Lee Randall: How a condition called Shopping Fat ends in a Wardrobe of Despair

Published on Tuesday 3 August 2010 11:31

MOST things in my life defy logic. This is highly ironic, since I consider myself ultra-rational - except when I'm ultra-emotional.

And if that last sentence makes your head spin, then welcome to my world. Pull up a comfy chair to ensure that you don't hurt yourself, what with all the thrashing about, and get used to the sensation of being me.

The logic-defying concept currently bedevilling me is this: how is it possible to suffer body dysmorphia in both directions?

On the one hand, I feel as though I am a whale. Gross exaggeration? I wish. I look at other women and marvel at their slender knees and ankles. I note their lithe torsos and wonder where they store their internal organs. Perhaps that's why jumbo handbags are all the rage - suitable for storing a liver and a lung or two.

Just last night, walking home from work with some virtuous supermarket purchases in my eco-friendly tote bag (vegetables, smoked fish, and fruit, if you're curious, and we'll discretely avert our eyes from the packet of peppered salami), I experienced a wave of self-loathing.

It occurred as I entered the Meadows and found myself incapable of believing that Boy's Brigade Walk could accommodate me and a father making his way along the path with his wee boy and several colourful vehicles with wheels, which they were both attempting to ride.

I edged ever further to one side, utterly convinced that my hips were the width of Marie Antoinette's best panniers.

This, because the unsightly bulge at the tops of my thighs has returned, and I'm feeling self-conscious about it. I always expect people to point at me in the street.

Such self-absorption would shame me, if I was thinking straight. But I rarely do where my hips are concerned. Although I know better, I've once again taken to blaming them for everything that I deem to be going wrong in my life.

And yet … and yet, sometimes in the shops, I find myself plucking things off the shelves that I think will surely fit - they're so big, after all - only to confront the horrific truth in the changing room.

I'd wager that this is the fate of every woman who is on the big end of high-street sizes, but too small to find suitable clothing in the emporiums catering to larger women.

For example, I bought some T-shirts recently, size "Large". They are tight. This makes no sense. I have a 36 inch bustline, and wear an A cup bra. I do not have back fat. although my arms are chubbier than I'd like them to be, they're not so rotund that normal garment sleeves do not encompass them. I in no way resemble Jimmy Five Bellies. So what's up with this?

Where do women with actual breasts and bellies shop for upper body coverage?

When not driving myself crazy dreaming that I can fit into clothes that don't actually travel up past my knees, I am usually Shopping Fat.

Shopping Fat is surely cited in the Clinical Handbook of Psychological Disorders as one of the contributing causes of depression.

When you Shop Fat, you are drawn to elasticated waistbands and A-line dresses. Your eyes light up at a row of tunics (the bigger the better) and glaze over anything pastel.

One of the worst things about Shopping Fat is how it makes you spend money that's hard enough to come by in the first place, on far too many ugly items. You do this because you're feeling so desperate and defeated that you snap up anything you think "will do", rather than those garments that flatter your figure, make you feel adorable, or please your eye .

The result is The Wardrobe of Despair, guaranteed to induce low self esteem every time you get dressed. When the day starts that badly, it's pretty much doomed. How can anyone conquer the world if they feel like a shlump?

Though I'm not yet adept at controlling my see-sawing body dysmorphia, I am making small strides on the retail front. I now refuse to buy anything that "will do" unless it's under 40 and I have an urgent need.

I refuse to buy bag dresses, having finally accepted that they only float alluringly around wraith-like frames. Baby steps, yes, but they're good for my bank balance, as well as my brain.