Slap in the Face? Fat Girl Fashion

Sarah Harding, proffessional fat chick advocate blogger, recently slammed the new Beth Ditto line for plus sizes recently put out by Evans. Why? It's too damned 80's.

From Salon.com:

"I recognize that pretty much everyone old enough to remember '80s fashion is at least mildly horrified by its return (however inevitable), but for fat women, the memories of getting dressed in that decade are especially cruel. I was a kid at the time, but just listening to my mother and sisters complain about the misery of plus-size shopping was plenty traumatizing. Even if one wanted to follow the eye-stabbing trends, it was impossible; every woman of size was rocking the exact same look, the "This was all I could find to fit my fat ass" look. The clothes were usually shapeless and often bizarrely juvenile. If you asked any of the very few companies making clothing for the plus market, they would have told you that fat women could not get enough of oversized tunics bearing images of fuzzy animals and cartoon characters. Those things sold like hotcakes! Which couldn't possibly be because the choices for those who couldn't sew were pretty much that or cutting armholes in a burlap sack.....

I'm not a huge fan of Ditto's look, but I was intensely curious to see what she'd come up with -- if not for me, then for my younger fat sisters (figurative ones, in this case), who might actually be interested in clubwear. Then I saw the line and, well, I've got to go with a blogger at Big Fat Deal, who said, "My first, gut, basic reaction is that as a fashion designer, Beth Ditto is a very good singer."

The line is so intensely '80s that it not only includes brightly colored geometric designs and acid-washed denim, but a shapeless sweater dress with a vaguely Patrick Nagel-ish face on it and, the pièce de résistance, an oversized cat T-shirt. With rhinestone eyes. Seriously.

With that particular item, Ditto has managed to evoke not only the fashion spirit of the 1980s, but the sheer panic felt by fat girls trying to clothe themselves back then. Says Colleen at plus-size fashion blog The Pretty Pear, "I guess what turns me off most is that I was a fat kid in the '80s and I wore a lot of long, baggy tops with leggings. I've always thought of that look as the 'fat girl uniform' so it just doesn't appeal to me. In fact, it borders on insulting, in a weird way. I think the cat face t-shirt kind of pushed me over the edge there. I've spent a lot of time trying not to dress like a streotypical frumpy fat girl and now that look is trendy?""

Truth be told... I haven't really liked the 1980's resurgence in fashion either. While I'm not a plus size, this means that my fashion options can potentially run the gamut. A lot of the new plus sized fashion is really, really 1980's so I can kind of see her frustration. Thoughts? Feelings on the look?