What’s a Big Gal Goin’ to Wear?

A Peek into My Plus Size Fashion Journey

As my mother used to say, “Don’t look like a skinny minny.” As a teen, I didn’t know what the heck she meant. As I grew older, my mother, who was a stocky woman, meant not to be too skinny. My mom felt that men, particularly, Black men, preferred a woman with “some meat on her bones.”

As a child and into my early teen days, I was what would be called today, “slim thick.” I was tall for my age, but had my mother’s face and my father’s butt, hips, and thighs. In addition, I had inherited my mother’s boobs. I never had a “training bra.” I went straight to women’s bras. By the time I had my first child, I was a size 40 DD.

But when I was a kid, my boobs were much easier to manage. Yet, I was a girl who liked to eat and my eating habits changed when I went to college. There I was at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. We were given a dining card that covered three meals a day — breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you used up your dining card before the end of the week (it was reloaded every Sunday), you had to pay for your meals. I treated my dining card like platinum credit card.

One thing about the dining halls, you could get as much as you wanted once you swiped your card. The dining hall was set up like a buffet and it was my first time experiencing so much food to eat in one place. The food was delicious and the drinks were plentiful. They even had a wide range of desserts to chose from. I was in food heaven!