Dress for your body type. This is a common clothing trope we've all been exposed to. Fashion magazines integrate this messaging in the form of produce by comparing bodies to shapely and unshapely fruit. The intention is to make you look more flattering by accentuating, hiding, and minimizing aspects of your body — using fruit as a way to objectify it for evaluation.
Unfortunately this way of thinking is not only unhelpful, it's harmful to how we think about bodies in relation to value — and who is allowed to wear what. The phrase "[ ] should not be wearing that" (insert correct pronoun) comes from advertisements and magazine spreads that group clothing types with body types. Bananas are told to show off more skin, whereas apples are told to cover up. Maybe it's easier to write sentences like that when you remove the people and replace them with inanimate objects. As we take away the human aspect from body shapes, we make it easier for this kind of messaging to seep into the thoughts of people labeled apples, bananas, and pears — and that will rot our thinking from the core.
Imagine this wasn't a thing, and we weren't constantly taught to only wear certain types of clothing. Maybe we'd arrive more quickly at finding comfort within ourselves. "This is a type of outfit that took me a long time to realize that I could wear at all," said Ash Hodges, describing her favorite outfit in the above video.
We're not fruit. We are humans: humans with individuality and style. We need to start thinking about how clothes should fit people, not people fitting into clothes. Remember: fuck the fashion rules. Dress for you.
September is typically a time when fashion publications definitively tell you what’s in, and what’s out. Fuck that. We’re dedicating the next couple of weeks to celebrate all the iconoclasts, independent thinkers, and individuals with unique personal styles who’d rather say Fuck The Fashion Rules than follow them.
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