Cherry Sundress in Texas

[susanstinson]

Cherry Sundress in Texas, originally uploaded by susanliz.

I'm in Texas at a family reunion, with my sundresses from the Fat Girl Flea market. Here's me with my family and the fabulous cherry dress. It was much admired, especially by my niece. I gave another one of my New York City dresses to my sister, on my right in this picture, who lives in a small town in Kansas. I posted a couple of more pictures of me in Fat Girl Flea market dresses in Texas on Flickr -- click the link and browse if you'd like to see them.

Comments

[amarama.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous!!! I love how you stand out!!!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Thanks, hon. One mysterious and fun thing for me is that the glasses and the dress are both very much like things my aunts and cousins were wearing when I used to see them every summer in Texas in the sixties and seventies. My cousin Shelly, a home economist, saw me and said, "I used to have glasses like that."

[helima.livejournal.com]

Wonderful dress.
Going to check out the rest of the pics.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[firecat]

Your family is adorable!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you.

[originalenid.livejournal.com]

you look wonderful and very well put-together!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Huge compliment coming from you, whom I consider the epitome of well put-together. Me, I just play every now and then, with lots of help from big city fat girl role models.

[charlottecooper.livejournal.com]

What a great picture. You look fantastic in that dress.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Charlotte. Wearing clothes from the Fat Girl Fleamarket was so helpful to me on this trip -- especially because I had stories to tell about how I got them, so it sort of brought that sense of community with me to draw on as I needed it in a pretty beautiful and effective way.

[potatoprint.livejournal.com]

You look wonderful, that's a great dress.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

It is, isn't it? It used to belong to hhholiday.

[nerd-dog.livejournal.com]

awww, you look lovely - and so happy to be among your family :)

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And, I was very happy at that moment. None of it's uncomplicated, of course, except for the bedrock love there, which is. They gave me an album this trip full of childhood photos and letters from everybody about me -- very, very sweet.

[crazycrone.livejournal.com]

Ha! Lush!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you.

[ericaceous.livejournal.com]

That dress is still perfect! I love how you stand out yet are also clearly among your tribe in that picture.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Isn't it just so perfect? Didn't I get so lucky? And, yeah, both things are utterly true -- different and one of them, both things, pretty much all the time.

[beccawrites.livejournal.com]

you look just like your sister, except also completely stylistically different! i love how you both totally stand out and totally fit in at the same time! (is your brother in the picture too?) which dress did you give your sister?

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

becca, I'm not sure how to post a picture in a comment, so rather than figure it out, I'll make a post with the picture of the dress I put on flickr. Yeah, as I said to ama above, the glasses and dress are just so so so much like what my aunts and cousins were wearing when we used to see them in Texas every summer when I was a kid, so I did feel both totally appropriate and visibly different, which they say with a very special inflection in Texas, too.

Both of my brothers are in the picture. The back row is my Dad on the left; my brother, Don, who is a painter, in the middle; and my brother, Mike -- who set up my website from me and had just urged me front and center in this photo because I had been very much obscured in the eighty person whole family reunion photo we had just taken, and nobody could see my dress! -- on the right.

And, becca, you know I wrote about this to bounce_n_jiggle, too, but that gift all of you who have been working so hard over the years -- and this year! -- on the Fat Girl Fleamarket -- the beauty and love of that -- was really getting felt there in Texas, by me in a big way, and not just by me. I kept telling people the story of how I got the dresses, how you handed them to me as soon as I walked in the door, and it was as if I was describing this kind of archetype of a moment that many first world fat women -- who have been sewing and hunting for the clothes that they needed or wanted, strangely neglected (maybe, until lately -- and this, of course, might be a good thing as well as a bad thing, because US consumption is so out of control), in the conspicuous consumption element of our culture, and also just wanted to play and be aptly adorned -- have secretly imagined, of simply being handed exactly what we want, and being being able to afford it, and have it recognized as right and beautiful.

And, also, as I was wearing these clothes, I felt the honor and love of that coming with me, clothing me, that others -- you! everybody! -- had wanted me -- and not just me!!! lots of us!!! as many as possible!!! -- to have something beautiful, to walk through the world with a reminder of my -- what? -- elegant human worth. Very, very helpful. Very, very moving. And, also, becoming as ordinary as pulling something over my head as I get dressed. Loveliness. Thank you.

[beccawrites.livejournal.com]

oh, thanks so much. really.

[little_star]

absolutely beautiful!
xox

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks, hon. It was just such an amazing thing to wear clothes from the Fat Girl Fleamarket throughout my trip to Texas. When I had on the black and white floral dress you had picked out for me, my 84 year-old home economist aunt was admiring the construction of the straps, and later I gave it to my sister who admired it a lot, too. And then Aunt Corinne said, "I was talking about your dress, and then your sister told me its history."

Because I'd been talking, every time I got a compliment on my clothes, about how I walked into the Fat Girl Fleamarket in New York City and got handed a bag of sundresses picked out for me, each of which were perfect. It sounded like magic, and also like I was a part of powerful, mysterious networks that fat women everywhere might want to tap into, which, of course, is kind of true. And then I got my aunt to tell me the story again about how she was so insulted when she went into a department store in the seventies and could find no underwear in her size, that she wrote them a letter with statistics about the size of the senior market and was outraged when all they sent her back was a scarf. "They were just trying to placate me," she says, in her very durable Texas accent.

[rainbowthespian.livejournal.com]

Oh, YAY!!!!!

And I agree with Becca, you look so right.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Thanks again! And see the stories I just told bounce_n_jiggle and am about to tell becca, above.

[daisygrl.livejournal.com]

you are adorable!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

thanks!