Mac : NW3 at Hobbs
Dress : ASOS Curve
Shoes : Evans

Face piercings out, and my makeup of choice was the eyeshadows from my Cabana Glamour set from Benefit, with Illamasqua lipstick in Scandal, which is my dream understated lip look.

T-shirt : a present
Velvet miniskirt : Hips & Curves
Trainers : Adidas
Earrings : Elephant & Castle shopping centre

Although as a ritual / tradition we start the night in our matching YOLO t-shirts we generally bring something to change into…

Crop top : Primark

And a better look at my custom-made Dancing On My Own necklace by Black Heart Creatives <3

]]> http://archedeyebrow.com/2013/06/17/keep-dancing-on-my-own/feed/ 0 http://archedeyebrow.com/2013/06/14/sculptresse/ http://archedeyebrow.com/2013/06/14/sculptresse/#comments Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:54:28 +0000 admin http://archedeyebrow.com/?p=1138 I don’t have particularly exacting standards for underwear: just don’t poke me, and don’t be ugly. Comfort and some vague hint to being aesthetically pleasing are good enough for me. I’ve been wearing my Panache Sculptresse on and off for a couple of weeks now just to make sure it’s pleasant and comfortable enough to give a good review to, and I’ve concluded it is. We’ve all been burned in the past- a bra that can withstand a morning, but by the afternoon it’s irritating/hurting you beyond all belief, so I wanted to give this one a good go first! I’m very impressed- it’s just a t-shirt bra, really, but something about it gives it an edge looks-wise. Even though it’s a plain black set, it still manages to be chic and sexy, and maybe that’s a combination of the texture of the material and the shape of the bra and knickers? It’s extremely comfortable and I don’t find myself wriggling and readjusting like I do with some of my other bras. I actually really love the knickers – they’re super comfortable and a really lovely shape. Not super high-waisted but a very satisfying silhouette and coverage. I’m not just reviewing it because Panache wanted to send me an underwear set, I’m reviewing it because nice, useful underwear that comes in a D-J cup and 36-46 back measurement can often be hard to find, and so much of my underwear purchasing is hit-and-miss. A plain, functional set that’s pleasingly stylish- big tick. Comfortable enough that I don’t complain all day or take my bra off before the evening (it has been known to happen) – big tick. Comes in a fairly comprehensive range of plus-sizes – big tick. The other colours and prints of the Sculptresse stuff are gorgeous, and I’ve seen some reviews of a floral print set that were lovely.

Dress : Scarlett & Jo
Shoes : Evans

I wore it with my lovely Illamasqua lipstick in Growl. I seriously think this is one of my favourite lipsticks of all time.

]]> http://archedeyebrow.com/2013/06/12/true-blue/feed/ 0 http://archedeyebrow.com/2013/06/10/life-wont-begin-when-youre-thin-thoughts-on-community/ http://archedeyebrow.com/2013/06/10/life-wont-begin-when-youre-thin-thoughts-on-community/#comments Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:58:31 +0000 admin http://archedeyebrow.com/?p=1114 I met up with my friend Charlotte the other day to pick up one of her Black Heart Creatives necklaces while she was in London. We sat on the ground outside a pub and chatted about life and business, and since she’s the manufacturer of the very popular Fat Bitch necklaces, we naturally talked about being fat. We both agreed on one thing: for a long time, we’d believed that if we were thin, we would have no problems. We’d be happy all the time, everyone would fancy us, we’d wear what we wanted and nothing would ever be wrong.

When I was in the rooftop pool in the spa in Bath the other week, I reported something similar to my boyfriend. ‘For a long time I was about 2 sizes smaller than I am now’, I said. ‘When I was that size, I would have seen someone wearing the bikini I’m wearing right now, at my actual fattest, and thought to myself that I’d wear something like that if I was thinner’. And I remember being let off work early one day last summer and deciding to go to the BFI to see The Apartment. As I watched, I thought ‘if I was thin, I would have short hair like Shirley Maclaine’.

It seems kind of perverse, then, that I’m at my happiest while I’m also at my fattest. That I’m making the kind of decisions now that I used to claim I would make if I was thin.

How did I change my mind? People ask me all the time, ‘how did you get to be so confident? How did you learn to love your body?‘. Every time I try to think a little deeper but I just keep coming back to the same thing –  it’s community. It’s not about validation, it’s about support.

Good support networks and communities have meant that I was able to reposition my perceptions. The only reason I thought I had to wait ‘until I was thin’  to have short hair or wear a bikini or believe that partners would find me attractive (and weren’t trolling me) was because those are the basic-level messages fat women receive. A body ‘worthy’ of a bikini is universally marketed as something you have to punishingly workout to achieve every spring in time for summer. Magazine column inches are dedicated to explaining why you should stay away from short hairstyles if you have a fat face. So putting myself in situations where the dominant discourse was one of positivity and productivity rather than shaming and hatred was what I needed to break out of that habit of deferral.

The single best thing I’ve been able to do for myself is to find friendship groups where mainstream messages about beauty and gender roles and bodies are challenged. I can’t blame the women who tireless repeat diet rhetoric, completely saturated in notions of guilt, shame, deserving, undeserving, punishment because they’re only doing what they’re told by a culture that wants women to be as thin and unobtrusive as possible. But I can elect to limit my contact with them.

I limit my contact with body-negative folk, and instead choose to put time and energy into relationships with people who I’ve literally never heard complain that they’re having a ‘fat day’ or shame someone for their food choice in a restaurant or base their value-judgement of a person on whether they’ve lost or gained weight. I don’t even need a radical fat environment in which to merrily do my thing – I just need people around me whose life motto is something other than ‘you can never be too rich or too thin’.

But a lot of this development hasn’t even been in ~real life~: the internet has been indispensable in my journey towards not-giving-one-single-fuck. There was writing like Kate Harding’s. There was Tumblr. There are conversations on Twitter, where most of my meaningful fat-community friendships have been made. There were blogs by women I have always admired. We’re now at a point where we’re having *hopefully* meaningful conversations about white supremacy and reproduction of mainstream beauty standards in much of the fatosphere, and I really, sincerely hope that one day these online resources can be as useful to / representative of all fats as they were to me as a young, white Western woman who used to be right at the bottom end of plus-size.

So anyway, now that I’ve told you how I got here, back to my original point: I didn’t need to defer my happiness until I was thin. I will almost certainly never be thin, but likewise I am absolutely certain that I’m happier with my body now than I’ve ever been. I am lucky to have this confidence and happiness and support carrying me through my days: it feels like life is a video game and I’ve got a cheat code that means I get to deflect all the lies and bullshit that drag fat people down.

But really, it’s not about cheating the system. It’s about creating a system of our own. Different standards on which to operate, new demands, new considerations, new ways to keep ourselves and our friends safe. I know I’ve been lucky in being able to find spaces to keep myself going, and I really hope anyone who needs it can find one of their own.

Here is me and my fat, pale, pasty arms raising a glass of Skåne Akvavit. I think I was just drinking it for something to drink, but let’s pretend I am saying ‘cheers!’ to everyone who’s making the world a more body-positive space.

I wore my Clements Ribeiro Swan t-shirt with zebras on it, as modelled by Nicolette in the campaign. I picked up the zebra t-shirt as well as the lobster dress because I reckoned of all the pieces, they were the most ‘me’. Appropriately, I also wore a skirt I bought off Charlotte two years ago, which is still serving me well!

Fun fact: my house got broken into last Thursday and the only thing they had time to steal was my jewellery box, including a bitchin’ gold chain I’d bought from Topshop on Tuesday and hadn’t had time to wear yet. I went back to Topshop on Sunday and they’d already stopped selling it, so I had to replace it with this faux-ruby adorned version.

Top : Clements Ribeiro Swan
Skirt : Cos
Shoes : Evans
Sunglasses : Miu Miu
Necklace : Topshop

Dress : vintage
Shoes : Debenhams
Bag : Faith

I wore it with my new Topshop t-shirt, which got a lot of admiring attention when I posted a photo on Twitter. A lot of fellow fats said ‘I can never buy anything in Topshop, it doesn’t go up to my size’. Well, mine either! I just try everything on. This top is only listed as being a M/L but it fits me just fine!

Jacket : Joanna Hope at Simply Be
T-shirt : Topshop
Jeans : Simply Be
Shoes : Clarks

The weather has been sufficiently lovely recently for me to wear my most amazing new purchases. Simply Be have started stocking Miu Miu, and I haven’t used up all my prize money yet, so I was finally, and unexpectedly, able to acquire the one accessory I’ve coveted the longest. And boy, do I love them. Wonderful red Miu Miu cat-eye glitter sunglasses <3

Here are two ideas for things to do while you’re being a fat bitch. Firstly, you can get pounced on by your cute babe while you’re trying to take a photo of yourself for your blog.

Or you could head to KFC and keep up the good Fat Bitch work by having some original recipe chicken and substandard chips.

Dress : Clements Ribeiro Swan
Jacket : ASOS main range
Shoes : Clarks
Earrings : Marks & Spencer

In other news, I got new reading glasses, which I love. They’re from Lensway and I got ‘em pretty cheap with a 50% off your first order offer, so if you need new specs and know your prescription then I say go for it. They took a long time to get delivered (so long that they’ve actually sent out another pair because I thought they were never turning up…), but they’re great now they’re here!

Something else cool happened, and I turned up on the bags you get when you buy a Swan item instore! How fun is that?! I’m on one side, Nicolette is on the other. Delicious.

Dress : ASOS Curve
Shoes : Superga
Bag : Zatchels
Sunglasses : Ray Ban

And a proper look at the adorable Hello Kitty saddle bag that I got in the 50% off Zatchels birthday sale because it’s so cute…

Jumper : Simply Be
Trousers : Simply Be
Sneakers : Superga
Necklace : Tatty Devine
Earrings : ASOS