It's time to relive some Y2K trauma
What the early '00s revival means if you never fit in - literally.
Lately, everyone’s been talking about the emerging early ‘00s fashion revival and all the horrors we remember from the first time round. I appreciate this must happen to every generation, but it’s still a bit of a shock when you reach an age (“about 40” seems to be it) when the fashion from your youth is being celebrated, even though a lot of it was objectively hideous. The ‘00s is also the first period we’re revisiting that was genuinely digital, which means it feels horrifically recent and it’s a lot easier to dig up the embarrassing photos.
But while I can join in with the chat about over-plucked eyebrows (WARN YOUR DAUGHTERS I IMPLORE YOU), sometimes these conversations leave me feeling a little left out, because I either physically couldn’t wear the clothes of the era or just knew I’d look awful in them. Low-rise jeans? NO. Strappy little handkerchief tops? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Does this sound like I had a lucky escape? Sadly also no, because I did own some embellished bootcut jeans.
Often in these chats, shops are referenced — Kookai, Jane Norman and Morgan, to name a few — that I couldn’t enter because they only went up to a size 12 or, at a push, a 14 (but you usually had to ask for it and it wasn’t worth the risk of withering looks and shameful rejection). I wasn’t even plus-size as such, I was what we now call midsize, but at the time this seemed ENORMOUS. Of course, there are still hangovers of this evident when we shop now: for example, the fact that on Vinted a UK size 12 is a Large.
A lot of Gen Zs and younger millennials I follow on Instagram campaign for the high street to offer more inclusive sizing, bemoaning shops “only going up to a size 22”. And I always think WOW. When I was their age I couldn’t even find a 16, unless I went to Evans, and no not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman with vague delusions of trendiness wanted to go to Evans. So, without wishing to sound all “In my day we walked 27 miles to school in the rain, ate rotten spam for every meal and wore rags made of old sanitary towels” I promise that there has actually been quite a lot of progress, fashion-wise.
I vividly remember when New Look brought out their largely vile “Inspire” plus size range. I bought things from it, mostly drapey purple or black things in scratchy fabrics (“Perspire” more like), and then swapped the hangers for ones that didn’t say “Inspire” on them since this would scream “DISGUSTING FAT COW” to anyone who happened to look in my wardrobe (which, now I come to think of it, would probably only ever have been me, and I didn’t need a coat-hanger to tell me that as it’s how I felt all the time). These days, a lot of these plus-size spin-offs have mostly just been absorbed into the main ranges, rather than being shoved into a corner of shame where sequin butterflies go to die.
Right now, people are worried about how the availability of Ozempic at al will entwine with the fact that we’re reviving a time when size zero was the beauty standard. I’m not wild about the idea myself, but this time, we’re all a bit wiser, aren’t we? People with different bodies are no longer hiding in the shadows and if shops suddenly stop selling clothes in their size, they will be publicly shamed. Thin privilege and diet culture will probably always exist, but we have a name for them now, rather than just a faint uneasy feeling.
This line of thought recently led to me explaining the concept of slim privilege to a friend who’s a UK size 6 (that’s a 2 in American). She struggles with how all the positivity stuff focuses on bigger bodies, as she’s always hated having small boobs and, specifically, how lots of people make jokes about small boobs like it’s totally fine.
I pointed out that she had never walked into a shop and either been explicitly told they didn’t sell her size (this actually happened to me in Miss Selfridge as a size 14 teenager) or quickly realised she wasn’t welcome (*scurries straight down the escalator to the Topshop accessories department without contaminating any of the cute little skirts with unacceptable excess flesh*).
She had also never had someone assume she was lazy, sloppy or unclean simply because of her weight, and therefore potentially pass her up for work, friendship or sex. And ultimately, even if she didn’t love every inch of her body (she should, she’s hot), she had always been a size that was celebrated in fashion and the media, which meant she belonged. Oh and let’s not forget that during the “heroin chic” era (WE SERIOUSLY CALLED IT THAT GUYS), small boobs were actively celebrated. So, she got it — but I promise I’ll never mention her itty bitty but oh so pretty titties again.
The other day I saw an Instagram post about this stuff and someone responded with, “But overweight people often are lazy!” Absolutely! But the thing is, so are a lot of slimmer people; you just don’t assume it by taking one look at their body. So, that’s what slim privilege is, in a nutshell (pistachios? Yes please).
I think some of this is why I exercise so fucking much, and then go on about it. LOOK! I MIGHT NOT BE SKINNY BUT I AM NOT LAZY!
It’s a lie though. At home I am bloody lazy. When I get in from a run, I have a really long, environmentally shameful shower and then lie around in a towel for, if I can get away with it, upwards of an hour. I ran a marathon (DID I MENTION IT?) and yet I often reach for things with my toes because I can’t be bothered to get up and/or bend down. I have trained my just-turned-9 year old to make me cups of tea (we have one of those fancy boiling water tap things which I think is *slightly* safer than a kettle?) because I find it hard to get out of bed without one, and he currently thinks that doing this is a treat FOR HIM. Oh, and I basically never put my clothes away, even though I always feel better when I do.
I do wish, though, that in my early twenties in the early ‘00s, someone had told me I could be both a bit fat and quite fit, both chronically lazy and endlessly energetic, rather than writing me off on my way to the badly-lit corner of drapey tunics and shame — and that one day, things I’d managed to do with my body might even make me worthy of an INSPIRE label myself.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FATTY!
This newsletter is a WHOLE YEAR OLD today! When I launched it last summer, I had a few goals:
Try and post every fortnight. I kept this up to start with, but have found it increasingly tricky, due to needing to prioritise writing I actually, y’know, get paid for. You can pay me though! Right now, it’s a voluntary paid subscription (like Wikipedia and The Guardian and other websites that merely beg without restricting anything) but I might start paywalling stuff soon. Or even put the whole thing behind a paywall. Who knows? So sign up before I do something crazy (would you be more likely to cough up if it sounded like I have a strategy?). The more people who pay, the more guilty I feel about not publishing frequently enough.
Use it to get more writing commissions on stuff I really care about. This has been a resounding success and I think “Substack as shop window for other work” is a better model for me than “Substack as money-making machine in its own right”. For those who don’t know, my background (like WAYbackground) is in journalism (you can read all about it here), then I accidentally ended up in marketing for a bit, but like an idiot I stuck it to the man two years ago to go freelance, mainly because I wanted to do more writing. Largely thanks to this newsletter, in the last 12 months I’ve written on body image, fitness and running for The Telegraph, The Independent, Stylist, Grazia, Vitality and, most recently, Metro (thank you, parkrun fans who’ve come my way via Metro!). Brilliantly, 100% of my income is now from writing, aka the only thing I am actually good at (I could sometimes fudge the marketing stuff though, she hastily types in case she ever needs to make money from it again). I also have a really fun new regular gig writing “hot takes” for Us Weekly, and I’ve managed to sneak some body image stuff into that too.
Get some free stuff. I’ve been gifted a few pairs of trainers, some sports bras and, much to the delight of my kids, a mini Nutribullet. Score! And anyone who says they don’t write a newsletter in the hope of free stuff is a liar.
Help me keep up my running habit. This has definitely been a success, although maybe I’d be doing it anyway? I’ve got The Big Half and The Great South Run coming up in the next few months, plus a couple of 10Ks and I’m taking parkrun SERIOUSLY because I calculated that if I don’t miss another one this year, I can hit my 100 milestone on Christmas Day. Better still, though, I’ve apparently got a few friends, acquaintances and even strangers into running or, like my friend Cat below, back into running, and this makes me PROUD.
A lovely morning at the Greenwich 10K last month. We ATTACKED THE HILLS and it was fun.
So, not a bad year’s work, and all thanks to some total twats in a white van. Thank you for being part of it. Fatty will try to keep it up.
Happy Birthday 🥳 and bloody love this piece, Jane Norman 🤣🫠🫠
Really enjoyed this. And bloody congrats. Incredible work in 12 short months.