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The Frustrated Hippy Woman

I’m taking a break from cleaning out my clothes drawers. I’m being fairly ruthless, even though I don’t have a lot of clothes (mostly because I don’t like clothes shopping, but also because we just don’t have the space to store them). I have mixed feelings about this. De-cluttering is really cathartic but the issue I’ve got is that my body has changed since I’ve become a Mum and try as a might, I can’t get rid of the baby weight, even two years after. So I’m getting rid of the clothes that don’t fit me anymore. I don’t look THAT bad when I look in the mirror, I’ve only gone up a size, but it makes shopping frustrating because according to the retailers, I’m on the verge of having to go to plus-sized clothing. Plus sized! My size doesn’t even begin with a “2”. But this brings me to a huge beef I have a huge beef with clothing manufacturers and retailers. HUGE. (as is the case with a lot of women, I think). The average woman, especially if she’s had a kid or two, is curvy, hippy and the average size of women in general has increased over the years because of better nutrition, healthcare and that sort of thing—science has proven it. OK yeah, the proliferation of junk food might have something to do with it, but let’s not go there shall we? But my genes, unforunately, are that I naturally have “good childbearing hips” and will never be Kate-Moss-thin because a lot of women in my family are the same way as me. Esepcially now, the shape of my body has changed. I am pretty sure that my ribcage has expanded because of being pregnant, and well, I will spare you the rest of the analysis. But I don’t REALLY look that bad when I stand in front of the mirror. And, let’s me honest, if you do people-watch in shops, there are the really stick-thin women of course but most women are not. So why the *&^% do I find it so frustrating to find clothes that fit, that a lot of clothes are cut really tight so I have to buy up a size? Why do I want to come out of the changing room in absolute tears, wondering what is wrong with me, why I feel like I look horrible and huge and see only that I’m not “perfect”?

Society tells me that I should go on a diet, get a personal trainer, and obsess about my weight. There’s the whole mythology of the size 0 that has sprung up which I seriously don’t like. There’s the whole celebrity-Mom thing which dictates that the average mother should look glam and gorgeous because so-and-so can do it…but, the kicker is, only WITH the help of a personal trainer/chef/nanny which is what most other mums definitely do not have. I wish I could get out to the gym but we don’t have the luxury of childcare and we are just too exhausted during the evenings to think about running on a treadmill. I do enough running after a toddler during the day to exceed my 10,000 steps thank you very much. I go for at least one walk a day. My weight repetitions involve picking up said toddler countless times a day. And even though it bugs me that my body shape has changed and I’m not as lithe as I was during my University years, deep down, I know that I am doing the best I can to take care of myself and take care of my family. The last thing I want to do is obsess about every calorie I take in, even though I try to cook nutritious meals—because I do not want to be a slave to the scale or the number of fat grams I consume when I have far more important things to concern myself with.

I think a lot of women GET this, but it’s those stupid clothing retailers and fashion mags and dare I say the media that doesn’t. All they succeed in doing is making women feel like they aren’t good enough unless they can fit into super-skinny drainpipe jeans and they are only happen when they enslave women to diets (and even diet pills) and obsessing about how they look.

And that’s not how I really want to be. So I’d better get back to cleaning out my drawers. Boy, some charity will really hit the jackpot with the clothes they will be getting from our house!