Your apocalypse is here, and she’s wearing silver lamé

I’m now the proud owner of these high-waisted lamé shorts (in silver dots/back) and I intend on wearing them… IN PUBLIC.

My birthday theme this year is “the future” which i’m choosing to interpret as amped-up-hipster-meets-ziggy-stardust with a bit of superhero twist. (the beauty of this theme is that it is very, VERY, LOOSE).

Lamé-curious fatties on will want to know that even though most AA lamés only run up to an L and look, to the naked eye, like bathing suit bottoms for the size 18 MONTHS crowd, my profound derriere–which is a 20, 22, or 24 depending–actually fit into them without harm or foul. I didn’t have to have to jump into them from a second story window, nor did a team of dedicated professionals trained in the precise art of lamé extraction have to be deployed to remove me from their shiny mettallic grasp. once they were on i did not even “ACK!” in the change room.

Lamé hotpants are like the ne plus ultra of FATTIES SHOULDN’T WEAR THAT, which, it should come as no surprise to many of you, makes me like them that much more. It amuses me to think that narrow-minded concern troll type people hate fat acceptance precisely because they are worried about this sort of thing happening. They are fearful, that fat acceptance will challenge and collapse exclusionary/meritocratic ideas of fashion and OMG MAKE FATTIES THINK THEY CAN WEAR SPEEDOS ALL THE TIME !!!11onety!! when they should obviously “earn that right like everyone else*”. It’s absurd. It’s my experience that the more you have the unwavering the presumption to be who you are the less you stand feel violated by another person’s refusal to conform to dominant–and usually limiting–ideals. There are always going to be things that don’t appeal to your individual aesthetic, but there is a world of difference between not wanting to wear something because it doesn’t move you, versus feeling that someone else doesn’t have the right/deserve to dress how zie wants simply because you don’t like it or don’t feel confident enough to wear it yourself. More than that, there is a stark difference between thinking an item of clothing is fug, versus directing palpable hatred at the person choosing to wear it. I mean, really, how repressed/frustrated/bored/boring is a person if someone else’s going about their business in a neon unitard makes their baby jesus cry. What must their priorities be?

In the spirit of that stellar post of Fillyjonk’s I just linked to, it occurs to me that a large (har) population of lamé hotpants-clad fatties taking, unapologetically, to the streets is probably many peoples idea of what a horrific apocalypse of cultural and moral values would look like. To these people, I–all 5′3, 250 comma-splicing pounds of me–have the potential to be very terrifying. And not just, peeking-through-your-fingers-at-a-horror movie terrifying but actual HARBINGER OF DOOM, capital T-my-world-will-never-be-the-same Terrifying. And you know, not to give myself too much credit, but I WISH it were that easy. If my wearing hotpants 8 days a week could actually bring about a swift and dramatic shift in the way many people view fat, fashion, feminism, and humanity–a literal cultural and moral apocalypse–I’d strap those suckers on, saddle up my tiny pony, and usher that mother the fuck in, already.

^{*aka hateful people who were born thin. or hateful people who weren’t but discipline and punish their body to stay/get that way, and would like you to suffer too, goddamnit. because if you don’t buy in, what the hell are they so hungry for?}

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