Does This Make Me Look Fat?

When I pick up a jumper, a pair of jeans or a jacket, I don't think about the patterns, or whether the colour will compliment my skin tone: the one thought that goes through my mind is will it make me look fat - and it can influence when and where I go shopping, and who I go with.

This week was the Churchill Square Student Lock-In, and I was both excited and terrified about going - I love the feeling of finding new clothes as I enjoy looking good and keeping up with the latest fashion trends but sometimes I have this mean little voice in the back of my head whispering that everyone, including the friends I go with, are looking and judging me because I won't fit; because I'm bigger than them; because I don't belong here. It's probably why I have so much makeup and so many shoes - they don't discriminate.

Last year I went with my flatmates, who I'd really only just met and who were a lot skinnier than me, and I didn't buy anything because I couldn't bring myself to try on a size 3 times larger in front of them and risk humiliation. This time I went back with one of the girls I went with last year, and I was able to try things on, but it got me thinking - was it because I was more comfortable with her, or because I'm a good 20lbs lighter and able to shop more easily in the same kind of stores?

Issues with size and weight affect almost all of us, especially those who are larger than the perfectly poised mannequins I was confronted with in store windows - I'm definitely not trying to skinny-shame, as that just passes the humiliation associated with being a certain size from one person to another, but when surrounded by plastic thighs the size of toothpicks it's hard to not feel like I was huge and should be directed to the plus-size clothes.

The Google definition of plus size is something that is 'outsize' or outside of the norm, and the current average size of women in the UK is a Size 16. So if that is normal, then why did I feel so huge at a 16 and continue to feel overweight now at a 14?

I wanted to find out what the students I was shopping with felt like, so my friend and I asked our fellow shoppers their opinions on what a plus size is and would they consider themselves, or myself, to be plus-sized.

Of the shoppers we asked, half believed that they were plus-sized - which just astounded us, as we had asked people of different body shapes and personally, I felt barely a quarter were technically 'plus-sized'. We also asked the students what they thought the average size of UK woman was, and the answers ranged from size 8 to size 16, with the average being a size 14.

A quarter indicated that they felt that I would be plus-sized too - I was wearing the outfit above, so nothing too tight and clingy and nothing that drowned my frame. This feeling of being outside of the norm was just exacerbated when we went into Zara. I asked what size the XL equated to and was told that it was a size 14. I didn't feel extra large, so why was I being labelled as such?

I asked my friends their opinions on plus sizes and they all said similar things - that they found it frustrating at the lack of diversity in clothes for them and their friends, and that some struggled to shop with others because they felt self-conscious and worried they would be judged. As one put it succinctly: 'we define ourselves as plus size because that's what the stores tell us'.

It's unfair that so many of us struggle with issues over the way we look, and part of it is down to shops in our local shopping centres and the term 'plus-size' - we're not out of the norm just because we have curves, and when stores like Topshop, Zara, Miss Selfridge and Pull and Bear (which were the busiest stores all evening) only stock up to a 14-16 it doesn't support a healthy body image - I'd been happy with my progress on my weight loss journey, but to know that I would still be considered large in the shops I frequent really dragged me down, and that is not okay. I am eating correctly, I am healthy, and I'm more than just a plus-size label, nor should I let it get to me in the way that it has.

Nobody puts Baby in the plus-size corner.