Photo by Knape

In the summer of 2020, for all the obvious reasons, I didn’t have much to look forward to—aside from the packages of clothes.

Online shopping was a popular crutch during the harsh days of COVID-19 restrictions, but I felt adamant that my situation was different. I was nothing like the social media influencers showing off their massive hauls to impressionable followers. These women were ordering much more clothing than I was, much more often. They were rich, they were excessive—and they were skinny.

After being what clothing companies nonsensically refer to as straight sized during my youth, I had gained weight in my late teens, and spent years grappling with the reality that this was my new body. I clung to my old wardrobe until the buttons on my blouses popped off and my leggings were worn out to the point I had to keep my legs crossed to hide the bare skin of my thighs peeking through. Most of the stores within my budget went up to only an extra large; and on the rare occasion a piece fit me, it would come with the condition that I refrain from lifting my arms above my head, bending down, or zipping it all the way up. Every single shopping trip involved crying tears of embarrassment in the privacy of the dressing room.

My first foray into the world of ecommerce fast fashion started early on in the pandemic with the long overdue acknowledgement that my body needed plus-size clothing, but quickly snowballed to replacing my entire wardrobe within the course of a few months. It’s impossible to look back at my fast-fashion era as anything more than a cringey, isolation-induced abandonment of my personal values, but it didn’t feel that way in the moment. I knew that buying fast fashion was wrong, but the packages arriving at my door every few weeks offered me respite from the shame I felt shopping in person. For a while, that felt something like empowerment.

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Corporate propaganda videos are rarely as memeable as Dani Carbonari’s. Known to her hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers as Dani DMC, Carbonari is a self-proclaimed “confidence activist” whose online identity strongly hinges upon her status as a fat woman. In 2023, her posts about a sponsored trip to China to explore the facilities of the fast-fashion retailer Shein made her the main character of the Internet, prompting her fervent defence of the company.

In a now-deleted video, Carbonari claimed that the company’s detractors were motivated by xenophobia, as Shein is a Chinese-owned corporation. This claim completely ignores two very important points. As of 2022, the company outsells brick-and-mortar fast-fashion empires like Zara, Old Navy and H&M, and makes up nearly one-fifth of the global fast-fashion market, according to one analysis. If Shein is being targeted, it’s for their objectively singular impact, not their country of origin. Secondly, many, if not most, of Shein’s exploited workers are also Chinese, meaning criticisms of the company’s labour practices are in defence of Chinese workers, rather than xenophobically targeting them.

Carbonari’s co-opting of social justice language didn’t stop there. In another video defending her choice to partner with the company, she described the challenges she had faced as a plus-size content creator, and credited Shein for valuing their partnership and offering a wide range of plus sizes, admittedly a rarity in the fashion industry.

When Teresa Giudice of The Real Housewives of New Jersey fame and three of her daughters received backlash for partnering with Shein on a curated collection, a representative of the family told media an eerily similar narrative, calling the collaboration “size-inclusive” and “made to amplify the voices and creativity of young women.” (Teresa is also a convicted fraudster who has been criticized for marketing weight loss pills, although that’s beside the point).

It’s easy to see how this messaging appeals to plus-size shoppers, who have dealt with a lifetime of being publicly shunned by fashion’s most powerful voices, from Karl Lagerfeld to former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries to Lululemon founder Chip Wilson. The majority of women in Canada are not so-called straight sized, and most U.S. women wear at least a size 16 (although the arbitrary sizing of clothing is often its own headache for shoppers to navigate), and fast-fashion brands have taken note of this underserved demographic.

At the same time, it can’t be ignored that fast fashion is responsible for up to 10 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the United Nations, and generally fails to pay its factory workforce a living wage. From top to bottom, Shein (and other fast fashion brands such as ASOS, Zaful, Temu and Fashion Nova) is built on exploitation. The evidence that the industry exploits garment workers, our environment, and independent designers is insurmountable.

When influencers and celebrities jump to defend these brands in the name of body inclusion, they exploit plus-size customers too. They essentially use us, a genuinely marginalized demographic, as a shield from criticism, not unlike the practice of pinkwashing. If the term fatwashing takes off in the next few years (in relation to clothing, not the niche cocktail-making technique), remember you heard it here first.

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According to Heather Govender, an environmental educator with the Hamilton-based non-profit Green Venture, the low-quality nature of fast fashion is about more than cutting corners—it’s also about maximizing profit in the long run. “They’re made quickly and cheaply so that people will buy lots and then throw them out and buy more and more,” she explains.

Govender says that fast-fashion items continue to cause environmental damage throughout their life cycle, even if they don’t end up in a landfill. Due to the plastic fibres used in most fast-fashion clothing, every laundry day produces microplastics that end up being released into the ocean.

If you struggle to find clothes for any reason—whether it be your size, location, budget or anything else—it can be easy to tell yourself that fast fashion is complicated. The more I learned about the industry, however, the more it feels like the only complicated thing about it is how layered and multifaceted its societal harms are. Its entire business model requires a detached, nihilistic worldview—a belief that the planet is melting and there’s nothing we can do to stop it; that every piece of clothing everywhere involved exploitation, so it doesn’t really matter where you shop; that the best you can do in this broken world is find a little bit of happiness in poorly stitched polyester and free shipping.

While fully acknowledging that I once bought into this nonsense, I know now that everyone, including the plus-size community, deserves better than clothes that contain lead and other toxins. We deserve better than to be “included” while simultaneously being othered—log onto any major fast fashion retailer and you’ll find the plus-size section is neatly separated from “Women” and “Men,” insinuating that our size somehow sets us apart from everyone else. We deserve better than fast fashion, and fortunately for us, fat organizers already know this, and are creating budget-friendly, community oriented alternatives to the status quo.

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It’s estimated that at least 80 billion garments are produced each year, yet any fat person can tell you how difficult it is to find clothing that fits. Eco-conscious influencers are quick to recommend thrifting as a way to save money and be gentle to the environment, but for larger people, the pickings are slim. To make matters worse, evidence indicates that weight bias can sharpen the already steep wage gap that women experience in the workplace, leaving shoppers desperate for both options that fit and that they can afford. In my experience, the plus-size selection in thrift stores is particularly minimal, which has always struck me as odd considering the sheer volume of clothing that already exists. This may be changing, though.

Brenna Strohschein, a co-owner of Fat Sisters Vintage, a plus-size consignment shop that recently opened in Victoria, B.C., shares some of her insights into the fraught relationship between plus-size people and donating clothes. “Plus-size folks are hoarding [clothes], because we have a scarcity mentality that we will never find it again,” Strohschein says. “It’s so hard to find a quality piece, so we can never let it go.”

According to Strohschein, creating a safe, welcoming space for plus-size shoppers has helped encourage consignments. To say the least, opening the store has been an emotional process. Every day, customers cry when they discover the abundance of plus-size options. Some tell Strohschein that they finally have the opportunity to explore their personal style, rather than taking a “whatever fits me” approach to shopping.

This hit home for me. I had gone from wearing threadbare clothes from my high school Tumblr era to having infinite options available at my fingertips, and my strategy was to try anything and everything. Instead of allowing me to discover my own style, fast fashion had only encouraged me to chase microtrends and, for the first time in years, fit in with the crowd. The truth is, I still don’t know how to tell the clothes I love from the clothes I’m just relieved to know fit me.

Strohschein’s shop is no accident: she, too, has struggled to find professionally appropriate clothing in her size, leading to fears that any perceived sloppiness would be attributed to her weight. Stories like these are why even well-educated, socially conscious fat people find the allure of fast fashion hard to resist. Nobody likes to wear ill-fitting or unstylish clothes, but the stakes are different for fat people. Too many people already assume that fat people are lazy and unprofessional, leaving many looking to the massive inventories of fast-fashion retailers for a wardrobe that will challenge rather than reaffirm these preconceived notions. The cruel irony is that, while fast-fashion giants might have office-friendly blazers and slacks, the poor quality often leaves many people unable to truly look and feel put together, and in a constant cycle of trying to shop their way out of fat discrimination.

The community efforts to combat fast fashion don’t stop at thrifting, though. Isobel Bemrose-Fetter and Heather Glasgow are the co-founders of the YVR Fat Clothing Swap in Vancouver, a sustainable initiative that aims to dismantle the shame that often comes with occupying a fat body. “We’re about bodies, and seeing bodies and normalizing them—let’s have them be seen,” Bemrose-Fetter said of the swap’s efforts to normalize fatness. “Bodies are inherently neutral.”

Of course, meeting a community’s needs is always an ongoing process. Both the YVR Fat Clothing Swap and Fat Sisters Vintage are actively involved in expanding the options for superfat people, who often face additional barriers when searching for clothing. Govender, who works on a twice-yearly clothing swap for all sizes, says that her organization is also continually looking for new ways to encourage plus-size participation.

Sustainable fashion brands are also slowly catching up and increasing their plus-size offerings. As budget is still a top concern for me, my primary strategy to curb consumption has been to take care of my current wardrobe rather than search for ethical options, but I’ve still stumbled upon resources that can help people of all sizes shop according to their own values. For example, a $2 (U.S.) digital guide from L.A.-based stylist Lakyn has helped me find sustainable brands that cater to a diverse range of sizes and budgets.

Clearly, the fat community has been hard at work to find ethical alternatives to fast fashion. That makes it all the more disgusting to hear the language of fat liberation being twisted by influencers and B-list celebrities to defend multibillion-dollar companies. Fatphobia has shaped my life in so many ways, and I’m still on a journey to get out from under its grip. I can confidently say, however, that indulging in fast fashion hauls won’t be a part of this journey—even if the alternatives do require a little more work.

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While consignment and clothing swaps might not be accessible for everyone, there are plenty of small acts we can take to get us on the right path. For those still looking for a fat community, Glasgow says that there can be power in starting small. “Even if it’s you and two other people and you’re like, let’s swap clothes and be fat together … that’s really all you need. You don’t really need a lot of pre-established community to start building.”

When I think back to the days I spent in my room, trying on clothes all alone, I realize that the only thing fast fashion ever offered me was another form of isolation, a new way to hide from a world that didn’t want me.

Rejecting fast fashion can be scary as a fat person. It means rejecting a scarcity mentality that tells us we need as much as possible, whenever possible, because our resources are finite. But it also means embracing a community that’s eager to support us in finding what we need. It means remembering that our liberation is all tangled up with everyone else’s—we can never achieve fat liberation at the expense of environmental justice or the dignity of garment workers. It means deciding that we all deserve better.