Hey troop!
Welcome back for episode 5 of The Nood Troop Podcast! Full disclosure, we are all over the place with this one, but there is a point…stick with me!!
Long story short, I booked a trip to Bali and like any normal, excited human, I started prepping the outfits long before the flight was booked. I imagined this easy breezy girl with flowy dresses, tiny little matching sets, clothes that made me feel like the higher version of myself…..so I did what most of us have learned to do.
I opened 37 tabs. I scrolled. I added to cart. I hoped. And then I spent over $1700 on clothes…just to return almost all of it.
Because shopping while fat isn’t just shopping.
For the majority of my life, shopping has been the ultimate ick. Hot dressing rooms, limited size options, emotional labor and disappointment. As someone who lives in a body that sits above the magical straight size of an XL, finding clothes in store is not an option. I don’t get the luxury of walking into a dressing room and knowing. I don’t get to feel fabrics, test fits, or try on five options and pick the best one.
Humans that live in bodies like mine get guesswork. We get size charts that lie. We get models that don’t look like us. We get “extended sizing” that somehow still doesn’t extend far enough. So we order…and we order a lot. Different sizes. Different cuts. Backups for the backups. Because the fear of having nothing that fits before a trip? That’s real.
And then comes the part no one budgets for.
The returns. The waiting. The refunds tied up for weeks. The mental math of “how much is currently sitting in limbo on my credit card?” The time spent repackaging. Printing labels. Driving to UPS. Doing it all over again.
And when stores do carry plus sizes?
They’re often hidden. Up on the 3rd floor next to the home goods section, with no airconditioning and a dressing room that’s built for the kids section it sits in. Nothing screams - you’re not a priority - than sitting on a stool made for a small human, while you sweat your ass off. It’s the bare minimum a store can do to say “Yes, you can shop here… but we’d prefer you didn’t.”
And here’s the part that hits the hardest…
You can be so excited about your life…and still feel completely defeated trying to get dressed for it. You finally booked the trip, you planned the travel, you said yes to life and yet somehow standing in your room surrounded by boxes that don’t fit, it’s easy to think: “Maybe my body is the problem.”
It’s not.
Let me say that louder for the people in the back: It is not your body’s fault.
Your body is not the barrier to cute clothes. Your body is not the reason shopping feels impossible. Your body is not the thing that needs to change.
The system is broken.
The fashion industry was not built with all bodies in mind and instead of fixing that, it asks you to bend, shrink, wait, or settle. It’s all a huge fucking lie and I want you to know that your body is good, is worthy and is deserving of clothes that fit you, that make you sing, that light you up and feel good on your body.
This week on the Nood Troop Podcast…
We’re talking about all of it.
The frustration. The cost. The emotional toll. And what it means to navigate a world that still hasn’t caught up to the reality of our bodies.
But more importantly, we’re talking about how none of this changes your worth. Not even a little bit.
You are not hard to dress.
You are not difficult to fit.
You are not the exception.
You are just living in a system that hasn’t done its job yet.
And that’s not on you.
I love you friend!
Katelyn
