I love Style and Beauty but...

[thedevilinablackdress]

I'm increasingly saddened by every other thread (if not more) being a catalogue of things that posters don't like about themselves (arms, legs, height, age, hair, etc etc etc). I get it, we are often here asking for advice about dressing for something outside our comfort zone, or when life and/or our bodies have changed. But it's so pervasive, how we see ourselves as a catalogue of flaws to be fixed. I wish it was not so.

Truthfully (and I'm not knocking them) I think people who are confident about the way they look are less likely to take style advice from people they can't see.

I meant much more expensive than she was looking for rather than three figures,

Im abit over the obsession with 'flattering' personally. Why does everything have to be flattering?, some things are just in your wardrobe because you love them!
Id rather be abit more Marie Kondo in my approach, 'does it spark joy?'.
I have lots of items in my wardrobe like dungarees, oversized dresses and huge balloon trousers. I love how they make me feel....I know people on here would be telling me how unflattering and awful they are though!!LOL😆

Well maybe you shouldn't exaggerate. Most of the suggestions were at the cheaper end of the high street.

When I am choosing clothes for myself, one of the deciding factors is if it is flattering. I do not see anything wrong with that. For many others, it is the same.

Everybody has different priorities when they choose and wear clothes. When I wear something which (I have decided!) is flattering, it makes me feel more confident and ready the face the day!

I inevitably end up not wearing clothes I don't feel good in.

This!

In the 90s I felt like we were only supposed to wear clothes that shrank our presence in society. It was such a toxic era and we were all meant to be super skinny (which I was not!)

Now in my forties I like to look good but I don’t care to look ‘less’. I will wear what makes me feel comfy and even sexy in my own skin, and take little account of any other factors really.

I understand that many posters find it helpful to seek out clothes that they think flatter their shape. Like I've said, I was a fan of it myself once. What I find exasperating is partly the inherent negativity - as highlighted by the op, and partly the attitude that there's no other intelligent way to dress and that you're some kind of vacuous fool if you don't subscribe.

@Epicuriouss I’ve never been a fan of the ‘make yourself as small as possible’ school of dressing, and have been buying oversized clothes for decades. So I generally find the language of the Style and Beauty board entirely foreign to me.

To me the Mary Quant era was an aberration - almost all of history has involved humans giving themselves presence through the scale of their clothing. I feel grateful to be alive in a time when Phoebe Philo’s designs set an example of how women can take up space in the world through their clothes.

In two minds on this.

I agree it is sad to see. And it does irk me to open a thread to discover that the complained about body part is more than acceptable by society's narrow fashion standards. It is impossible not to think "fuck if you saw my legs/hair/chin you'd have a heart attack".

It can feel like perpetuating the very standards that opress us. I know people think their attitudes only affect themselves but they don't. We are intricately social animals. Working with children I've lost count of the number of times I've watched girls (and only ever girls) struggling with the impact of the way adults in their lives (including school staff and celebrities, as well as parents) view their own bodies.

But the flip side is that these pressures exist and MN is a place where women can talk about everything. And sharing is good. And whilst I would love a more "fuck it" attitude towards clothes, if you have a body with proportions that don't neatly fit size charts and you can't afford a seamstress, finding clothes to simply fit (and ideally look great) can be a challenge.

I did love the woman from a few weeks back who was asking for help finding clothes for her specific figure and the responses began to steer towards weighloss suggestions. She hit back confidently that actually she looked brilliant naked.

I think wanting your clothes to fit is entirely reasonable, but not the same thing as requiring them to 'flatter' your shape.

I bet a lot of people aren’t though. My mums mantra was that she had « big arms » and i had big legs » . Big for what?? To be seen in public I suppose. Constant quest to buy clothes that covered her arms. She talked about diet and body size constantly.

as a result i never talk negatively about my body in front of my teenager . It’s monkey see monkey do isn’t it.

100% . I posted before I read this post and said the same. The size of ones legs is just not relavent.

If I ever in seeing a photo of myself as a child say good grief look at me, my mum instead of saying dont be daft you look fab or you just look like we all did in the 80’s will say but look at you now - i am thinner now, not loads - why would you say that?!

Eugh this is a bug bear of mine on here. “ Flattering “ is not a style. Someone in her mid 40’s who has lost her style mojo being told to wear 1950’s dresses because she has an hourglass shape or wrap dresses because she has big boobs ( actually a lot of wrap dresses are too skimpy for this ) is an immediate irritation. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things if you feel drawn to them but come on 1950’s dresses are a very specific look.

I also think a lot of posters don’t care too much about the subject and just want someone to tell them what to wear and to provide a few links. I stopped posting in a lot of those threads because I’d be recommending resources to help
find your own style and was mostly ignored.