A photo of Sonya, Zoe and myself in a playground, sitting in a spinning cup which is out of shot.

My friends Sonya and Zoe came down the coast on Saturday and we headed out to Burleigh for coffee, food and muggy day playground times. I have been struggling with the muslin for this dress for weeks; even though it’s based on this dress, adding sleeves was a complicated task especially because I have such lofty expectations of a dress such as being able to lift my arms, reach forward, etc. I’d picked the sleeves out for the third and final time and inserted a newly drafted sleeve and managed to make the dress wearable, horah, so I thought I’d take it out for a spin.

Sonya, Zoe and I sitting in a spinning egg cup in a playground. I'm hanging on for dear life.

Zoe, Sonya and I standing together for a group outfit shot in front of the beachfront at Burleigh.

An outfit photo of Zoe wearing a tree branch print maxi dress with a purple cardigan.

An outfit photo of Sonya wearing a yellow tank top with an animal print maxi skirt which matches her animal print sunglasses.

An outfit photo of me wearing a knee length dress in a white/ blue/ red print.

Badges Zoe gave me on my dress: one from Cupcakes and Cuddlebunny and the other from Re/Dress.

A photo of the cut out heart on my back which shows off my falling fairy tattoo.

Dress: made by me
Scarf: clothes swap
Shoes: Evans

A photo of me in the back yard wearing a blue pin striped shirt over jeggings with a black cardigan and a dapper bow of my own making. I also carry a navy umbrella with cats all over it.

At any rate, I’ve been sewing these bows and this olive and blue madras fabric really reminded me of Doctor Who for some reason, so I decided to put on one of Nick’s shirts and pretend I was the Twelfth Doctor. Why not, eh?

An outfit photo of me carrying a navy umbrella with cats all over it, wearing a white/ blue pinstriped shirt over jeggings with brown shoes, black cardigan and a dapper bow.

Another outfit photo, this time I'm looking down.

Me, smiling in a doctorly way, under the cover of the navy cat umbrella.

A photo of Cheryl the foam head wearing an olive/ blue checked madras bow tie.

Shirt: Nick’s
Jeggings: Best & Less
Shoes: Grasshoppers via Shoebuy.com
Cardigan: Asos Curve
Tie: Fancy Lady Industries
Umbrella: My mother-in-law’s.

A photo of people walking past lots of crafty market stalls.

We took a look at the markets today mostly because our new GC pals Heiko and Lilly were holding a stall for Heiko’s work, but also because I feel like I’ve been getting a bit too insular! It was so nice to go and see what local artisans are making and selling, and now Nick thinks it’d be cool if I sold my work at the market too! I don’t know how receptive most people would be to my more activisty products, but it seems the punters love knick knacks and whatnots so I’ll have to have a think about the kind of things I can make and sell for a market audience.

A photo of cut out illustrations, a mysterious black figure with a H and a kind of scary/ zombie koala beneath it.

Six prints of Heiko's illustrations.

Bunting with Heiko's illustrations on each flag strung across his stall.

A bowl of Heiko's tiny badges sitting on calendars.

Heiko said he’ll be at the markets next fortnight too, so if you are local and want to buy some awesome art stuff for people you must go!

A stuffed owl toy by Sisterhood Sewing in pink fabrics sitting inside a pink ring with vines wrapped around it.

A screenprinted wall hanging by Beneath The Sun with a fat merman surrounded by seaweed.

Nick and Miffy standing in front of a huge Burleigh Heads State School emblem painted on a brick wall.

An outfit photo of Miffy and I standing amongst trees; I wear my crochet top over a green singlet with a diagonally stripy maxi skirt and a big black hat.

Yellow flowers and peach flower buds on a tree.

A photo of Miffy and I standing in front of a colourful beach mural with a rainbow and hearts with nice values in them.

Crochet top: Yours Clothing
Singlet: Autograph
Skirt: Yours Clothing
Shoes: Evans
Hat: Seafolly (I think)

An outfit photo of me, fat and pale skinned, wearing a dress with a mauve/ purple/ cream/ olive dot pattern, a lot of brown bead necklaces, and a thin belt with black sandals. I'm standing with Miffy, who wants her outfit photo taken too.

This morning we decided to go out for lunch and I had a dressing dilemma. Summer is a terrible sartorial period in my life because it’s so damn hot and for some reason I don’t have a very cohesive summer wardrobe. I have made a few patterned skirts but none of them go with the tops that I have! I pulled out the dreaded dress and decided to give it another go. Without anything to around my waist/ under boob area (the two are basically the same place when you have a short waist) it just made me feel very frumpy and un-finished. I pulled a studded belt out of the top of the wardrobe and put on as many beaded necklaces as I could find, and found it infinitely more wearable and less frumpy in my head. I hate wearing belts that just float around, and I really resent the designer for making this dress loose fitting from the bust line, but this is basically the best way I feel I can wear this dress.

My dress struggles reminded me that even though I (or you or anyone) can fully reject something (like the principle of flattering clothes) in theory, in practice it’s a far harder thing to carry out especially when we’ve had acceptable body shapes and sizes drilled into our heads. In some ways I feel like a hypocrite, but being gentler and more tender with myself is probably a more productive and workable approach. No fat or body acceptance activist is perfect, we all make mistakes, and sometimes we practice things that fall outside what we preach. How can I expect myself to be a perfectly radical activist in every way when I’ve grown up in the very culture I am questioning? I am not objective, I am subjective; we shouldn’t give the objective viewpoints more weight in most circumstances, we should be giving voice to the lived experience of hardship, struggle and oppression. I am feeling these shitty feelings we’ve been taught to feel. The most powerful thing is stopping for a second to listen to my self talk, then questioning why I feel the need to comply. Talking about it with other people helps a great deal, and it’s one of the reasons why I write about being fat and wearing clothes on this blog.

An outfit photo of me picking up my necklaces with one hand and the skirt of my dress with another, in a very carefree sort of "I'm a blogger lalalala" kind of way.

So I chose the option that made me feel less shit about myself in this case. It’s not perfect, but it’s one of the things I have to do in order to wear clothes as per my societal contract as a human being living in a city in Australia. I chose the option that made me feel like I’d be less of a target. As a fat person who is deathfat and can not hide it, my body is hyper-visible; I felt like I’d be less of a target for people to stare at and yell things at. I also chose the option that made me feel much better about a purchase I made, because I don’t have access to a diverse range of options in a size 24-26.

A photo of Miffy reaching up to give me a high five (with both paws because her front legs are adorably tiny).

A photo of my face, smiling in a kind of very forced way.

A photo of my legs and feet standing on grass sprinkled with red poinciana flowers. I'm wearing black studded sandals.

I get lots of feedback and questions about being fat and trying to be a “good activist” all the time, and honestly, I have no idea what a “good activist” is. The best human being I can be is a transparent, tender, forgiving, accountable being; and when it comes to an area of activism like body image that is so personal and emotional, the best activist thing is kind of a false aspiration. Seek to question, critique and be accountable but also be super loving and forgiving and remember that nuance is incredibly important. If you struggle with hating your body or participating in hurtful practices but love the idea of fat and body acceptance, you are not alone. There’s lots of us standing in front of mirrors every day battling this stuff, wondering if a belt will compromise everything. But it doesn’t.

Dress: Piper Woman
Shoes: Annie (via Shoebuy.com)
Belt: From a Yours Clothing dress
Necklaces: from a variety of forgotten places
Bangles: City Chic

A photo of Miffy and I standing on a groyne at the beach. I'm wearing a black singlet under a cream crochet top with denim shorts and I'm holding an orange bag.

Even as I write this, I’m thinking this outfit is a little TOO dressed up because I’m wearing that crochet top, shoes and a bra. It goes to show that even though I really really want to show realism, there are little extra lengths I will go to when going outside and/ or posting photos to this blog. Do I show you photos of me wearing a daggy dress with no bra? Nope! Why? I guess because, for me personally, I already feel disadvantaged by not being a conventionally attractive blogger type so what I post is really just the cream skimmed off the surface in my sartorial life. That might be true even for the conventionally attractive blogger types too!

One day, I promise to show you what I really wear on a day to day basis. A singlet and a skirt, bed hair, no bra and no make up. There’s this belief that fashion is aspirational, that is, that the types of people excluded from participating in fashion and being represented in magazines, on tv, through blogs, etc, aren’t the type of people most people want to look like. And the only thing that sells clothes is the idea that maybe, just maybe, we could look just like the type of person we aren’t. However, I know just through blogging that even us purportedly unaspirational fat people can get units shifted; that is, I know plus size bloggers are called upon by retailers more than ever to wear their clothes on their blogs so that readers will buy more clothes.

So what if I want to know where to buy casual clothes, nighties, undies and what not? And what if I want to see people like me who don’t have a load of money to spend on glamorous pseudo-casual clothes (and don’t get the “giftage” from retailers!) These are totally unfleshed out thoughts, but I’m sure somewhere in here is a middle finger aimed in the general direction of the fashion industry, popular blogging practices, the beauty ideal and capitalism. So just pretend I wrote something very smart and concise along those lines, and enjoy these photos of our day at the beach.

A photo of Miffy standing on a big rock with her tongue hanging out and licking her nose.

A photo of Nick holding Miffy as the wind sweeps her ears back.

A photo of me looking down, the crochet top I'm wearing is clearer in this photo than the first one and it has a big crochet flower on the front of it.

A photo of Miffy sniffing the ground with my legs walking behind her.

Singlet: Yours Clothing
Crochet top: Yours Clothing
Shorts: Best & Less
Shoes: Grasshoppers
Necklace: Made by me
Bag: Made by my neighbour

A collage of three versions of the Coffee Date dress, a sleeveless dress with A-line skirt and neck ruffles.

Remember a long time ago when I was really determined to grade up that Coffee Date Dress to a multi size pattern for all the fats in the land? Yeah, it kind of died in the arse when I realised my grading method didn’t work. I put the project away and then subsequently deleted all my pattern grading files for Illustrator in a fit of rage.

Since I’ve been on this recent sewing kick I’ve been hungrily consuming any kind of pdf “print at home” sewing pattern I can find, at first going to sewingpatterns.com and being hugely disappointed in their consistently atrocious Print Sew back end, and then going back to BurdaStyle only to find that you can’t buy patterns from the site at the moment and there’s no word when functionality will be restored. Free BurdaStyle patterns can still be downloaded, so as I browsed through the pitiful collection of plus size patterns on the site I came across the Coffee Date Dress again and thought I’d give it another go.

A graphic of the main pattern pieces of the Coffee Date Dress, split apart and spread to make the pattern my size.

After more BurdaStyle browsing I came upon this cute-as-hell circle collar on the Candy Sundress and decided if I was going to go forward with a wearable muslin then I’d put my whole arse into it and make a fancy collar. The original dress has a lower back neckline so I lowered mine too; I’m glad I did because it really makes the whole neckline as well as show off my tattoo!

CAVEAT: Some of these photos are pretty shocking because I couldn’t wait for Nick to get home and take photos so I set up the tripod and self timer… with wonky results. Also, despite much ironing this fabric insists on creasing whenever I move!

An outfit photo of me wearing my short sleeveless green dress with circle collar made out of a patterned green cotton.

Another photo of me wearing the dress, this time on the balcony.

A photo of the back of my dress, with a low neckline that shows most of my falling fairy tattoo.

A photo of my face and the circle collar close up.

There are small flaws in my construction alas: the bodice lining is a bit of a schemozzle as I forgot to cut it at the same time as I cut the outer fabric, some of the collar circles overlap the wrong way or are unevenly spaced, and I could probably take the whole thing in a few inches at all seams but I probably won’t because I like how it swings! Despite the flaws, I’m proud I finally made this dress in my size. I realise now that making a multi-size pattern isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be, and ultimately might not even work on most people because we’re all shaped differently.

An outfit photo of me, fat and pale skinned, wearing a short dress with a large retro stylised flower pattern in teal, purple and yellow, with teal leggings and brown wedge sandals. I'm standing in the backyard in front of the Hills Hoist.

Mum and I went to this new-to-us fabric store near her last week and I bought this fabulously obnoxious 70s style cotton lycra as well as some other pretty fabrics. I made it up into a version of the Burda Style Fatina Plus the other day, ordinarily a very simple pattern but my machine throws hissy fits every time I bring a stretch knit fabric near it so it took all day! I shortened the pattern and lengthened the shoulders to make some self-sleeves and now I have the best, most obnoxious, little t-shirt dress for summer.

A full length photo of me with my hands on my hips.

A full length side view photo of my outfit.

A photo of my legs and feet wearing teal leggings and brown wedge sandals.

A photo of me holding Miffy and making her little paw wave.

A collage of four black and white photos of me in various silly poses with my dress, cheeks and lips in colour.

Dress: Made by me
Teggings: Re/Dress
Shoes: New Look

The way I edited these photos reminds me of the Happy Litte Vegemites ad and with the Hills Hoist in the backyard, this post is chock full of Australiana. You ripper Rita?

A photo of the Brisbane CBD from across the river, with the Riverside Expressway looping over the mangroves on North Quay.

Nick and I headed up to attend TEDx Brisbane yesterday, and as we drove into the city we both felt a bit sad that we aren’t still living there. The whole day was a little weird and overwhelming for me, feeling like a bit of an odd bod amongst a crowd of people I thought were there to listen to new ideas… but for some reason the vibe was off at TEDx this year. Maybe it was me, maybe I’ve romanticised last year’s inaugural event, but I just didn’t get a lot of what people were putting down.

[Warning: there's an animated gif at the end of this post]

A photo of the audience in the hall for TEDx Brisbane.

Despite having lots of feelings and not knowing what to do with them, there were standouts for me. The unrestrained enthusiasm of Edward Harran as he spoke about being feeling at home on the internet as well as his own inner internet, having access to such a stimulating and exciting amount of information and its potential for unlocking creativity in people. I started using the internet in 1995 and immediately recognised it as an exciting tool for learning, but at the same time realised that the learning I would undertake would rarely be formally recognised. The separation of IRL and URL still exists 16 years later, and Harran noted this frustration too. His talk made me feel like I wasn’t alone in being excited and awed by being able to access, learn, share and collaborate however I felt like the point sailed clear over many heads in the audience.

My favourite talk was by Hazel Dooney, the only female speaker I saw (granted I left at lunch, with two more women speakers to go… good work organisers…) and an Australian artist I’ve followed online over the past few years. Her writing is blunt, brutally honest, confessional and sometimes cutting but as Dooney’s soft voice introduced itself I was pretty surprised. I thought she’d sound harder. Many tweeters using the #tedxbrisbane hashtag roundly condemned Dooney reading from a clipboard, emphatically tearing off pages and dropping them on the stage as she was finished with them. What they utterly failed to comprehend was her ability to make you remember her, she may as well have ripped off post-it notes and stuck one with her name on every head in the crowd. Hazel Dooney has been representing herself as an artist, sticking it to the traditional gallery system, over the last few years AND she’s been doing an exceptional job of it by marketing herself online, communicating with her collectors directly. It was inspiring to see her speak in the flesh, and has firmed my resolve to run my own art practice by my rules.

Like I said, I left after lunch because I was quite overwhelmed by everything. We sat for too long, there were too many people, the walls were closing in, and I just wasn’t into most of the talks. I’d been looking forward to hearing from Eva Cox, but since she was the very last speaker I figured I’d be well over it by then. Nick and I went away from the crowd of suits and jerks (yeah, sorry attendees) to have a quiet moment and ended up taking some silly photos. It was just what we needed, some time alone to laugh and muck up.

A photo of me sitting down on the edge of a garden bed at State Library, holding an iPhone in one hand and a coffee in another.

A photo of me leaning against a railing with the Brisbane River and CBD behind me. I'm wearing a white t-shirt, a skirt with octopus tentacles, red tights and boots.

Top: City Chic
Skirt: Made by me
Teggings: Re/Dress
Boots: Evans
Necklace: Re/Dress
Sunnies: Giant Vintage

A photo of Nick wearing a black Beatles t-shirt with black shorts and beige slip ons. He leans against a green wall.

An outfit photo of me in front of a green wall.

A photo of the back of me looking over the river to the city with my arms outstretched.

A photo of Nick stroking his missing beard :(

Another photo of me in front of a brown wall, gesturing indescribably.

Yet another outfit photo, holding my octopus sweets skirt out.

So, in conclusion, if the organisers of TEDx Brisbane (or any other TEDx) want to contact me to talk about fat embodiment and activism, blogging and finding community online… I’m available. I’m pretty sure my ideas are worth sharing and they’ll be more exciting/ stimulating/ controversial than another white dude talking about urban planning. YAWN.

An animated gif of me prancing towards the camera.

A photo of me smiling on a quiet Gold Coast street at night. I have new shorter hair!

This is what I wore to dinner the other night, separated into its own post because it might be a bit tidier that way. I think? I’m not sure, but here it is! You might notice that my hair is a touch shorter, I cropped off a whole bunch of hair to get rid of dead, peroxided ends and to even up the layers so when it starts growing it (hopefully) won’t be so painful.

I bought this top from Target the other week because it was 20% off, horah! The Target down the coast seems to have a lot more plus size clothing in the women’s and men’s sections, but as always their sizing is wildly erratic. Nick bought a short sleeved button up shirt without trying it on and when he did get around to trying it on, it was at least two sizes too small. What’s the deal Target?

An outfit photo of me, fat and pale skinned with short ash blonde hair, wearing a short self sleeve animal print top tucked into a black maxi skirt with cage sandals, a chain necklace and my trusty black handbag.

A somewhat blurry photo of me walking towards the camera.

Top: Target
Skirt: Made by me
Necklace: Made by me
Shoes: Evans
Bag: Dangerfield