Conspicuous consumption

I have a lot of dresses for someone who mostly doesn’t wear them. The owning and holding is something that started about a decade ago, shortly after I returned home from an inpatient eating disorder treatment program. Before that, I had only a few, special occasion dresses in my closet, old faithfuls that I’d haul out for weddings, funerals, and Christmas dinner.

It’s best if those things happen on different days.

I wore skirts more often than dresses, though still not very frequently, and only skirts of the long and maxi variety. You’d have perhaps wondered about a possible Quaker connection if you chanced upon my closet back in the day.

I had problems wearing dresses and skirts, any clothing, really, that wasn’t sack-like and all-encompassing. I told myself that adding chunky shoes made the “outfits” stylish instead of hopeless. I was incorrect.

They’d be great with some of the ones I have now, however. You can take the girl out of the nineties…

Dresses and eating disorders

You’re not allowed to do a lot of things when you have an eating disorder. Permissions will be granted once you meet the baseline of acceptability that the eating disorder sets, and I never seemed to make it. When it came to clothing, my eating disorder told me I was too fat for anything that didn’t envelop or flow. It’s hard not to believe things you hear for decades, even if it’s just an inside voice doing the talking.

Dresses were one of those things for later, when I was thin and had tolerable legs.

When I started buying dresses and expanding my wardrobe and comfort level beyond oversized, my legs were still much the same; I just grew a better mindset with recovery. You don’t think clearly when you’re in the grip of an eating disorder, and if you think you do, you’re wrong.

Holistic recovery

The work I did at Cedars was holistic; the program had us working on more than just our maladaptive food behaviours. I spoke often with the counsellors about the clothing choices I was making, and the decision-making powers I was giving to my neuroses.

Fun fact: you don’t have to believe the things you think, and you don’t have to do the things your brain suggests. They’re not commands, they’re just thoughts. We have thoughts all the time; it doesn’t mean anything. The feelings of urgency and the push to action that thoughts can generate fade if you wait. Learning to sit with discomfort while you do is the hard part.

I would’ve liked it better if I’d started wearing the dresses as soon as I bought them, but owning them at all was a big step in the right direction. A wardrobe made of clothing I liked, that fit, and that wasn’t exclusively baggy, saggy, and dark was nice to see in my closet, even if getting into it would take more work.

I also feel vulnerable when I wear dresses. I feel physically at risk when I’m in a skirt as opposed to pants, and I don’t like feeling that way. I feel vulnerable in a way that I don’t when I’m in clothing that limits access to my genitals. I suspect those feelings are related to my history of sexual abuse. This is probably the kind of information one can bring up with a therapist, but I’ve only recently started admitting that truth about dresses to myself, and I don’t always share insights right away. I like to sit with them a bit.

Exposure and reintroduction

One of the hardest things to do in eating disorder recovery is to eat. There are aspects of eating disorders that are similar to addiction, but it’s the differences that tell the tale. You can’t abstain from food to recover from an eating disorder, not that the eating disorder wouldn’t love that. With substance abuse, abstinence, at least in the early days of recovery, is the standard of care. With an eating disorder, you have to learn to peacefully coexist.

When your eating disorder is active, your food world becomes curtailed. The foods you can eat without experiencing distress, panic, and self-loathing become limited to those that are made up of mostly water. It takes a lot of work to change this. It takes a lot of time.

Food reintroduction is a slow process – I still don’t drink juice, ten years after the last treatment, and with five years of sober eating. You practice each new food until you can manage to eat it without panicking or breaking down. Some are easier than others. I still feel a bit embarrassed about weeping over having to eat a plate of sweet and sour chicken.

You practice this same slow reintroduction with the other things you removed from your life as the disease progressed. I felt quite remedial when it came to managing and practicing a healthy form of self-care in the early days of my recovery.

Start small

The first step for me with clothing wasn’t dresses, however. One must walk before one runs. The first step was wearing clothing in the correct size. That was exceptionally difficult. First, the aforementioned dislike of feeling fabric sitting close to my body made wearing things that fit a challenge on a tactile level. The wrong label, thread, or seam can ruin my whole day. It’s a processing thing. It’s why I hate touching sand.

Second, it’s harder to call yourself fat and believe it when the size numbers on the clothes are small. It’s unlikely that all the different manufacturers are lying, though an eating disorder brain will try to convince you.

I still struggle with fitted clothing, though that’s less a function of my eating disorder these days and more to do with sensitivities.

My first outings with dresses were hard. I felt self-conscious and awkward, and very much as though people were staring. I know I’m not the centre of the universe, but it sure feels like it when I put on a sundress. Then I get anxious, then I get angry, and things go south from there if I’m not careful. It’s why therapists suggest starting small. Wear a dress to a friend’s house for coffee before taking one for a stroll at the grocery store.

Give yourself props

I’ve managed to put on a dress twice so far this month, and I’m giving myself extra props because I didn’t shave my legs. It was more “can’t be bothered” than a feminist statement, but I’ll take the small win.

The weather has been helping me stretch my behaviours – it’s been grossly hot and humid here, and a dress is a much cooler piece of clothing than pants. Leggings should be illegal in high humidity, and shorts are a clothing item that still needs work.

Things have been mostly okay, save dress issues my second time out: it’s a great dress, blue, shoulder straps, tiered skirt, all in a cool cotton-linen blend. It’s a great dress, save for the one heinous flaw: no pockets.

Women’s clothing tends to be pocket-impaired, to my eternal frustration and irritation. Pockets are a useful thing at the best of times, but they’re an absolute necessity when one is feeling uncomfortable – what else am I supposed to do with my hands? I suppose I could learn to juggle, though, without pockets, where would I carry the scarves?

Do you have a clothing bête noire?

(header: H & M Stripped Midi Cotton Dress with Smocked Waist)

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