Has Your Body Image Ever Felt Personally Victimized by the Fashion Industry? Body Image Tips for Fashion

In this blog post, we will discuss my own body image journey regarding fashion, fashion mistakes I've made, and body image tips for fashion.

Raise your hand if your body image has ever felt personally victimized by the fashion industry 🙋🏻‍♀️- Girl, same. Maybe like me, you have a closet full of clothing yet nothing to wear. Maybe you have tried on an outfit and experienced your self-confidence plummet because it doesn't look or fit right. Maybe you feel insecure because you don't look like the model on the store's webpage. The struggles are endless, but some solutions I've discovered for a more positive fashion experience are below👇🏻

My Body Image Journey in Fashion

First off, I'm not claiming to be the most fashionable person on the planet. BUT, I do know that I feel confident in my outfits these days so I figured I must be at a point on my journey where others could learn from what I have to share! With that said, growing up my fashion sense was absolutely terrible. I had no sister to show me the ropes or to share a closet with so it's just been me figuring out my fashion sense as I go with the body that I've got.

Shopping for Pants was a Nightmare

To begin, my struggles with body image and fashion started with trying to find pants that fit👖. Because I am short (I'm not even 5'1"), I've had my own seamstress for as long I can remember who hemmed all of my pants- Even the Victoria Secret yoga pants were hemmed lol. Likewise, I did gymnastics growing up, and the bubble butt 🍑 genetics compounding that muscle group development made it more impossible to find pants that fit my waist- Don't even get me started on shorts that could both fit my waist AND cover my butt. As you can imagine, I didn't blame the clothing companies for their clothes not fitting, I blamed my body. Today, I am thankful for the more inclusive sizing for both length and curves (Shout out to Abercrombie's Curve Love line as it's solved all of my pant issues lol).

My Curly Hair was a Curve Ball

Another impactful part of my fashion-body image journey was learning how to style my curls since the hair completes the look, ya know? My hair started to get curly towards the end of elementary school, and therefore, it lived in a tight bun or ponytail until mid-high school when I finally started experimenting with my curls. For YEARS I was insecure about my curls because I believed that straight hair was superior and I felt ugly with my curly hair- The Carbine curse I called it. An absolute low point of growing up with my curly hair was when "Whip My Hair" by Willow Smith came out in 2011 and I couldn't participate since my hair was always in a bun 😕. Maybe I could have embraced the curls sooner had my mom known how to style my curly hair, but it was thanks to YouTube tutorials I watched in college in 2018 that revolutionized the curly hair game for me (Shout out to Jayme Jo and India Batson!!). Now I LOVE my curls and can whip them back and forth 😉.

My Body was Weight-Shamed & My Definition of Beauty was Narrow

A major part of my journey was overcoming being fat-shamed when I was fifteen years old. From that day on, everything about my life was centered around shrinking my body- My nutrition, exercise, feelings of self-worth and acceptance, the content I sought out/consumed, and even my career interest! 😱 I was in my internship year on the road to becoming a dietitian when I discovered the concept of intuitive eating that changed my life forever (Shout out to authors Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch, and Laura Thomas for their incredible work). Breaking free from diet culture and weight-centric health was the most liberating thing I've ever experienced 🤯 as I found my health in various aspects to improve. The most relevant to this post was the improvement in my mental health regarding my body image! I no longer had the pressure of a weight-loss outcome attached to exercising and eating 3x a day, which freed up a lot of my head space to expand my definition of beauty to include all different body types. For reference, my definition of beauty was a slender, straight-haired blonde bikini model in a Billabong magazine- Quite the opposite of my curly, curvy, and brunette self. It's no wonder my most insecure moments growing up were on the beach with my hair looking like Hagrid's and my body not looking like a Billabong model LOL. Now my definition of beauty includes at least what I look like and subsequently, my body image has improved- Who would have thought? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I Was Not Wearing the Best Colors

This final part of my fashion-body image journey is relatively new and ongoing, and it's about wearing clothing that not only fits right and is my style, but also includes colors that bring out my inner beauty. Colors that bring out your natural beauty can be found in your specific "color palette 🎨." I discovered that I am a "soft summer" color palette 🌤️ and have since been buying clothing colors close to what's listed in my palette, which are cool, muted colors (meaning there is a blue tone and gray is added to the true color to soften it) of pink, green, blue, red, purple, gray, oatmeal, off white, and charcoal. Your color palette is determined based on your hair color, skin tone, and eye color (Shout out colorwise.me and your color style for helping me determine my colors!). As you can imagine, when I wear my colors, my eyes pop just right and my complexion radiates my inner glow effortlessly 🌟- It's been an incredible feeling that has boosted my overall body image! Subsequently, shopping my color palette has simplified my wardrobe, making it easier to get ready since my closet is cohesive in colors and pieces that match more easily- I finally have something to wear and don't believe that my body is the "problem" anymore. All in all, my body image has benefitted two-fold by following my color palette and I am excited to see where this part of my journey takes me.

Mistakes I've Made on my Fashion Journey

I've made three big mistakes when it comes to fashion and it was because of my ignorance of color palettes I realized in retrospect. The first mistake was buying whatever clothes influencers were debuting in their YouTube videos 🎥. The girl who was influencing me looked nothing like me regarding hair color, skin tone, or eye color so it's no wonder I felt washed out in everything I wore influenced by her. The second mistake was trying a neutral "capsule wardrobe" of black and white ◑. I didn't know that true black and true white were not my colors/shades (off-white and charcoal are) and, oh boy, did those colors wash me out. Would I try a capsule wardrobe again with the neutrals of my soft summer color palette? Maybe. I find making a capsule wardrobe with my color palette most suitable for packing for vacation as I am currently satisfied with the simplification of my wardrobe's cohesiveness and I don't feel the need to be minimalistic. Finally, the last mistake was fighting against my color palette. I wanted to be soft autumn 🍂so bad to wear gold jewelry, but alas, I find rose gold, silver, and hammered metals to suit me best now that I'm not in denial. Save yourself from my mistakes and figure out your colors!

Disclaimer: It's not that I follow a rule that I "can't wear gold" anymore as a soft summer, it's more like why buy/wear anything that doesn't bring out my natural beauty?

5 Body Image Tips for Fashion

As mentioned, I feel like I'm far enough on this fashion-body image journey that I have tips to share and learn from!

Tip 1: Shop Size-Inclusive Brands

Shop size-inclusive brands and buy clothing that is your style and fit because constantly fidgeting in clothing that does fit right can be a trigger that your body is the problem when it's actually the clothes. I also recommend trying on 3 different sizes of the same thing in the dressing room to discover your best fit. And to answer your question. Yes. You might be a different size in the same thing of a different color or the same damn color 🙄. Buy what fits right, forget the size. As I shared, Abercrombie has solved all of my pant problems. Their reboot of being a size-inclusive brand has allowed me to shop in the curve love section offering my legs room to breathe with the extra 2 inches 📏 of material around the hips and thighs! Not to mention I can buy them in short! It was quite the feeling walking out of that store with pants that fit.

Tip 2: Shop Your Color Palette

All of my fashion mistakes and getting ready struggles were because I wasn't wearing the right colors!! Save yourself from "a closet full of clothes yet nothing to wear" and shop your color palette. You’ll start to find that your closet is filled with clothing that can be mixed and matched more easily in your wardrobe AND you'll feel confident from the color choice 😌.

Tip 3: Eat A Balanced Carb Meal Before Shopping

Shopping on an empty stomach increases the risk of being uncomfortable after eating since the distension of our abdomen will cause the clothing to fit tight. And I don't know about you, but when I'm buying cute going-out clothes, I'm most likely planning to wear them to dinner and want to consider feeling comfortable after eating 😋.

By the way, some abdominal distension after eating is completely normal no matter what the influencers say! Distension can be from the food in our stomach taking up space, the carbohydrates holding onto water weight, the carbohydrates expanding our liver as it gets stored as glycogen, and any gas our gut bacteria produce from certain foods. Any distension should subside within hours or a few days. If the distension is painful or extreme, it could be something underlying such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)- Talk to your doctor or gastrointestinal registered dietitian about your symptoms. 

Tip 4: Find Representation of Yourself Within the Fashion Industry

That could mean changing your environment online to something more body-inclusive by following fashion influencers with your body shape and similar struggles. As I said, my ideal body image was a Billabong bikini model lacking any representation of myself so I was left feeling inadequate compared to her. I now follow girls I see myself in (curly-haired, curvy, and/or short) and found it a much better strategy for shopping inspiration and promoting my body image.

Tip 5: Get Cutsies Before Going Shopping

Yes. Do a little makeup 💄 and wear something cute 💁🏻‍♀️ (but that's still easy to get on and off) to have a boost of confidence in the dressing room. Not that you need makeup to feel pretty, but I find putting on makeup to enhance what I like about my face makes looking at myself in the dressing room mirror a WAY more positive experience than not having makeup on. Plus, sometimes those dressing room lights do us no favors lol. Likewise, being somewhat done up also helps me envision myself wearing the clothes in the future.

I know you might be thinking, “Caitlin, you’re a dietitian, not a stylist,” but because how we perceive our body can affect how we nourish ourselves, I want to make sure I cover all the angles of nutrition. Anecdotally, since incorporating the tips discussed in this blog, I have fewer bad body image days and no longer try to manipulate the shape of my body with food- I just feel extra cute in my outfits 🥰. Please let me know your experience when you incorporate these tips! You can message me at @tasty.cait.rd on Instagram. I can’t wait to hear from you!