2 Clothes 2 Small: What to do when the clothes are too small, part two

The Question

Hi! I have a question about clothes that I think might have a home here. I found a similar question in your archives, but the response leaned a little more into the emotional aspect of it. I'm having a hard time with the financial side of things.

I started boxing a few months ago (actually a move I was empowered to make after hearing your interview with Chelsea Fagan — that's how I found this newsletter!) and I had to buy some exercise clothes to do so. I'm also currently healing from a lifetime of trying to stay as small as possible and holding myself in. As I let myself physically grow and expand, I am finding that my exercise clothes are really fighting me in the process.

Of course, I expected some wardrobe changes in general to occur as I relax into my body, but seriously, exercise clothes are the absolute worst. Both because they are so expensive but also because it feels like they are designed to hold me in. Sports bras are especially awful in this way. When I started boxing, I spent I think almost $200 just for two sports bras and two pairs of shorts that fit (after a long and frustrating search to find the least-restricting exercise clothes possible), and after about six months of working out they're starting to feel too small and constricting.

I just don't know how to keep up with this. It's so expensive but also I like giving myself the liberty to grow in size. I don't want to stay small just because it's too expensive to get bigger, and I don't want to feel like I have to keep holding myself in because my clothes are too small. Anyway. After over a decade of maintaining a consistent size and weight, letting myself become a more natural, bigger size is coming with an unforeseen price tag that I don't know how to manage. I don't know if there's really a solution beyond just sucking it up and buying when I need to and reselling my old clothes.... It's just a surprisingly expensive (and kind of discouraging and prohibitive) aspect of growing. - Logan

Hey Swole Woman! Here’s my dilemma: I’ve been weightlifting with CrossFit for about a year now and I’m seeing some real gains in my legs and butt — it’s awesome. EXCEPT, most of my pants are getting a lil tight now, which can [be] rough on the old mental health, I’m finding.

I have the kind of job that requires business casual (skewing more toward casual), so even though I love lounging and moving in leggings or sweats, those aren’t an option during the work week.

Do you have any suggestions for dealing (mentally, emotionally, commercially) with these changes? Thanks so much!

Molly

P.S. A big, big thank you for this space, this newsletter, everything. It’s always a highlight of my week, and reading it has changed my brain chemistry (for the better).

The Answer

We’ve lived for the last 10 or so years in a very “fitted” era of clothes. It feels hard to remember now, but when I was in high school and college, there was no such thing as stretchy jeans. Now Spandex is in everything, and a lot of stuff is athleisure-inflected. But with the stretchiness came the pressure for everything to fit-fit. It was fun to wear all the stretchy stuff for a while, but now, I personally feel very over this wardrobe paradigm. In this moment I feel ready for my clothes to do more implying and less declaring. So I feel very equipped to answer these questions, at present. But I have also been through a lot of body changes up and down myself, and boy, do they continue apace! Especially when I’m operating with no specific intent.

I think part of the answer here is to know that you are not going to keep changing in size forever in the near term. You do have some control over this. I personally got something out of tracking my weight and food intake early in my lifting journey because I felt like my body was a badly behaved and unpredictable black box; some impartial measurements helped me see that there was a pretty straightforward and mathematical relationship between my body and the world (it had different rules than I’d long thought, but that’s another article). Tracking these things is not for everyone, but believing bodies are betrayal machines is not good for anyone either.

But also, there’s another way to think about this logistically: You will have to buy new clothes eventually, even just out of boredom of the stuff you currently have, or because they just plain get worn out. Changing size due to sports might speed this up a little, but not wildly so. I know neither of these letter writers wanted to hear about ~ feelings ~ (which I did cover here). But it is important to let go of undue guilt about expending time and money on yourself. If changing size in a freeform way is important to you, you are allowed to spend some money on it! You will simply have to get over those feelings of “but I JUST bought those other new things.” They don’t fit you anymore, for right now or maybe ever again. It’s frustrating and logistically annoying, but it doesn’t make you a bad person.

But this is also a good reason, when buying the next round of clothes, to bear in mind more flexible fits. Not everything you own needs to be an amorphous mass. But your next couple of purchases should probably move in the direction of “stuff you can wear that doesn’t feel like it is directly commenting on every incremental body fluctuation.” To that end, I have pulled some looks for you both, which we will get to in a minute.

Bras, and cycling through your stuff

Let’s talk a bit about selling your old (or not even that old) stuff. Something I’ve noticed, having moved among much wealthier people, is that they benefit from this general transitory mindset regarding possessions. Reselling old stuff to trade up to new stuff is like breathing to them. Only dumb new-money people (or, I guess, the obscenely wealthy) pay full price for stuff and then hold onto it forever or throw it away when they’re done.

When my parents bought me skis as a kid, I clung to those things for like, 10 years, long after I’d outgrown them. After I finally couldn’t use them anymore, they were passed down to my younger siblings. A private-school friend of mine who also skied, by contrast, would get new skis every year (sometimes year-old demos), and trade in her previous new skis for them. Sure, this cost a little premium every year, but she had brand-new skis that fit her, that probably weren’t literally dangerous to ski on due to their age haha lol, every year. Her parents were making that little investment in an activity she loved to do, and she deserved that (she was a really good skier). That’s rich-people behavior from which we can all benefit.

This also takes the pressure somewhat off of investing in new things; you can sell it later! You’ll get less than you paid. But like, if you buy a $150 dress, wear it twice a week for a year, then sell it again for $35, that’s a little more than a dollar per wear. You are allowed!

If you feel reasonably confident that you’re never going to fit these items anymore, sell them. Poshmark, ThredUp, eBay. If the item was expensive and isn’t that old, it’s the perfect thing to sell. You might think no one wants your former bra, but you’d be wrong.

You can also give them away. The Bra Recyclers accept used bras, and you can buy and sell at Bratabase. You can also give AND receive bras at RandomActsOfBras subreddit.

In general, body size change is a good reason to opt for bras that come in letter (S, M, L) and not cup/band sizes. It does mean they fit a little less specifically. But unless you are running or doing running- or jumping-based sports, you probably don’t need a super-high-impact, perfectly fit bra. You might consider bras that are a little more like shirts. I have sworn off Amazon, but before I did I got three different colors of this top; it is surprisingly high-quality and I don’t need to wear a bra under it (for non-running stuff anyway). NO RACERBACKS EVER.

How to do forgiving clothes

For clothes in general when your body size is changing, you need to think in two directions: