Fat Girl (Frikkin' Fabulous, Frugal, Friendly, Full of Foment, Fatshion Forward, Famous) Flea

[susanstinson]

It is a very lovely thing to arrive at the third floor of the lgbt center in Greenwich Village, fresh from Penn Station, suitcase in tow, and see prrpltrrtl (who, I hear, has written about this event in her memoir) and beccawrites at the front table, and fattest and hhholiday selling copies of SizeQueen and the new Nolose cookbook zine at the next table!

'becca, wearing Hershey's kisses as earrings, a sleeveless t-shirt with panels of little paintings of fat women in bathing suits, orange terry cloth capris she had scored from the flea market sorting, and high tops -- exclaimed when she saw me and handed me a bag with three -- count 'em! -- three beautiful sundresses that the unbelievably hard-working and generous volunteers setting up for the flea market had picked out for me from the mountains of clothes.

lj, dear lj, these are beautiful dresses. They are exactly what I wanted. They cost me $5 each, and all of that gces to benefit the Nolose conference, where fat dykes, bisexual women, transgendered folks and our allies gather to try to expand and deepen our sense of what radical, critical, beautiful visions of transforming the culture to let everybody be more fully engaged and human might be.

One dress formerly belonged to the always lovely hhholiday. I'm not kidding about the lovely thing: some of the smart, tough, persistent, strategic fat activists I've met through Nolose -- hhholiday, beccawrites, bounce_n_jiggle, and lovelikeyeast among them, but there are a lot more -- are absolutely inspiring in the creative, sensual, transgressive and gorgeous ways they wear clothes. I want to leave room in there for the practical and utilitarian options, too -- choice and range so important in this as in so many things -- but sometimes they wear outfits with subtexts that remind me of short stories by Grace Paley in their highly entertaining surfaces and tremendous unexpected depths -- or of the kind of Bette Davis movie where a viewer's mouth hangs open at the sheer life force of it all.

So yeah, as soon as I walked in the door, beccwrites handed me a bag with a black cotton cherry print sundress from Torrid formerly graced by hhholiday (and spotted for me by rainbowthespian, who put her shirt down when she was trying something on, and it disappeared when somebody evidently bought it!)with a little red ribbon bow at the neck; and black and white rayon floral print with crisscross straps that goes almost to my ankles and will definitely wow 'em at the family reunion in Texas this week (found by the spectacular bounce_n_jiggle, who also made me happy by complimenting my underwear in the fitting room -- I had selected them with the fitting room in mind, so that was gratifying); and a very cute black and white checked dress with a big fabric bow in the front. And they fit! Each of them fits like a dream!

I saw more folks I know than I could begin to list -- it was part of the reason I made the trip, since I won't be at Nolose this year -- but they included jack_mcspanky, 2uncool2have1 and their new little Bean, ericaceous working up a storm in a truly great skirt, nerd_dog, and a bunch of folks from fatshionista I recognized from their icons.

I got a bunch of other good stuff -- so much that it feels greedy to list it all -- black cardigan (which someone else who had found it very sweetly gave me when I said that I was looking for a cardigan), sleeveless tops, a red and white wrap skirt -- so many good clothes that I was most flirtateously assisted in zipping my suitcase by someone who said she was more used to unzipping. It really is such a balm to a fat woman to spend an afternoon at an event full of small moments of appreciative attention and practical assistance and large intentions to try to remake the world.