Thursday 11 January 2007

Pimp my....clothes?

I went out to Wood Green today, mainly to go clothes shopping but also to go somewhere that isnt Palmers Green or Sainsburys. I get to Matalan, get upstairs to the menswear dept....and it was empty. When i say empty, there were two racks of small and medium shirts, and the rest of the floor was empty - totally deserted.

But i'm in Wood Green, the 'Shopping City', so i go and look in Top Man. Nope, nothing in my size. Burton? Playing bad R&B music in there and they seem to sell stuff that seems to cater for pimps. Marks & Spencer? Not bad selection but again, nothing in my size and they wanted £25 for a shirt!! A FUCKING SHIRT!! Come on, who are they kidding? Everyone knows its been stitched together in 40 seconds in some chinese sweatshop for the grand cost of 11p, so why are you trying to pawn off this shoddy excuse for a shirt for £25!?

I carry on my quest for clothing, and finally, theres BHS, which in days of old (er, about 1995), was the last bastion for decent menswear that fits. They had some decent bargains, and even stuff that fitted in some cases, but they still didnt do anything larger than XL, which is unfortunate, cause i usually take XXXL (for those of you currently unaware, i'm a little on the large side).

The one common theme for all of the stores though, is that they sell pimp clothes. There were shirts that were so shiny, you could have used them as an emergency mirror repair on the hubble space telescope. My god! And the sort of colours that clash violently. I suppose they do it so that when you go out on a friday night binge with your mates, girls wont notice that you've been sick all over the front of you - it just adds to the psychadelic madness thats already printed on the shirt.

The thing that really annoyed me about today though, was that nowhere seems to do anything in any remotely large size - even XL was hard to find.

We live in a society that worships thin people. If you're thin, you're A-OK is the general concensus, which is utter bollocks, but people buy into it anyway. This attitude however, does not reflect reality in any way whatsoever. Over the past few years, the average waistline has expanded over and over and over, so these stores know that theres a market for clothes in these sizes, but do they stock them? Nope, they would rather carry on catering for waif thin people that look anorexic and weak and ignore anyone that doesnt conform to society's ideas of the 'acceptable norm'.

It's all bullshit. I'm sick and tired of being treated like a second class citizen because i weigh more than 12 stone (i weigh 19, if you wanted to know). Sure, i dont mind losing a few stone at some point, but i'm damn sure not going to be bullied into it, nor am i going to feel guilty because i don't eat miniscule portions of food that has no flavour.

How long is it going to take before clothing stores stop pandering to the editors of HEAT magazine and other junk magazines that idolize stick insects? How much more discrimination are us larger people going to have to endure before someone snaps and takes out a branch of UniQlo with a semtex vest?

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