What proportion of your income do you spend on clothes? Pls help me get over my tightness...

[WilfSell]

I am a grown woman with a fabulous salary. OK I have lots of children and lots of mortgage and lots of commitments. But I still can't get over my 'god that's too expensive' gene.

I am fat and run to seed after baby 3. I know I need to shift blubber. Some of my meanness is that: you know, the 'I'll only buy really nice clothes when I'm slimmer' mentality. Which is stupid, because I know taking care of myself is actually more likely to help me slim.

And some of it is feeling selfish to spend money on myself. And not the kids or house or DH for example.

And some of it is just lazy, used to Tescos the crappy high street mentality. A woman of my age (farking 40) should know better.

I looked at the shirt dress Perkin Warbeck linked to in Austin Reed and though feck they even do it in an 18 (though I bet it is a 16 really) and wondered to myself why I have never even considered shopping there.

And some lovely things in Hobbs currently. And lots of other shops that I don't frequent.

sorry if this pisses people off - I'm not trying to be smug about my earnings. I'm just wondering how other people justify 100 quid on a blouse and 180 on a pair of kecks. Is it because I'm a tight Northerner?

ok, how fat do you want to be?

You see, I'm a size 18-20 but I will only let myself shop in cheap shops. Firstly because i have some really lovely clothes in the wardrobe from 3 years ago when I was a 14 and secondly because I haven't come to terms with being this fat.

If you have genuinely come to terms with it then shop in egg and marina rinaldi.

If you haven't then do what i'm doing - spending cash on some very cheap clothes and wii fit

roll on the size 14's......................, for me, not you

laurie, I understand the dilemma. I haven't come to terms with it because in my head, despite being 40 and having no sleep and never getting round to exercising or not opening the bottle of wine/packet of biscuits, I still think of myself as the inner size 12 I used to be. Well, I'd settle for a 14 too.

But it has been so long.

Is Marina Rinaldi giving in then? What is Egg? Are they proper fat girls clothes (like trapeze style tents and all?)

I've been buying shite from Tescos etc as I said higher up the thread, but I am now thinking it is disrespectful to my fashionable self. not that i've ever been a proper 'victim' but I do love clothes.

OR
you could take a different route
stop worrying about clothes
take the ecological route and stop consuming
stop buying into the pressure on women to keep buying, keep dieting, keep plucking, keep waxing and keep judging yourself and other women on the way they look

and think about something else and spend your money on something else
or don't spend it at all
just another POV

sorry I have put a dampener on the thread

ok, but you can hardly go around naked. I buy as little as possible but I'm still going up sizes. I am deliberately buying cheap, nasty size 20 clothes ( a small amount) because I refuse to buy nice stuff til I've decided I'm going to be this size.

It's summer today. I went through last summers clothes, I have 2 cropped trousers and one pair of jeans that fit. I Have to go and buy a couple of three quarter sleeve tops tomorrow or i will not get through the next couple of weeks/the summer. It's such a struggle to lose weight.

I'm a new school feminist: the kind that believes in celebrating my material culture, and addressing social and ecological need in a balanced way. We're all implicated in trivia and belonging in different ways. Consuming performs lots of roles, not all of them bad.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this so am not being glib.

egg is a shop in London whom (according to India Knight) is for 'posh fatties' - apparently the clothes are lovely

I like to look good, i'm not an eco-warrior type. I make no apologies for it, it is who I am.

It does not make me a better or worse person because I like to buy nice clothes.

Is it gonna kick off now?

I am sure you are not being glib, and I don't begrudge you spending your hard earned money etcetc. and yes I would agree, consuming performs some positive roles. but those with (comparitively) more economic power have a comparitively heavy responsibility to spend their money in ethical ways, maybe?

but what about the over concentration on appearance? does that have a positive side. do you think?

I am genuinely interested and not being deliberately argumentative, just answering your question about why you find it hard to justify spending £180 on a pair of trousers. I don't think it is because you are a tight northerner (though there is nothing wrong with that ) but maybe because you are fundamentally frugal and that you are reluctant because spending money in this way is, if not immoral, at least a little ethically and politically dubious

I do think that appearance and making an effort can be positive, yes. I think promoting healthy body image is extremely positive, and if part of that is looking good, then no harm to it.

comparatively

I think there is a bit of me that is concerned about the ethics of production. And of course I know that trousers just are not worth 180 quid. But - just to be boringly specific - nothing is really worth what it is worth so we have little hope of escaping that, except for very direct produce. I'd love to see alternative clothes like this, but I doubt they exist.

As for the appearance thing... Clearly it has been colonised by global capital and celebrity-itis. Yet I still believe there is something intrinsically appealing about both belonging to groups and being 'shiny' that is OK actually. It's what we do as humans (as well, funnily, as standing out). Clothes and decoration satisfy both these things, even if the lingua franca for them is pretty limited and directed.

so, harpsi, I am a mess of contradiction!

how does spending lots of money on expensive new clothes promote a healthy body image?
that seems like a total non sequitur to me.
I think to say there is "no harm in it" is probably untrue tbh.
lots of people have very poor body images, leading to lots of unhappiness from EDs to general lack of self esteem.
being judged on your appearance - in particular being judged on the clothes you wear and how much you have spent on them - is a form of snobbery. and not particularly feminist, imo.

how about this tshirt

But I like to look good. I am very happy and comfortable with my body, and I like to style and dress well.
What about that is unhealthy, or harmful?

"she won't get a job if she looks like a bag lady hc."
yeah now we are onto massive non sequitur territory and hyperbole
since when did "not spending £180 on a pair of trousers" = "looking like a bag lady"??

it's mad people spend £20 on a blusher because everyone else does

SEA - I don't buy anything 'because everyone else does'. My blusher costs me £35. Its very good.

i knew it was gonna kick off

am off to bed will be back tomorrow...