Jezebel Express Instagram – ✨Clothing is meant to fit you, not the other way around.✨
You do not need to fit into the clothing you wore five years ago. You owe no one an unchanging body.
You do not ever have to wear the jeans you wore in high school again. You do not need to hang on to clothing that is unlikely to fit you again.
If you own any clothing that you use as a tool of shame or punishment, please do not allow it to continue occupying space in your home.
The fact that you spent money on something does not mean you need to rearrange your physical body around it, especially if doing so has mental costs.
Your clothing should not pinch or hurt you (unless you’re into that sort of thing. 😏)
Your partner’s fondness for an outfit is not a good reason to keep it around if it makes you feel bad about yourself.
All that said, you are also under no obligation to throw away clothing that doesn’t fit you, so long as you are not using that clothing to harm yourself.
Does it make you happy to know you have it? Does it fall within your body’s normal size fluctuations? Are you otherwise attached to it? Keep it! It sounds like it “fits” you and your life.
Sometimes we are told that we are only allowed to own clothing that fits us, and it can feel like we are being punished for not staying the same size over time.
Like food, clothing serves a variety of purposes. Some are practical, some are emotional, some are related to identity or community. And like food, our relationship with clothes can be positive, neutral, or negative.
Discarding clothing that makes you feel bad about your body is a concrete step you can take towards accepting your body as it is.
There are practical considerations to changing sizes, and I don’t mean to minimize them. Anxiety about having clothes that is real, as is actual clothing scarcity for folks with proportions that don’t match “standard” clothing shapes or sizes.
You know best what is right for you and your life. But I do want to invite you to keep clothing that fits you and feels good in your wardrobe, and to opt out of letting the sizes you own dictate your opinion about what size you “should” be. Instead, start to honor the size you are. ❤️ | Posted on 25/Jul/2023 22:36:56
