We buy the clothes we barely fit in, so we can fit in, barely.

I remember it like it was yesterday. That’s how deep the scars of degradation can run. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Who ever said that lived a pretty unscathed life. Time heals scratches. Wounds bleed out.

I remember it like it was yesterday, but it actually happened Wednesday. 1/9/19 is a day that will live in infamy. My own personal pearl harbor. 1/9/19 will forever be known as the day that Ed Kiester wore a crop top at the gym.

My list of goals on that chilly day did not include “soaking the underpants of every women in a square mile with my bare midriff”. In fact, Wednesday was supposed to be my day off from working out. When I went in to the gym, I came with nothing but a sense of whimsy as my guide. Hell, the only reason I had gone to the gym was to vent out some steam. Work, kids, friends, life, all of these things are dumb. Some days, the only way to decompress is to sweat out the angst. Wednesday was this day for me.

On days in which we feel beaten by life, sometimes we put on a false bravado. There is absolutely an inverse relationship between how secure I am feeling, and how cocksure I present myself. On Wednesday, I walked into the gym as if I owed the place. 2 Pac was entering my head through my ear buds, and blasting through my glances and into the souls of everyone around me, like I was the vessel delivering his divine message to the unwashed masses at VillaSport.

When I entered the locker room and saw my buddy Chris, inspiration darted through my body. Today would be a “bro dude” workout day. Bench press, curls, triceps… we would basically just haphazardly lift heavy shit and grunt.

Sure enough as soon as we entered the weight room floor, we both walked for the incline bench. Does this exercise aid in my attaining my goals? Who fucking cares. It combines my two favorite activities; 1) Sitting 2) lifting heavy things. It was during this first set that my shirt sprung to action. As I was grunting out reps, I could feel my shirt crawling up my stomach like it had come to life. Once you are lifting, there is little you can do to run interference as your shirt starts inching upward. As soon I had completed what I assumed was an adequate number of reps to impress the legions of backward hat wearing miscreants, I decided it was probably time to re wrack the weights and pull my shirt down. As I stood up and adjusted my clothing, it occurred to me that I might be fighting more than just my clothing that day. I glanced around the room, and there must have been 10 soccer moms staring at my midriff like I was a piece of meat. Not cool “ladies”. My eyes are up here.

Of course, I figured that I had sufficiently handled the crop top dilemma by the time my next set started, but I assumed incorrectly. Sure enough, as I started lifting, my shirt started its way back up. However, this time it was painfully clear that my shirt was playing a game of cat and mouse with me. This time it seemed as though she had crawled a little further up my torso. My shirt was gaining confidence and felt as comfortable increasing the distance it would creep up my body. Also, as I stood up to adjust my shirt, I couldn’t seem to get my shirt down as far as I would have liked. I was hoping  that my crop top was making me look like one of the Alpha Betas from “Revenge of the Nerds”, but I have a feeling I looked like one of the dudes from the first half of the Olivia Newton John “Physical” video.

I instantly understood that I was doomed to spend my entire day in an unwinnable battle for my self-respect, against my shirt. For awhile I thought that I was going to be a worthy adversary against my clothing, however my shirt had a secret weapon. It appeared as though my sweat was working as a double agent. I kept thinking that as my sweat saturated my shirt, the added weight would help keep my shirt down. The opposite happened. As my shirt grew increasingly damp, it began to stick to me. Every inch of movement my body made, resulted in a disproportion amount of upward movement from my blouse. Up. Up. Up it went.

By the time I had moved on to the final set of incline press, my shirt had basically become a sports bra. I have often referred to myself as “buxom and flirty”, but this was going way too far. Every time I finished a workout, I pulled my shirt down, and every time I started lifted, my shirt worked its way back up. To make it even better, Chris is friends with every single person in the gym. People know him and ask him for tips all the time. He’s a really amiable guy, so he ends up helping a lot of people with their workouts, and in doing so, ends up with a lot of people who know him on a first name basis. Of course, and I shit you not, half way through one of my lifts as my shirt was doubling as a sports bra Chris started giving workout tips to the 25ish year old woman in front of us, and decided this was the perfect time to introduce me to her. I was too mortified to hear what he really said, but it felt something like this…

“Hey Syd, have you met my friend Ed? Or his bare navel? If you wait long enough, at his shirts current rate of reduction, I bet his nipples will be out too.”

You know who I blame for my shirt going rogue? Not myself… no no, of course not. I also don’t blame my shirt. I really don’t even blame the clothing company. I blame every self-loathing portly person. Why can’t people act in their own best interest? Here’s the problem, fat people won’t buy a brand of clothing made for overweight people. We all want to dress in the name brand clothes our physically fit counterparts are wearing. However, mainstream clothing companies expand their patterns equally throughout the whole pattern as they increase their sizes, but peoples bodies don’t work like that. We aren’t meat tubes. Men and women have somewhat universal “trouble” areas as our weight changes. We don’t gain weight evenly throughout our bodies. Name brands don’t really account for this. To be fair, I don’t think name brands want fat people wearing their clothes. I know Banana Republic saw some backlash, a few years ago, over their limited plus sizes.. and of course the CEO of Abercrombie said he they didn’t make plus sized clothes because they made clothes for “the cool kids”. Before you get too pissed, its not Abercrombie’s job to create clothes for you. Of course it was shitty of him to say that, but to be fair… fat people are usually fattists too. We judge each other and ourselves just as harshly as anyone else does. We buy the clothes we barely fit in, so we can fit in, barely.

What we need is a line of clothes aimed at actually meeting the body type needs of people who aren’t tiny or in perfect shape. I think there is a need, and a growing market for such a thing. A growing market for cool, fashionable, well made, and attractive clothing that isn’t cut to fit hanger type bodies. However, because overweight people are usually self-loathing, I have doubts that people would actually buy a line of clothing like this.  We fear that people would see the label and then judge our weight. Do we really think that people who are going to judge us, don’t know we are overweight until they see our clothing label? This isn’t a rhetorical question. The answer is yes, we actually think our clothing is hiding how we look, and that if someone saw us for what we really are, they would reject us. Just like how the heavy dude who wears his shirt in the pool thinks no one knows he’s overweight just so long as he leaves his shirt vacuumed sealed to his over abundant torso. The idea that people would reject you for being overweight is shitty too. It makes bold implications against people we don’t know. It is mean to think that people we don’t know, will reject us for being overweight. It is also narcissistic to think that the whole world is analyzing us. No one cares that you are overweight, or is judging you for it, as much as you.

Someone is going to see that the overweight clothing demand is growing. They will create a line of workout gear without a logo on them. The first; high quality, cut to fit heavier people, cool yet non-descript, clothing line… and they will make a fortune. Of course, the clothing would have to look good, but not have a logo that could be associated with unfit people. Otherwise, the brand would slowly morph into a punchline, and overweight people would allow fear to stop them from acting in their own best interest.

I admit I would struggle to buy a brand that everyone knew was for heavier people, too. However, hopefully whoever makes this clothing line, will not have the sick sense of humor that kids jean providers had in the 1980’s. I cant be the only kid whose parents scarred him for life by calling out across the store, “They are out of the ‘husky’ sized jeans”. Husky sized? Seriously! Why not just name them “little fat bastard jeans”. If you are going to murder my self-esteem, at least make it a quick death.