Fat-ish Guy Fashion: Fatphobia, Punchable Faces, And Clingy T-Shirts
PLUS: Jane on Conor McGregor's penis and Perimenopause Awareness Month. And so much more!
Hi wonderful people,
This guy has been with me since before Another Jane Pratt Thing had a name (and an ingenious name, if I do say so myself) and needs no introduction. So my gift to you today is… No introduction! (I have a lot to say that I’m saving for my next non-newsletter though.) I will talk to you about everything that’s going on with you and me in my favorite cocoon known as the comments section, as always!
Xo Jane
Ok, PS: I love how boldly and vulnerably Charlie writes about topics like body image here, that can be even harder for a dude to be upfront about. I also love his wife Kim, who is just awesome overall and took all these pictures. Can't you see how much she loves him by looking at these?
OK, PPS: Are any of you interested in hearing about my encounter with Conor McGregor's penis? Or would you rather not? I thought of it because I've been seeing statistics on his candidacy for president of Ireland (!). On an anti-immigration platform (!). With Elon’s endorsement (!).
OK, PPPS: I just learned that September is now Perimenopause Awareness Month in 13 different states. I have what I think is a very unpopular opinion about this, but I'd love to hear how you all feel about it.
And NOW, here’s Charlie!
A few weeks back, I was doing my combined favorite/least favorite activity: losing my mind while watching Donald Trump undo 249 years of national progress. While I’m genuinely mortified by his calling the National Guard into DC because it is, in Trump’s words, “overrun by bloodthirsty criminals,” it was a comment he made much later in the press conference that set my blood boiling.
The press conference bounced from topic to topic, as Trump always does, but eventually he started castigating my hometown of Chicago, the mayor, and the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker. As one of the very few Democrats who seems to understand the current stakes, Pritzker has often been a lightning rod for Trump’s anger, and here we see the President show that he has more tools in his belt than his signature racism. Cue the fatphobia!
There’s a lot to unpack in that clip (how does this motherfucker still not know how water works?), but two things got under my skin just a little more than usual — the smirk on Hegseth’s face (voted world’s most punchable face for three straight years!) and the casual assumption that Pritzker’s weight loss made him a viable candidate. I could dwell on the former and have an awful lot of fun banging out 3,000 words ripping a couple of men more contemptible than a clown drowning bagfuls of puppies, but I’m going to focus on the latter because I’m nothing if not a buzzkill.
When we launched AJPT nearly a year ago (dear god, how did it go by so quickly!), I introduced myself with a little blog about dressing as a fat guy. Primarily, I wanted to write about how difficult it is to find (and afford) clothes that a large man can not only fit into, but also feel comfortable in, and the various ways we make do. More than that, while I had noticed that body positivity was becoming more prominent in coverage of women’s fashion, I wasn’t seeing much of anything focused on body positivity in men. Thanks to our old friend the patriarchy, men can get away with looking like schlubs… to a point.
The problem is that when I envisioned the beat of writing about fashion for fat guys1 back in the spring of 2024, I was a very different person than I am today. Over the last two years, I’ve lost somewhere around 120 pounds, which has given me a level of discomfort about writing further columns.
It was while wandering aimlessly through one of the most isolated locales on the planet (the interior of a JCPenney department store) when I realized that writing about fat guy fashion felt like stolen valor. I was purchasing shorts (size 36) and a roomy Hawaiian shirt (XL) that I grabbed from the men’s section, not the Big and Tall section. I wasn’t disappointed by the selection, nor was I forced into grabbing my fourth choice because it was the only one that fit. These aren’t the actions of a Fat Guy, but those of just a normal old guy. You can’t really pull an entire column out of “man buys outfit; has pleasant time,” can you?
Jokes aside, stolen valor is the least of my concerns. I’ve experienced the humiliation of running into my biggest crush while shopping in the Husky section and that shit has haunted me for 33 years, so I’m not concerned about losing my credibility covering body image issues. I worry that I’m not capable of writing about weight loss in a way that doesn’t place a moral judgment on the fatter version of myself.
Writing about weight loss without slipping into fatphobic tropes is incredibly difficult, even when you’re conscientious about avoiding it. Think about what you tell people when they’ve lost some weight: “Hey, you look great!” It’s a very nice thing to say and an equally nice thing to hear, but deep down in there is the subtle suggestion that you previously looked terrible. I know it’s not intentional, but as someone who is scarred by decades of body issues, that’s where my mind instantly goes. Which makes me feel like an asshole for thinking the compliment was a hidden insult (when it obviously wasn’t) and makes me feel sad about how hideous I must have looked for so long. Knowing this wasn’t the intention (or even the reality) doesn’t matter in the moment — the surge of dopamine from the compliment is immediately suffocated by my self-loathing.
See? It’s a very complicated issue!
As I move forward writing about my body, I want to make sure I steer clear of calling it an improvement. It’s not that there aren’t obvious, tangible benefits from my weight loss — like being in shape enough to go up hills without breathing hard and the ability to threaten my friends with high kicks instead of shin kicks thanks to my new athleticism. The point I want to make is that there wasn’t anything wrong with the person I was a hundred pounds ago. I was pretty great back then and I’m still pretty fucking great today2.
This is a lot of words to sum up that a Fat-ish Guy is currently writing Fat Guy Fashion. I may have a different body these days, but I’m still floundering about trying to understand how to dress myself properly and offering up the solutions I’ve stumbled upon. Let’s get to it…
Shirt sizes were invented by a sadist who gets off on people’s confusion
In that first column, I discussed my shirt-related shopping issues at length. Here’s a taste:
I end up wearing clothes that are too big for me, which is a delightful piece of irony. I can’t find clothes that fit, so I go to the big and tall section where I buy clothes that also don’t fit, but because they are too big for me. When I see clothes that hide the Peanut M&M-esque shape of my body I pounce on them.
To save us all some time, I’m not going to break down every single determination I made when shopping for shirts back then, but the TL;DR version is that I simply chose the largest size available. This was especially true at concerts or when someone was ordering shirts3 and it’s still my default setting. This has led me, once again, to continue wearing shirts that are too big for me despite not actively trying to purchase mumus any longer. You know that bulky thing Ghostface wears in “Scream?” That’s what the sleeves look like on my old shirts, so I’ve needed to update my wardrobe, and it has been a frickin’ bizarre journey.
I’m finally in a place mentally where I don’t feel the need to wear shirts designed to camouflage what’s underneath, but I honestly can’t tell when a shirt actually fits. Figuring out what size pants fit was remarkably simple — all I had to do was choose a pair with a lower number on the tag and they fit. Shirts seem to live in some sort of alternate dimension where sizes don’t actually mean anything. For example, I have a 3XL shirt that is still a little snug and an XL bulky enough to smuggle a sixer under at the movie theater. Absolutes are never my thing — grey areas are usually welcome — but being unclear about whether a shirt in my size will fit or not has completely broken my brain. The chances that the hollow earth theory is true are beyond slim, yet it’s a far more likely reality than one that involves me buying a shirt that fits.
If I can feel it snug against my skin, I immediately cringe and assume it’s too small. I’ll stand in front of the mirror and pull at the shirt, wiggle around in it, suck in my stomach, stick out my stomach… it’s quite a stupid little dance to watch. No matter how I position myself, the version of me staring back from the mirror looks like a manatee in a crop top.
If I can’t feel it snug against my skin, I assume it’s too big, and the only reason I’d buy it would be because I cynically believe I will gain all the weight back. That last thought will send me into a spiral about the knife’s edge my health is seemingly always walking on, as a little treat.
This means that every time I purchase a new shirt, my poor wife has to deal with me asking, “OK, but are you absolutely positive this shirt fits?” roughly 347 times. Aren’t I a peach?
Yes, I understand the complete absurdity of a 45-year-old man who prides himself on having a pretty solid grasp on how black holes are formed and more than a few opinions on the works of Leo Tolstoy being unable to know if a shirt fits. What I’ve learned is that while the anxiety over whether a shirt fits has remained the same as before, what I’m expecting out of the shirt has changed drastically. This requires a whole new set of mental boxes to tick while shirt shopping and, more than anything, a brand new problem area — length.
There’s only one consideration now: which body part will sneak out to mortify me, the tums or the crack?
My original philosophy necessitated that I cover as much of myself as possible; the new one is primarily focused on two problem areas dictated by the odd shape of my body. As a fat guy, I have never worn my pants on what is actually considered to be my waist. Instead, I wear them under my belly. In the beginning, this was done as a necessary step to buy pants of the “not sweat” variety; later, it became a comfort thing. Even as I have gotten slimmer, the idea of wearing my pants all the way up around my belly button feels comparable to being placed in an enormous vice4, so I’ve maintained the old ways.
This is an issue because my gut, which once proudly jutted out of my body at a horizontal angle, has decided to droop down farther than ever now. I’ve been doing a bunch of crunches and leg lifts and other acts of contortion in an effort to tame the beast, but nevertheless, it has persisted to hang low. This means I need a shirt that hangs a little bit lower, but still fits up top so that my sleeves don’t go down below my elbow.
Every manufacturer seems to have different standards when it comes to length, and these seem to vary even more wildly than the discrepancy in sizes. Cool. And when you’re shopping online, you’ve got about a 7% chance the website will have measurements that include shirt length. Very cool.
Luckily, I’ve figured out that if you sort of shift how you put the shirt on, a little extra length can be achieved so that my stomach doesn’t hang out of it. Unluckily, this creates a bit of a teeter-totter effect and brings my ass crack into view. Tremendous.
This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to reveal some sort of ingenious solution to the problem, but I have to be honest with you here, I’ve got nothing. It just seems to be trial and error, then remembering the brands/styles of shirt that work best. Pretty unsatisfying, right? I agree.
Despite completely failing to achieve the objective of this column, I did come to a pretty powerful revelation. For as long as I can remember, I treated potential weight loss as a panacea for all of my problems. Trouble finding a date? It’ll be easier when I lose some weight. Having issues landing a job after an in-person interview? Dropping a few pounds will make me a better candidate. Can’t find clothes that fit? Everything will fit perfectly when I’m thinner.
This isn’t the way reality works; it’s wishcasting brought about from years of self-deprecation and shitty self image. It’s misguided to think that losing weight would cure every problem in my life, and it’s completely delusional to think it would do so magically and immediately, but that’s how I had always approached it. Now that I’ve worked my ass off5 losing the weight, it’s abundantly clear it will take some time to adapt to my new body. And that’s fine!
It’s going to take some time to figure out how to find shirts I’m comfortable wearing6, just like how it took some time to learn how to be a Fat Guy who still participated in “fashion,” at least by the loosest definition of the word. In the end, I’ll figure it out. Or everybody in my life will take pity on me and just tell me that I have. If the result is the same and I feel content in my body, no matter its shape, who cares how we got there? Either way, I win.
Since there’s going to be a lot of body image talk in here, I wanted to briefly reiterate why I almost always use the word fat over any other adjective. Simply put, when I was getting bullied, they never called me husky or big and tall or voluptuous or fluffy or plus-sized; they called me fat. Fat is the term that gets thrown around as the world’s easiest insult to make, so I feel that by embracing the term, I take away some of its power. I understand if it bothers people, and I apologize if it makes you uncomfortable, but I think it’s important and powerful to use it
I am a Leo, which people who believe in that kind of thing say has something to do with my rampant ego
My friends and I print up shirt designs mocking each other on a pretty regular basis
Reading too much medieval history and watching too many horror films led me to believe that vices were going to have a much larger role in my life. So much so that I used to think about how I would handle the pressure of being tortured in one. I was a weird kid who became an even weirder adult. Sigh
I wanted to make the most obvious joke and say “literally and metaphorically” or some variation of it. Do not be misled into thinking I avoided this because I thought the joke was hacky. To the contrary, it’s because I’ve never had any sort of ass to begin with. It’s more of just an extension of my back
And I hate to say it, but Hawaiian shirts seem to be cut perfectly for me. It may be my fate to look like my last known address was Margaritaville, and I’m embracing it
Great piece, Charlie! I’m also fat and am intentionally losing weight. I’ve also been a fat activist for most of my adult life, and boy, is this a loaded minefield.
At my biggest I was about to size out of most mainstream plus size brands. I know every trick for covering what I want covered, and failing. I was participating in a poetry reading a few months ago. When it was too late to change clothes I realized the black dress I was wearing was hitching up in the front when I moved or raised my arms. My reading involved a lot of gesturing and I was convinced my apron belly was about to be on full display. All this is to say that I will forever obsessively tug on the neckline of every dress and shirt for the rest of my life.
An unpopular opinion: fat women have it better than fat men when it comes to clothes. My partner is also fat and refuses to shop. Once a year, usually for his birthday or Xmas, I buy him new clothes. The choices are grim. The waistband issues are real! I can get away with high-waisted bottoms (I don’t wear pants), or dresses (I always wear dresses). Lots more options.
Confession: I think that peek of tummy on bigger guys is hot. It’s a glimpse of the forbidden, and there’s a vulnerability to it that I like.
And finally, Jane! I’m pro penis encounter stories, so spill!
First of all...COYS! I love your posts b/c I have a husband that refuses to buy clothes. He feels bad that he is no longer the soccer/football playing guy and he thinks he it's a waste of money to buy new clothes if he is going to be able to someday fit into his old clothes. Anyway, I do buy clothes for him and your insights help. Thank you.