What I Wore On Book Tour
Dressing so people can see you and some thoughts on taking up space.
When I went on tour with my first book in 2018, I felt almost scared to think about clothes.
I was just a year out from having my second baby. My body was in 74 different places, hormonally, emotionally, size-wise. I was thinner than I am now, and not to be all Midsize Queen about it, still in that gray space where it felt like I could pass as thin if I just picked the waistline that hit in the right place, the silhouette that wasn’t too clingy yet also not too voluminous, the colors that weren’t too bright. I had stopped dieting, and I was working on my relationship with exercise, but I had not divested from Diet Culture Fashion. So I ordered a bunch of jewel-toned dresses from Boden, wrestled my way into Spanx and heels, and went out to talk about the book.
I loved that book tour for a lot of reasons, but if I’m being honest, I never felt comfortable in what I wore. The Boden dresses were a little too corporate; their fabrics too thick and unforgiving. My feet hurt a lot, and so did my internal organs, from the Spanx. I did have one pair of pink heels I could actually walk in (and yes, they’ll enjoy a comeback arc here), but more that I couldn’t. And I don’t know why I was so sure this kind of wardrobe was required of me in 2018. I hadn’t been remotely corporate since 2005 when the magazine I was working for folded, we were all laid off, and I had to messenger home the two boxes of shoes that lived in my cubicle. Back then, I walked to work in Reef flip flops or sneakers, and changed into my heels every morning at my desk. I could only stand on them in our carpeted office, but in the early 2000s, women’s magazines required a certain “cool girl corporate” aesthetic, and a total disregard for one’s physical comfort.
It was a relief to leave that behind, to start figuring out my work-from-home wardrobe, to discover Birkenstocks. And yet, for the next decade or more, whenever I needed to be “professional,” I would still switch into wanna-be-editor-in-chief style. I did this for editor meetings, for in-person reporting assignments, for book events. That’s how deeply I’d internalized the idea that my physical comfort is always worth sacrificing to look “right.”
I’ve written before about how I learned to dress for other people in middle school. Which has always meant dressing to pass as thin, yes, but also seasonally appropriate, professional, polished, chic, and like a person who is conversant in the cool girl brands. I would have told you that I took my own joy in pretty dresses and heels, but nothing about our relationship to beauty happens in a vacuum. So I can’t untangle how much of that joy was for me, and how much of it was the joy—or maybe security—I felt in knowing I looked right to other people.
Several of you noted on the reader survey that you’ve had enough book promo, so let me be clear that this is not a book promotion essay. This is an essay about being in our bodies, out in the world. Which for you might happen every day at your office job, or at least every few weeks because you’re dating new people, or insert all the other reasons we leave the house fully clothed here. But as a writer who works from home, pretty much the only time I am a body in the world, at least in a public way, is on a book tour.
So now let’s fast forward to the Fat Talk tour.
A lot happened in the five years between my first and second books. The pandemic profoundly altered the way we all show up in the world, or don’t. It also altered book tours, which feel much less essential to a book’s success than they used to be (and they arguably weren’t even then). And I found myself watching the book tours of authors I adore—
, , —and who were showing up so entirely themselves, and entirely comfortable. (When Angela wore clogs and a bracelet her kid made on The Daily Show!!) They were not dressing like early 2000s editor-in-chiefs. Because we are not in our Louboutin era anymore. (Probably Emma, Angela and Lindy were so cool they never were.) We are all in our 40s and can enjoy some arch support. Comfortable Author Fashion is a thing now.I’ve also been doing some work on my relationship with clothes, with the help of the brilliant
, who many of you also know and adore. And, hello, I wrote a book called Fat Talk. I am no longer interested in passing as thin. There was no way I could talk about this book with any integrity if I wasn’t ready to show up in the world in the body I have now. And while I suppose I could have shown up as a fat person who was physically uncomfortable and/or wearing all black and trying to blend in—why would I? I did all of that in service of thinness. It was never for me.So Dacy and I chatted about how I did want to show up on this tour: Still polished, maybe even a little preppy —I am who I am and who I am is from Connecticut—but comfortably. And in color. I want to acknowledge that there’s still a tension here: I no longer want to dress for other people and yet book tours—and book-related photo shoots and TV appearances—exist for other people. And I’m still evolving here. So yes, I’m showing up fat and I’m wearing bright colors. But yes, I still care about knowing the cool girl brands.
I also still care—to a perhaps obsessive degree—about the rules of shoulder season dressing. I have a traumatic backstory for this part: A lifetime ago (well, pre-kids), I spent six months as a ghostwriter for a Hollywood actress. Sorry, NDA, but yes, you’ve heard of her. This meant regularly flying to Los Angeles to work on the book together. This is someone who is constantly followed by the paparazzi, and so I ended up in a few random Internet paparazzi shots. And one day this happened when I was wearing a sundress with very un-tanned bare legs and arms, because I was from New York, and excited to be going to LA in early May. But the Hollywood actress was covered in black from head to toe, because she has to deal with being photographed daily and one celebrity survival strategy for that is to make sure they can’t see your skin unless you are ready for them to see your skin.
Cut to all of my friends texting me a photo from Gawker of said celebrity looking chic and vaguely French in all the black, and me looming beside her, my sparkly vampire limbs reflecting all of the universe’s known light.
What I am saying is, Dacy had her work cut out for her and she nailed it. She solved the weather anxiety by deciding we would figure out one colder weather outfit and then a couple of legit spring-is-here looks. And she let me panic text her a weather report before every event so we could decide whether a forecast of “62 and partly sunny” qualified as warm or cold because honestly, who can ever know that!! She solved the shoe anxiety by finding me some legitimately comfortable black ankle boots for the cold weather outfit (okay, not Crocs-comfy, but I walked in NYC and did not get blisters!), and figured out other looks I could wear clogs or sneakers with. And she knows cool girl brands—but now we’re defining that as brands working hard to be ethically made and/or size-inclusive. (Nothing I’m going to show you is perfect in either respect.)
I want to be clear: It is a privilege to be able to work with a stylist on this kind of project. (Full disclosure that I’ve hired Dacy in the past, but this time she gifted me her styling help. Thank you Dacy!) It is a privilege to buy expensive clothes, and I bought so many more than you’ll see here because of course I ordered tons of things that didn’t work and had to be returned and no I didn’t get them all returned on time and that’s a fun life lesson/hidden added cost! I’m hoping to re-wear all of these things for a long time to come. And several items I already owned, Dacy just identified their potential in my closet. But that’s of course a gamble, because bodies and lives change. And it is a privilege to fit into the largest sizes of a lot of non-size-inclusive brands, when most fat folks have a much shorter list of brands to shop from.
It is just unquestionably easier to to show up fat, when you have the various privileges required to do it this way.
It shouldn’t be that way though. I’m sharing all of this not to show off all the pretty clothes I got to wear, but to articulate why so many of us struggle to just wear what’s comfortable instead of what we think the world requires of us. This is about thinness, absolutely. And it’s about gender presentation: How many cis white male authors show up to every book event in the same jeans and blazer? It’s also about the labor we’re expected to perform—and the time and money we’re expected to invest—to make other people more comfortable with our bodies.
I didn’t try to make myself smaller this time. But in addition to buying clothes, I did get my hair professionally styled twice and my makeup professionally applied once (for a photo shoot, at their request). I got a pedicure and a brow wax. All to make sure I’d be viewed as professional and confident—yet not threatening. I have to dress a certain way to be understood as an authority on my own work. Except it doesn’t matter what I wear when men on the Internet decide they know more.
So here’s what I wore on book tour. I love these clothes. I was physically comfortable (yes, even in the pink heels though I never wore them for long). My internal organs were never compressed. I showed up as myself in these outfits.
And I still texted Dacy before almost every event to confirm that it was okay to stand out like this, to be this visible, to take up this space.
This Thursday night is the last event of the tour (with
at Northshire Books in Saratoga Springs, come on out!). The forecast is 76 and mostly cloudy. I’m leaving the heels at home.Can You Just Show Us the Clothes?
Okay, yes, I know why you came here today. Here’s what I wore for every event, with as many links and photos as we could track down. These are a mix of things I bought new for the tour and things I’ve had for years, so a lot of those aren’t available anymore. I’m including the sizes I wore in case that’s helpful for reference. (Please skip this if clothing sizes are triggering for you!)
Sorry, one more note: Please know that I gave preference to a size-inclusive, ethically made brand whenever I could, and that’s part of why you’re going to see a lot of higher price tags. (See above re: Privilege!) But I couldn’t be a purist about it because there are so few brands making size-inclusive clothes ethically or sustainably. I also can’t figure out how to buy cheap comfortable shoes. It does seem like one category where you get what you pay for?
Okay, now really, the clothes.