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For the past five years, a piece of clothing has followed me everywhere. I’ve moved house. Twice. I’ve moved to another country, in which I’ve also moved twice. This garment, a pair of pants, has occupied suitcases and, rather rudely I might add, lived rent-free in my closet. The thing is, though, these trousers haven’t fit me in years—not since my mid-20s—but I’ve held onto them in the vain hope that one day they will again, or, more accurately, that I would fit them. These are what are known as “skinny” clothes: garments that gather dust in the back of our closet, taunting (and haunting) us with memories of our thinner and therefore often idealized past selves.
I confronted said trousers while I was overhauling my wardrobe recently. Since the beginning of the pandemic and Age of the Sweatpants, I’ve realized there are a lot of garments I just don’t need nor wear, and as anyone familiar with apartments in Manhattan knows, the space crunch is real. In taking a leaf out of Marie Kondo’s book, I had to try everything on first to see if it still “sparked joy.” As it turned out, these near-decade-old pants did the exact opposite when I couldn’t do up the zipper. I’ll admit it, I felt a little crushed, and when I consulted with my friends and followers via Instagram DMs, I was inundated with people who had shared my experience. It was comforting not to feel alone but at the same time, it was a real bummer to learn just how normalized feeling shitty about ourselves is, even for the most outwardly confident people.
“There is a cultural mindset that ‘smaller is better’ when it comes to clothing, size, and weight,” says Afton Kapuscinski, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist and director of the Psychological Services Center at Syracuse University. “Many people whose bodies have changed for various reasons, like stress or pregnancy or aging, find that their confidence is diminished because they have internalized those values.”
The idea that we should modify our bodies to fit into clothes is a phenomenon I like to call enclothed subservience. It’s something Rebecca Eyre is frequently exposed to in her line of work. As an eating disorder therapist and the CEO of Project Heal, a not-for-profit that focuses on equitable access to eating disorder treatment, she has worked with many clients who keep clothes that they either used to fit into or that they aspire to fit into as a form of motivation without realizing just how toxic that can be.
“They think of holding onto ‘skinny’ clothes as a positive, but unfortunately, it's really negative, because in a lot of ways, it's a kind of self-oppression,” she says. “Clothes are for our bodies; our bodies are not for clothes. And when we have clothes that we are trying to change our body for, we’re sending the message that the clothes are right and our bodies are wrong.”
Indeed, getting dressed should be joyful. Fashion should be fun! So, why does it so often feel like a punishment? “Women are taught, subtly and not so subtly, to feel guilty or arrogant when they say something positive about their appearance. So, to put an outfit together and think, ‘I look really good in this,’ is not something that women would often feel comfortable saying to other people or even saying to themselves,” says Dr. Kapuscinski.
It’s important to note, though, that eating disorders do not exclusively affect teenage girls and young women, though during youth is often when these conditions first arise. Eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder affect men and transgender and nonbinary people too. And because less than 6% of people with eating disorders are medically diagnosed as “underweight,” the condition often goes untreated, even unacknowledged by the individual themselves. It’s why it’s a little tricky knowing just how many people are affected, though one research paper by the Academy of Eating Disorders estimates that at least 9%, roughly 28 million Americans, will experience an eating disorder during their lifetime. “Holding onto ‘skinny’ or the ‘goal weight’ clothes is a way of supporting the eating disorder to persist well past when our eating disorder began,” says Eyre.
Of course, the presence of these toxic garments in our wardrobes can impact everyone differently. While the concept may not be “life-damaging” for some, Eyre observes, it can be significantly destructive for others. “When I came out of the eating disorder treatment center, none of my jeans fit me anymore. I held onto them hoping I’d get back down to my anorexia size,” says one friend I spoke with. Others hadn’t considered the subtle, destructive impact these clothes had on their self-esteem and the question I posed brought them to realize it.
So how do we do it, transition to a more positive, healthy relationship with our body and the clothes that hang in our closet? “Some people have scale-mashing or clothes-burning parties. I think that can be really healing for some people,” says Eyre. Such finite endings don’t work for everyone though. We are saying “goodbye,“ after all, and giving ourselves permission to grieve is important.
“It’s not always going to be only freeing, only liberating, and only feel really good. I think it’s okay for it to be a grieving process,” says Eyre, and it’s certainly not something you have to do alone. Reach out to a friend or professional support services if you’re struggling, she advises.
My fashion-obsessed friends had an extra layer of complexity. These were garments they treasured, and as one friend described, that they felt a certain kind of “magic” when they wore them. That sentimentality can be preserved in many ways while still letting go of that old or unrealistic idea of what your body “should” look like. Cut them up and sew them into a blanket or donate them to someone who might appreciate them. (In case you’re wondering, I consigned my pants and spent the cash from their sale on a pair of earrings.)
You could, like one of my friends has, keep them in a box with other memories as a reminder of the good times you had, but you could also celebrate “how good it feels not to be so insecure anymore.” She continued, “It’s a nice connection to those early years of being an adult and a woman and all of the chaos that can come with that, and being able to look back with a bit more gentleness.” I think we can all get on board with that goal.
If you or anyone you know need help or support for an eating disorder or concerns about body image, contact the National Eating Disorders Helpline at 800-931-2237.