Vintage Fat

Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in antique malls, flea markets, and vintage stores. I’m not a big shopper, but I like seeing and touching artifacts from the past, in exactly the way you can’t at a museum.

I enjoy the little mysteries. For instance, I often see hand towels and other bathroom linens at an antique store, but I’ve never once seen a washcloth from the 1800s or before. Why not, I wonder. Did people use sponges a long time ago? Did they use a bar of soap by itself? Were washcloths so well used that they wore out and never made it to our century? Were they considered too intimate to pass along after a person’s death? I don’t know. If I’m to find an answer, it will probably happen as I’m pawing through linens at a mall booth filled with old textiles.

Another thing I never see is women’s plus-sized clothing. There is seldom anything larger than a modern size ten, in fact. This is true for 1950s hostess aprons, it is true for 1880s dresses, and it is true for everything in between. None of them would fit me. Even the shoes are inches too short.

In general, most of us are larger than our recent forebears. If you don’t believe me, go try on some vintage shoes. Shoes from as recently as seventy years ago seem like they were made for a slightly less-evolved species—Homo Cinderellus, maybe. They run narrow and short. If you find a pair that fits, you can assume that they were worn by a giant of the past.

Our increase in relative size can almost certainly be credited to improvements in our nutrition, and maybe to our general robust health, thanks to modern drugs and vaccines and cures. We are hale and hearty. We live longer, and larger. We wash ourselves meticulously, with washcloths.

Then there’s the corset factor. People used to wear them—even men wore them in the Regency era. And although fashions and desirable body types changed throughout history, just as they do now (picture Twiggy alongside Kim Kardashian—a mere generation apart), women’s undergarments were generally form fitting and restrictive; in the Edwardian period, the wasp waist was all the rage. Perhaps antique clothes are smaller because the people who wore them were constantly trussed, or because being trussed trained their bodies into smaller configurations. As someone who has camped out near party spreads, cheesing multiple crackers, I don’t doubt that a tight girdle kills one’s capacity to ingest canapés.

Even when I was young, undergarments were de rigueur, despite the fact that I grew up during the height of the feminist movement. Regardless, in my small hometown, women wore pantyhose. My mother insisted on the importance of my equipping myself with control-top hose, a supportive bra, a slip (good Lord, when is the last time I wore one of those?), and even a tummy-taming girdle-type garment for when I wanted to look my sleek best.

All that elastic held my moving parts in place. Maybe it even took me down a dress size, temporarily. Maybe day after day after day of wearing constraining undergarments took people down a size permanently.

This theory would explain antique clothes being just a size away from my own size, but that’s not the case. No part of me fits into any part of a hundred-year-old dress. Period.

Clearly, I am the fattest woman in history.

This is a startling thought, and one that first gave me pause. I’m starting to own it, though.

Even so, I’ve developed a few alternate theories, as one does when one is unable to find evidence that any human like herself walked the Earth before her lifetime. (Imagine if every garment from the past had two neck holes or three arms. It’s kind of like that. You’d look everywhere for the one-neckers, the two-armers—the evidence that you’re not, in fact, the first of your kind.)

I mentioned nutrition, medicine, and improved overall health. I think another reason for the lack of antique plus-sized clothes may be what I call the Curtain Factor. When a woman my size died, it was seen as a waste merely to pass along her clothing to other people. So much material! The whole stunted, emaciated, corset-carved family could have outfits from a single hearty woman’s dress. A single gown could yield a men’s vest, a couple of baby onesies, a few light summer frocks, and some cheery curtains.

Just think of how sad those poor people would be. Not only is their loved one dead and buried, but they’re drying dishes on what used to be her petticoat. The couch is upholstered in her best winter coat. Her bloomers have been converted to mosquito nets. Everywhere they look, there are traces of her. They dab their eyes on an armless sleeve, and rinse it, maybe, and wash their face with it.