Fat Grownup Prom Shopping

It demands creativity and patience

I wasn’t super thin as a teenager (one prom date lovingly called me “squishy” and instead of accepting the compliment I conflated it with “fat” which must be “bad” so I got upset, I’m sorry Mike!) but I could still wear straight sizes. I loved going into Caché with my dad and picking out something probably inappropriate for a 17-year-old who could barely fit her 34E bust into the size 8 satin top. As grownups in the entertainment industry — or, partners of grownups in the industry — we have awards shows as our version of prom, and when I was in my 30s the vintage evening gown world was my oyster. For the second awards show¹ I went to with my now husband, I wore this incredible Peggy Hunt black jersey evening gown and I thought it must have looked real good because he literally asked me to marry him right there:

Even when I was this small I complained and worried about my belly, which makes me both sad and annoyed. But look at my husband’s red red beard!

In 2020, just before the pandemic, I wore this incredible 1930s velvet zip-front gown with gold leaves at the hips and shoulders and a pearl grape cluster at the neck.

Both of these dresses (and many others) came from Playclothes in Burbank, California, which remains my absolute favorite brick and mortar for vintage. Shopping for awards shows used to be one of life’s great pleasures, proud of what my husband had accomplished and also getting to hunt for a special dress and get fancy. But now, as a larger person, most of the formal vintage I find in my size online (and the pickings are extremely slim) assume that if you are fat, you are old, you do not want to draw any attention to yourself, and there is big grandmother of the bride energy going on which is not the vibe.² I have always been able to find things in my larger size at Playclothes for daywear, but I hadn’t tried putting together a formal plus-ish size look yet, and for some reason I waited until the last day I had free to shop before the Creative Arts Emmys the following weekend.

At this point you may be wondering, why does it have to be vintage? Why can’t you go find a new dress? The simple answer is because I don’t know how and I don’t want to. The last time I shopped for a new formal dress off a rack was back in that Caché in Omaha in 1997. For the last three weeks I’ve tried to find anything secondhand in my size on Gem, either modern or vintage, and I’ve come up empty. I just don’t know how to shop IRL if it’s not vintage, and besides, I don’t really have any interest in buying something new. The quality just won’t be as good for the money I have to spend and honestly, it wouldn’t feel like me.³ So with all the confidence of my former self, I walked into my favorite vintage store expecting a bit of an uphill battle but ultimately to come out victorious with just the right thing, or close enough to the right thing.

This did not happen.

I think I was expecting a gown, either a large velvet 30s number or some kind of frothy 60s chiffon thing, huge and flowy, or a shiny 1940s dressing gown? something with a huge sweep, lots of fabric, lots of drama. But the clerk kept pulling beaded 80s things like this:

and I kept saying things like, this beaded top is fine, but I want a huge black skirt to go with it, and we couldn’t locate one. I think she kept pulling these dresses because they had no waistline and honestly if this cream beaded number had been big enough I would have loved it, but there just wasn’t anything in my size that felt fancy enough for a red carpet event. A lot of this stuff felt appropriate for a fancy dinner but not grownup prom.

And it finally hit me about an hour in that I really had sized out of being able to effortlessly shop for big events. I found several things I wanted for like, everyday wear, but the find-five-options-in-an-hour shopping I used to come for was now pretty much out of reach. After all the internal work I’d done around accepting my body and rejecting anti-fat bias, here I was again wishing I was smaller, this time not to be loved or admired but simply to fit into these interesting and stylish clothes I once had complete access to. This isn’t for you anymore, whispered the mannequins and beautiful dresses with tiny waists. I began to mentally prepare for wearing something more casual already in my closet and trying to dress it up with sparkly jewelry and fun shoes. With all the pouty self-pity I had available—and it was a lot at this point—I thought to myself, “no one will say ‘I love your dress’” and I think that made me saddest of all, because when people used to say that to me it meant I had good taste, a good eye, a talent for creating something visually interesting and appealing.

In the end, I bought a bright turquoise 90s silk burnout robe that would be more suited to a beach chair and tiny umbrella drink than a red carpet, but it was the only thing that fit. It felt like a frustrating defeat, and also one of those problems that gets in your head and you can’t think about anything else until it’s solved. So I mined my closet for anything that felt remotely appropriate, and I came up with a 1940s dressing gown that I’d gotten from the same shop a few years ago, that was not shiny or sparkly but was dramatic and bold and ready to be accessorized appropriately. Added some extremely high heels from Remix, absolutely bonkers shoulder pads and a silver bib necklace and I suddenly felt very well prepared, even though I would essentially be wearing very nice pajamas.

These illustrations by Dagmar Freuchen-Gale for Vogue, October 1 1951 are later than the dress I’ll be wearing, but they really emphasize how fancy one dressed for at-home entertaining (or, according to the copy, just watching TV??) in the 40s and 50s. These are certainly fancy enough for a red carpet event in 2024, when people just kind of wear whatever they want and there are essentially no more rules?

Today, getting ready, I realized my hair dryer didn’t work, I had no lash glue and no shape wear but I don’t feel like leaving the house in 100 degree heat and it occurs to me that the very fancy things that used to happen before the pandemic are just different now, not just culturally but personally. In the before times, I considered my appearance to be a direct reflection of my husband’s success, and I felt that if I didn’t present a perfect picture, that his colleagues would think less of him. Honestly, what the fuck? Am I a feminist or not? Where did this come from? I mean I know it came partly from our mothers, women who were mostly stay-at-home moms by cultural default, who had husbands who were working up some kind of career ladder, men who may have had bosses or colleagues that left their aging wives for “younger models” that they showed off at parties and company events. But that’s not my life. I am a whole person with my own career and interests, and I never ever feel like (or care if) my husband’s appearance has any bearing on how I will be perceived by my friends. Why wouldn’t he feel the same way? It feels like this is a topic for its own post? *adds to growing writing prompts list*

But now, I might actually be starting to believe that these things are less performative and more social. And since I’m not even the one up for an award, honestly, who cares? It’s fun to swan around in a dressing gown and feel fancy, but it’s not a competition and the stakes are not that high. Even though I’m aware that the event itself is very much not about me, right now it still feels like a moment of growth and reflection. At this point, I’m just looking forward to going to grownup prom with our friends, and maybe? watching my husband win a cool award.

Next time: pics and label history of the dress! it’s a sweet one.

1. Idk why but I don’t have pics of the first one, which was a 1950s copper satin dress with a huge full skirt and black lace trim.

2. I actually feel like this might be one of the contributing factors to why larger size vintage is harder to find. I think the irritating trope that “people were just smaller back then” is lazy and doesn’t capture the whole picture, and that one possible reason why larger vintage in the styles we like now is hard to find is that fat clothes weren’t as fun and so people were less likely to keep them. There are so so many factors here, and as I was finishing up my shopping, the woman behind me actually said to me that people were smaller back then because of ultra processed food and I struggled not to absolutely lose it and start an argument. I know that is a really popular opinion but again, I think relying on it is lazy and lacks curiosity and critical thinking. You simply could not look at pictures of the women in my family going back generations and think ah yes, people were so much smaller back then.

3. Unless you have one of those sparkly Batsheva Goldie dresses in a size 18 or 16?