear but was told I had to for the sake of school. Even as a kid, I would have worn stretch pants every day and as an adult, leggings became a way to avoid my dressing room meltdowns completely.

Even though my size changed throughout all the years, I went back to school shopping from a size 16 to a 6 and everywhere in between and I still never had an easy time buying pants. Any pants that fit in my thighs and hips were too big in the waist and any pants that would have fit my waist didn’t even get over my thighs. And that was just one part of the struggle. The length was always an issue for me. I had to roll under my pants to see what they would look like hemmed and pray that the seamstress knew how to make the hem look the same so people wouldn’t notice that the hem on my jeans was an imposter.

And an imposter is always how back to school pants shopping made me feel. I felt like there was something wrong with me. I blamed my short legs and my thick thighs. As I tried on each pair that dragged on the floor, got stuck on my thighs or gapped at the waist, I would inevitably start to cry. What I see now that I couldn’t see then is that my body wasn’t the problem at all. The jeans not fitting has more to do with retailers not realizing that women are not all shaped the same with the same proportions. It took me a long time to realize that the jeans not fitting was never my body’s fault.

Plus size styling company . recently came out with a campaign and called that highlights the dressing room experience and how retailers can do better. Prior to releasing the campaign, they conducted a survey which found that 22% of women reported leaving the dressing room happy and that 75% of the clothes a woman tries on do not fit her body. Dia & Co ties this all back to retail standards (dating back to the 1930s) being unrepresentative of the women they serve. Dia believes that “it’s not the clothes that should determine the shape of your body, but your body that should determine the shape of your clothes.†And when you think about it that way, you can really see how this mindset puts the power back in our hands as consumers.

Although it’s been a while since I have shopped for school pants or experienced total dressing room defeat, I still try on a lot of clothing that doesn’t fit. When I walk into the dressing room now, my mindset is totally different. I am mostly looking to see how good the lighting is for mirror selfies instead of shaming my body for the way clothes fit or don’t fit. I almost always bring in the maximum number of items you can bring into the dressing room; not because I plan on buying them all but because I know that 75% of them won’t fit. I do a lot of online shopping so when I have the opportunity to shop for plus size clothing in person, I try on a lot. I see how different styles fit and how fabrics lay. I never tell myself that I cannot wear anything as a result of this experience; instead, I just try a bunch of things on and wear what fits.

I even bought multiple pairs of jeans this past summer for the first time in years even though leggings are still my pant of choice. I found a retailer that carried plus size jeans in short lengths and I knew I needed to at least try them. I grabbed several different pairs of jeans. I told myself that there was no harm in trying and that even if none of them fit, my body was still pretty great as it is. As I stepped into the dressing room, I tried on pairs of jeans that dragged on the floor, got stuck on my thighs or gapped at the waist just like all those times I had gone back to school shopping. But instead of crying, I had patience. I tried on every pair I brought in and to my surprise, one of them fit. That was just the first time in recent memory but not the last that I walked out of the dressing room not in tears but with a pair of jeans.

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