Sh*#^%*t!!!!!

Have you ever gone to put something on and found that—magically—it no longer fits? (I swear that must happen to me every few months just to remind me I'm human.) Well, if so, you're not alone. As it turns out, even celebrities can't always get their clothes to fit.

Because last Friday, Sofia Vergara, star of ABC's Modern Family, freaked out when none of the dresses she was trying on for the Golden Gobes fit her. "Nothing fits meeee!!!!" she said via Twitter. "I'm not going to the Golden Globes!!!!!!!" And suddenly I realized that in some ways Vergara is one of us—a regular person. This makes two reasons I'm happy to watch her show every week.

The picture that accompanied her tweet (above) also took me back to being a teenager . . . you remember, don't you? Lying on the twin bed, trying desperately to zip your too-tight Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans over your still-flat belly. How many of you did something like that???

Of course, Sofia's tweet raises the question, if TV stars struggle to fit in their clothes, what hope do the rest of us have?

FYI . . . I'm on Twitter now. Follow me @IWillNotDiet.

Clothes make the woman—so why aren't they made for us?

The Mossimo Smocked Empire dress from Target—cut up to your pantyline and down to your cleavage. Seriously, who wears this stuff???

Last summer I wrote about the fact that I was surprised to find out that one of my really thin friends hates to wear sleeveless shirts and dresses as much as I do. Sure, we have totally different reasons—she doesn't like to go without a padded bra, and I don't like to bare my upper arms—but the end result is still the same: a huge percentage of women's clothing is unavailable to both of us.

It bothered me when I realized this, but I also figured it was a bit of an anomaly. But then I was shopping with another friend over the holidays—this friend is older than me, and like my other friend, she is very thin too. But unlike my original friend, she has a little bit of a bust. So when were out shopping, I didn't hesitate to recommend a gorgeous white sleeveless blouse to go with a new red necklace she had just bought. To my surprise, she balked. "I don't do sleeveless," she said without a moment's hesitation.

"Why not?" I asked. "You're so thin."

"You haven't seen what I've got under here," she said, pointing to the part of her arm that was obscured by her short-sleeve shirt. "I'm old! This doesn't look good when you get old."

"You're being ridiculous," I said, but she wasn't budging.

I'm not going to lie—it really bugged me when I found out another one of my friends refuses to wear sleeveless clothing. It bugged me because everywhere I go I see sleeveless clothes marketed to women—sleeveless shirts, sleeveless dresses, sleeveless pajamas, etc. Next thing you know they'll have paper gowns at the gynecologist's office with spaghetti straps.

I know this to be true because I'm always trying to avoid sleeveless, but it's almost impossible to do because it's EVERYWHERE.

And when my friend said she doesn't "do" sleeveless either, I started to wonder who the hell does. I can name two friends of mine who I know regularly wear sleeveless shirts, but that's it. Just two.

And then I started thinking about hemlines.

Because if sleeveless dresses make me feel a bit sickly, short hemlines make me downright ill. But everywhere I shop, all I see are racks and racks of dresses and skirts that stop two or three inches above my knee. I know it's in style for young girls to wear dresses like this, but what about the rest of us? What are we supposed to wear? I promise you that if most women don't like going sleeveless, they certainly don't enjoy wearing a skirt that skims the bottom of their Jockey underwear.

What's interesting is that I just found two gorgeous dresses that come to the knee in the most recent issue of Lucky magazine, but when I looked at the price I was horrified—they were both over a thousand dollars a piece. So the only people who can wear knee-length dresses are rich woman? Does it really cost that much more to add a few more inches of fabric???

Of course, it doesn't, but for some reason, clothing designers and clothing stores seem to only make clothes that have too-short skirts and too little sleeves. I wonder why that is.

Or maybe it's more complicated than that. I was complaining about hemlines being too short with a female student last month when she said that has the exact opposite problem—they're all too long for her and fall between her knee and her ankle, like a prairie dress. I looked at her and realized for the first time how tiny she was.

"How tall are you?" I asked.

"Almost five foot," she said sheepishly.

No wonder dresses are too long on her.

And that's when it hit me—the reason so many women hate the way clothes fit is because they're not MADE to fit us. Think about it . . . men's pants are sized two ways—waist and length—but women's pants and skirts (and dresses) only have one size: S, M, L, or XL (or they're numbered from 2 to 24), but they do not have one measurement for height and another for girth like men's clothing. So the assumption is that if we're short, we're also tiny? And if we're tall, we're also big around? That must make it pretty hard for my skinny six-foot-tall friend to find anything to wear. Not to mention my short curvy mother. The truth is that it makes it hard for all of us.

That might be why so many people recommend that women have their clothes tailored after they buy them. I have friends who take every single pair of pants to the tailor to have that part that gapes in the back cut out. Every. Single. Pair. That's gotta add up. And I really don't think we should be expected to that.

Unfortunately, the only answer is for all of us to stop buying any clothes until manufacturers start making clothing that is truly designed to fit women of all sizes. But I know that you all like to go shopping too much for that. So instead now that we know this is a problem, we'll just have to start talking about why it's a problem that the clothes they make don't fit us. If we raise enough of a stink, maybe they'll actually listen.

Miracles really do come true

195 pounds

If you believe in miracles, this is the post for you.

After two years of looking for new knee-high boots, I am the proud owner of not one, but two! new pairs of knee-high boots.

This past Sunday, I opened the Target circular that arrives in my inbox every weekend and saw that knee-high boots were on sale this week. The last time I found knee-high boots that fit my calves was three years ago—back in the fall of 2006—when Target carried "extended calf" size boots designed my Isaac Mizrahi. As I said recently in my "These boots aren't made for wearing" post, I love my Mizrahi boots, but they have three-inch heels and are very girly, and I've always wanted a more rugged looking pair that I can wear with my casual skirts and dresses. But even though I've searched high and low for a pair like that, I have not been able to locate a single other pair of knee-high boots that fit my calves.

That is, until this weekend.

I had looked at Target's fall shoe line a month or so ago but not found any extended calf sizes, so I never bothered to try on any of the boots in the store. It had never occurred to me that knee-high boots that were not specifically marked "extended calf" would fit my calves, which at just over 19 inches are a bit bigger the 12-inch shaft offered in most taller boots.

But when I saw that Target had knee-high boots on sale, I couldn't resist calling them up on my computer screen for a closer look. And I was shocked by what I learned when I got there: several of the reviewers said that the Kallista Riding Boot by Merona (pictured above) was perfect for women with larger calves.

And that was all I needed to hear.

I literally jumped up from my computer, threw on a t-shirt and my favorite jean skirt—perfect for trying on boots—and headed to Target.

As it turned out, the reviewers were right. The Kallista Riding Boot is made with elastic that stretches to fit my muscular calves. They were a little more snug than I would have liked so I bought a half-size bigger than normal, but I am not kidding when I tell you that they look absolutely fabulous and, believe it or not, might even make my calves look smaller!

But wait! It gets even better!!

When I went to the three-way mirror to get a better look at the riding boot, I was shocked to see another curvy woman there trying on a completely different pair of adorable knee-high boots—the Kady boots by Mossimo (pictured below).

She was asking her boyfriend what he thought, and he was acting appallingly noncommittal. But I could not keep quiet. I told her they looked simply amazing, and that I was going to immediately go back to the shoe section and find a pair for myself, which is exactly what I did. As it turns out, the Kady boot not only fit, it looked just as good as the first one. Maybe even better. It was like I had died and gone to boot heaven!

Unfortunately, the Kady boot is no longer available online, but they still have some left in the store. The riding boot, though, is available in every size online, and at $30 a pop, it's almost a no-brainer. If you're like me and don't have calves the size of toothpicks, I recommend that you stop whatever you're doing and go immediately to Target to buy these unbelievable boots.* Because for all we know it could be Y E A R S before us curvy girls can find another decent pair.

*Be sure to go up a size or two; if you buy online, you can get free shipping if you spend over $50 by ordering the boots in more than one size and then return the pair that doesn't fit to the store free of charge!

These boots aren't made for wearing

195 pounds

I’ve been trying to find a new pair of knee-high boots for over two years now. I have one pair of Isaac Mizrahi chocolate-colored, suede knee-high boots with a three-inch heel that I bought at Target back in '06. They’re very dressy and girly, and I still love them, but I also want a pair that are more casual and rugged. The Frye “Campus” boot (pictured here) is my ideal, but as fate would have, the “shaft” of that boot is too narrow for my calf.

In fact, what I’ve found over the past two years is that hardly any knee-high boots fit my calves. Do I have especially big calves? I’ve definitely got big bones—even when I was a little girl, I was never able to stretch my fingers around my wrist—but I don’t think my calves are really that much bigger than anyone else’s.

Like I said, I started looking for a more casual pair of knee-high boots two years ago, and after a few months, I began to enter the desperation phase of my search. Whenever I become obsessed with locating a hard-to-find item, my search usually goes through five stages:

Stage One: Initial Excitement—this is when I first decide that I want to find a certain item, and I feel completely titillated by the prospect of looking for it.

Stage Two: Momentary Confusion—confusion sets in when I don't easily find what I want. At this stage, I spend precious time wondering why something as straightforward as a pair of boots is so elusive in our consumer-driven society.

Stage Three: Frantic Desperation—once I understand that it's going to be a struggle to find said item, I start to get frantic: my adrenaline begins to rush, my nerves start rattling, and my forehead starts to sweat.

Stage Four: Righteous Anger—when I finally realize that the item I want is either not available—or in this case, not available to me—I do what any smart woman would do: I get pissed off.

Stage Five: Bad Choices—And sometimes when I get really frustrated and irritable, I even go so far as to make a bad decision, buying something I don't even really want just to satisfy my insatiable desire for a purchase.

But last fall, I still hadn’t even reached stage four, so I tried to convince myself that I just hadn’t looked hard enough. I figured that the boots I'd tried up to that point probably ran smaller than normal and that I just needed to be more thorough in my search. So with a renewed sense of enthusiasm and focus, I hit the local mall one weekend last fall.

But what I had hoped would be a fruitful search ended up being a disaster, not to mention a huge waste of time. I think I must have tried on every single pair of knee-high boots in the entire mall but could still not find one pair that fit my calves. I even asked the salespeople in the various shoe departments for help, but though they tried their best, ultimately they looked at me with pity, as if they were secretly thinking, poor little fat girl can’t find any cute boots. You might think these looks would bother me, but they had the opposite effect.

I had entered stage four: I was pissed.

Eventually I regrouped and approached the problem from a more scientific angle, measuring my calves to see if that information would aid the process. It turns out that my calves—which I still think are pretty average-sized—are nineteen inches around.

That's bigger than I thought anyone’s calf would be, but looks can be deceiving. So I went online with this crucial information, and what I found was that most knee-high boots have a circumference of twelve inches. Twelve inches? That’s barely over half the size of my own calf. Are my calves really almost twice as big as those of most other women?

Then I remembered that my friend Kelcey once told me that Banana Republic carries “extended calf” boots—that is, knee-high boots that have more room in the calf area. As soon as I thought of this, I went to the Banana Republic website and scoured the shoe listings, but I discovered that the boots there—at $300 and up—are way out of my price range.

So my search continued.

At Zappos, I typed in “extended calf” and "extended shaft" and "wide calf" and whatever else I could think of. But I found that only a handful of knee-high boots—made by Fitzwell and R.S.V.P.—offer more room in the calf, and none of them fit my needs so I put off my decision, hoping for some kind of shopping miracle.

Before I knew it, winter was over, and my material needs were changing. I shelved my search for the perfect pair of casual knee-high boots and focused on other things.

But I never completely gave up, always keeping an eye out for a pair that would fit my unfittable nineteen-inch calves.

I never had any luck—every time I tried on a pair, I was either unable to get my nineteen-inch calves inside the shaft or unable to get the zipper closed over them—and now that it’s September, I have found myself back at square one: I still need a different kind of knee-high boot for my fall and winter wardrobe, and I am now beginning to believe that such a boot doesn’t exist.

And, to be perfectly blunt about it, the idea of this pisses me off in a way that I haven't been pissed in a L O N G time. Are there really no boots for girls like me? Girls who wear the size that most women in America wear?

Women’s clothes are available in all kinds of “plus” sizes, so why aren’t boots available in a plethora of sizes as well? Are my calves being discriminated against? It’s as if the fashion industry is trying to tell me that girls like me are not allowed to have cute boots.

I got so frustrated that I emailed Piperlime—a competitor to Zappos—and asked them if they carry any extended calf boots, and they actually wrote back and said, “Unfortunately we do not have boots with extended calf sizes. We apologize for any disappointment this causes.”

They apologize for any disappointment this causes?

Is that it???

They’re acting as if they’re merely sold out of the size I'm looking for when, in truth, they don’t even carry my size, a size that I bet most women in America wear. I’m no longer feeling simple disappointment. I’m feeling righteous anger.

Because if Piperlime—and all of the other stores I visited—don’t carry boots for someone like me, aren’t they reinforcing the notion that the only women who should dress in a fashionably way, the only women who are allowed to look good, are women who resemble the stick-thin models we see on the front of our magazines?

I wrote back to Piperlime and told them that I won’t be spending my hard-earned dollars at their store until they carry boots for all sizes of women. In the meantime, I beg you to please let me know if you are aware of a place where a girl like me can find a nice pair of knee-high boots.

For now, I’ll just have to keep looking.

It's a revolution! Why Lizzi Miller could change everything

196 pounds

Holy stomach roll, Batman!!!

I just found out (thanks to my cousin Jill) that a “plus-size” model is featured in Glamour this month (the September issue). Not only is it impressive that a magazine like Glamour featured a regular-sized women in its pages, it’s revolutionary!

Lizzi Miller appears naked in a Glamour article about self-esteem looking both confident and real (see the pic on the right), and the web is buzzing about it. Apparently, readers are falling all over themselves to say how much they love Miller’s very real stomach and legs, a sign that we are all ready to see women who actually look like us rather than woman who look almost as unreal as Barbie dolls.

And this isn’t even the first time Miller has graced the pages of Glamour. She also appeared in their April issue wearing nothing but a flesh-colored bikini bottom. (See the pic on the left.)

So who is this beautiful but normal-sized woman?

Lizzi Miller is an absolutely gorgeous 5’11”, 180-pound, 20-year-old “plus-size” model, and I think she is going to have to be my new hero and the patron saint of I will not diet. Miller says she wears clothing that ranges from size twelve to fourteen, and she’s been modeling for seven years. How she managed to not give into the pressure for models to be rail thin, I’ll never understand, but I admire the hell out of her for it, especially since she’s only twenty! Let me repeat—she's only twenty! And yet she is stronger than women I know who are twice her age. It would be a huge victory if a middle-aged woman with a real body was featured in a women's magazine, but a twenty-year-old with a real body? That’s like winning the lottery.

(By the way, I’m putting the words “plus-size” in quotation marks because I don’t understand how she can be a plus size model if she wears between a size twelve and fourteen, which, as well all know, are not plus sizes.)

Just think how models like Miller could change the way young women feel about their bodies! My ten- and fourteen-year-old nieces already claim to be watching their weight even though they are mere skin and bones, and I love thinking about them accepting themselves for the beautiful young women they are if models like Miller were to become the norm.

The best part about Miller is that she is exactly what I’ve been saying we need: a happy medium, a woman who is not a size zero and not a size twenty. Not only is she an average size—because the average woman in America wears a size twelve to fourteen—but she’s also gorgeous, happy, and comfortable in her own skin. This is exactly the kind and size of women we need to see more of in the media: she’s not only someone we can admire, she’s also someone we can aspire to look like.

This is a huge victory for those of us who are lobbying for more healthy role models, and I think we should take it as a clear sign that things are changing. This change also means that we must keep insisting that the women staring back at us from our pages and our screens look more like we do. How do we do this? We do it by voting with our dollars—by buying the September issue of Glamour in record numbers (and asking for it if it's sold out) and by paying to see movies that feature real-sized women (see the list on the right side of this blog). We can also Google Lizzi Miller so many times that women's magazines will have no choice but to get the message. Because the truth is, how can we possibly feel good about ourselves if we don’t embrace women like Miller?

This is a good day for average-sized women everywhere, and I honestly couldn’t be happier about the attention all of this is getting. I don't know about you, but I needed this. I say we all celebrate this coup by putting on something sexy this week and feeling good about our gorgeous—and real—bodies in honor of this brave twenty-year-old.

One more thing . . . way to go, Lizzi!!!!!

Addendum: I just found this amazing health and fitness blog by Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive—Vitamin G—which contains more info about Miller (she's a belly dancer!) and other related issues.

Earning their wings

196 pounds
Flight attendants are probably one of the most maligned segments of our work force. We treat them like servants, they're repeatedly used as comic fodder in movies and television, and—worst of all—they're required to dress incredibly well and appear both attractive and happy on the job.

I've always been bothered by the latter—the fact that flight attendants have to dress so fashionably and act so perky. It seems somehow unethical to require a person to seem so perfect day in and day out. Isn't that asking too much? And is there any other respectable job—being a Hooters' waitress does not count as a respectable job—that asks its employees to smile and be supportive throughout their workday and to do all of that while also wearing a pencil skirt, panty hose, and fabulous heels?

I don't think so.

And we all know all too well that, in years past, the flight attendant industry has been plagued by instances of discrimination based on a woman's looks or weight.

For this reason, I've always felt like a friend to the flight attendants of the world, a supporter of their rights if you will, so when I saw a headline about flight attendants challenging an aspect of their uniform, I immediately clicked on the attached article.

As it turns out, some of the flight attendants Delta acquired in their takeover of Northwest Airlines are fighting for their right to wear the uniform recently designed by Richard Tyler. Apparently, these fashionable red dresses were only made in so many sizes, thereby making it impossible for the curviest flight attendants to wear them. To add insult to injury, the flight attendants claim that the sizes of the dress are not even close to accurate, meaning that if you normally wear a size fourteen (like Meryl Streep), you'd need a size eighteen in the Tyler dress.

(The irony of this slight is that the Tyler dress appears to be a knee-length wrap dress, which I have found to be one of the most flattering things a curvy woman can wear.)

In my opinion, this move reeks of fat-ism and is another example of our society trying to send the message that larger women are not as attractive as smaller women, which we all know is simply not true. (Please see my gallery of gorgeous women to the left if you need proof of this fact.)

And if we let this go, I have to wonder what's next. Will Delta start making flight attendants who don't have perfect upturned noses wear masks??? Will getting a Delta boarding pass become as difficult as getting into the hottest New York dance club??? Will there be a red velvet rope and discriminating bouncers lined up to inspect your ensemble and makeup at the gate???

Of course, none of these things would ever actually happen, but that's not the point. The point is that it's wrong to tell one group of employees that they can't be treated the same as their peers, that they don't have the same rights or perks.

Thankfully, the Association of Flight Attendants is having none of it. They've filed a grievance with Delta in order to make them offer the dresses in all sizes so that every flight attendant can wear them—no matter what their size. And I applaud this organization for standing up for the right of ALL of their members to wear this fashionable uniform.

Unfortuantely, Delta's only response so far has been to say that they don't know why the dress isn't available in larger sizes and that there have been "few complaints." The message is that if only a few curvy women are being kept from wearing the dress, then it's not a big deal. But from my point of view, if one female flight attendant is not allowed to wear the dress, then all of us—men and women alike—suffer because of the dangerous precedent it sets, which basically sends the message that it's acceptable to discriminate against larger people.

So I propose that we all let Delta know that this practice is unacceptable, upping their complaints from a "few" to a few hundred. To do that, go to this website:

http://www.delta.com/emailus/servlet/EmailUs?cmd=go

Your complaint doesn't have to be long. Just tell them that their practice of making the Richard Tyler flight attendant dress only available in smaller sizes is unacceptable and needs to be changed. (Feel free to copy my words if you'd like.)

The bottom line is that ALL of Delta's flight attendants should have the right to wear Richard Tyler's amazing red dress. After all, they're the ones who have to deal with Sharon Stone when she starts screaming at them about wanting to bring an oversize bag on board. Doesn't that earn them the right to this one little luxury?