Forbidden Fruit #3: Sexy Dresses

On showing off a body I've berated, hated, and hidden.

Welcome to Forbidden Fruit, a series that focuses on pieces of clothing I wasn’t allowed to wear when I was younger and how I style them now.

---

I need you to sit down for what I’m about to tell you (she said, speaking to her body dysmorphia): I’ve got curves. I’m an hourglass shape—which should feel like a humble brag, but instead feels like a scourge. I’m prone to covering my curves, wearing oversized jackets or balancing my silhouette with tight tops and loose bottoms and vice versa. But this year, I started to realize, through therapy and sheer willpower, that I can’t go on covering up and disapproving of the way that I look. 

I wrote earlier this year on my Instagram that one of my fashion goals for 2024 was to wear something sexy. As a woman with big hips and a small waist, dressing sexy means showing them off, which is terrifying to me. Earlier this month, I searched high and low for a formal dress for a wedding I had coming up. Nothing fit right, or I felt like I was staring into a funhouse mirror while trying dresses on. My head was an acorn, my hips a full SUV. It didn’t matter that friends were standing by, telling me how much they loved whatever look I had on—I felt embarrassed and vulnerable standing there in something so unfamiliar. 

Growing up, people were always telling me what I needed to do to “enhance my natural beauty.” Once, on the bus ride home from junior high, my best friend looked at me, eyes wide. 

“Oh my gosh,” she said. “Don’t worry, but there is something wrong with your face. I’ll fix it when we get to my house.”

“What? What is it?” I asked her, over and over. She just shook her head. I pictured food in my teeth, snot running down my face, a newfound zit on my greasy forehead. I pulled my side-swept bangs over my skin, hoping to cover whatever embarrassment might live there. My crush tried to talk to me, but I ignored him, looking out the window, heart beating fast, wishing the minutes away until our stop.

When we got to my friend’s room, she took out her tweezers and plucked an errant hair from my eyebrow line. One. Blonde. Hair. 

Friends told me I needed to wear mascara. Then eyeshadow. Then eyeliner. Then concealer. They told me my jeans were saggy. My boobs were too big. In high school, another friend cornered me with tweezers. This is what my eyebrows looked like at the time, but apparently the situation was dire: 

Terrifying.

A thousand people said I’d look prettier, older, or sexier if I just did this or that or the other. One of my family members, who I looked up to, also had body dysmorphia, and growing up listening to their thoughts on their own body made me consider mine more carefully. They would compliment me by comparing me to other people—saying my shoulders fit my body unlike Liv Tyler’s after we watched The Fellowship of the Ring. Or saying I had a proportional body type as opposed to some other stick-thin girls my age. Children, all of us children, growing and fitting into ourselves. And, by the way, Liv Tyler is sexy as hell, regardless of shoulder size.

It didn’t matter if these moments were full of compliments or insults; all of them only illustrated the myriad of things I should worry about. I didn’t know people thought about shoulders or eyebrows or proportions until they bothered me about mine, and after that, I couldn’t stop noticing these things about other people. It’s a vicious cycle: ignorance, a new insecurity, seeing the same insecurities in other people. 

I wanted to disappear, but I never did anything drastic to make it happen. Instead, I covered my body with modest clothes, trying to find clothing that made me look straight and boob-less. I worried about how I looked or came off, wondered what insecurity others were finding in me. It got so bad that when hanging out with someone, I’d get lost in my own mind, worrying about my arm shape or my thighs splayed out on my chair, and I’d have to ask them to repeat what they’d said. 

I’ve been trying, through therapy, to manage these thoughts better. Right now, I’m mostly trying to avoid them. I’ve told myself for so long that I need to work through the thoughts—but that hasn’t gotten me anywhere. So now, I’m working on shutting them down as soon as they arrive. Hips look big? Don’t care. It remains to be seen if this will actually work as a long-term solution, but when it came to finding a dress for the wedding, I was better able to embrace my body. 

I ended up asking my neighbor if she had any dresses I could borrow, and viola: she was like the fairy godmother I never knew I needed. I walked into her apartment and it was like a Reformation dream house. Here are all the dresses I tried on: 

Spoiler alert: I didn’t choose this one because it was too white for a wedding, but I did wear it to a ’20s-themed gala because of the drop waist!

Another spoiler alert: I didn’t choose this one either, but I brought it with me just in case. I actually was surprised at how much I loved this shape on me, as usually I pick something with a defined waist. It was comfy, too—just ended up being a little too casual for the wedding.

I ended up wearing the green dress to the rehearsal dinner and the red dress to the wedding, and I felt great both nights. Of course, the red dress is the “sexier” of the two, and of course I panicked while looking in the mirror, of course I worried about my proportions, of course I lamented the constant bloating I can’t seem to get rid of, but I wore it anyway. 

The whole night, I carried on as if I hadn’t a care in the world. And for half the night, I actually believed myself. I went crazy on the dance floor (dancing is amazing), I posed for pictures, I said “thank you” when complimented, trying hard to avoid my usual self depreciative follow-up. I still looked down and worried about my stomach, still sometimes wished I had a jacket, but overall, I didn’t waste as much time worrying as usual.

When I think back to that bus ride, the one where my friend freaked the F out about one eyebrow hair, I think most about how I was wishing the ride away, waiting for the near future when I’d be “fixed,” when I’d finally be good enough. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to wish the ride away. How many nights have I spent inside my head, never fully experiencing my body? What a waste of time. I want to echo Jameela Jamil here, from a recent Glamour interview:

As we’re saying goodbye, she adds: “You know how I told you that everything I do is to atone for my 12-year-old self? Well, I feel I’ve achieved that. I feel I blew all the whistles. I healed the eating disorder. I said I was sorry to her. And I get letters from so many women telling me I’ve helped them, too. So now, everything I do is for the 85-year-old me. Everything I eat, every walk I go on, every holiday I take and every shag I have. I want her to look back and thank me, because all I’ve ever done is look back and say sorry. And now I’m done with that.”

I forced myself to take the mirror pic in the red dress. Because I actually thought I looked really good. My head looked like a head. My hips like hips. I hope one day—very soon—to feel that way every time I see myself. I think 85-year-old me will look back and remember that was the night I promised myself that I, too, am done with all that.

Cheers,

Abi

---

Side note: I felt the need to explain how people have talked to me about my looks because after consulting family and friends, I actually found this experience to be pretty unique to me. Did anyone else out there get critiqued all the time? How do you handle this when/if it comes up now? I can’t believe I’m saying this as a 31-year-old, but I’m still searching for the best responses to people’s unsolicited advice and opinions on my appearance.