Billie Eilish and Oversized Dressing

I was greatly disheartened to come across a bit of celebrity gossip yesterday regarding Billie Eilish wearing clothes that actually fit her. There is a particularly mundane paparazzi photo floating around of her in a tank top and shorts that shouldn’t have bothered anyone, much less provoked them to rain down on the 18 year-old multiple grammy winner with a battery of fat-shaming comments.

But that’s exactly what it did, and it only goes to prove how right she has been to wear extremely oversized clothes in the public eye. In oversized clothes, she was judged for her voice, her unique and groundbreaking songs, and her charismatic stage presence and performing abilities. No one seemed to care about her body when they couldn’t see it. She’d cracked the code when it came to being a musician and not a sex symbol. I admired her for it.

I’ve been drawn to oversized clothes ever since my freshman year of high school, with the very same motive in mind. I wanted to be treated like a person, and not an object. I remember admiring the fashion decisions of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, long before they became wildly successful fashion designers. They wore extremely oversized outfits, dwarfing their small frames and forcing you to look them in the eye.

I remember seeing Nicole Richie do the same thing. Picked apart in the media for losing some weight, she mostly appeared covered up in long, oversized dresses. When a paparazzi photo of her in a bathing suit revealed her body to the public for the first time, she was bashed and criticized for being too thin. Her body suddenly became a topic for commentary, much like Billie Eilish’s body is now.

Clearly, these women were on to something with their style choices. They had successfully de-objectified themselves simply by wearing bigger clothes. So that’s what I try to do when I dress myself. I try to take my body out of the equation. I find this harder to do when I’m heavy, but it still dictates how I like things to fit (or not fit). If I’m a 2X in tops, I buy a 3X. If I’m a small or medium, I buy a large. So as my weight has decreased over the past two years, I’ve often continued wearing certain clothes, even as they became several sizes too big. I still wear the same sweaters I wore 75 pounds ago. And I’ve often stuck it out for longer than most people might, wearing pants cinched with a belt so they didn’t fall down.

Once I finally reached my goal of fitting into my “smaller clothes in storage,” I thought I could finally stop buying new pants, and just wear what I had and loved. The last time I was this size, I spent a lot of time and money finding really great clothes. I scoured the internet for the things I liked that weren’t necessarily in style. I found great, wide-leg pants on final sale at J. Crew, and hemmed them to exactly the right floor-skimming length. I ordered T-shirts in multiple sizes and colors, seeking out just the right neckline and boxy fit. I bought a cashmere sweater from Thredup and two pairs of Naturalizer heels that have exactly the right heel height for both walking and singing. I made the journey to Saks off Fifth at the outlet mall to try on high-end items before tracking them down, second hand, on eBay. I was really happy with my wardrobe. Until it didn’t fit.

My medications changed and I started eating more, and pretty soon, it was all for naught. I packed the clothes away, where they waited for three years, and only recently have they come back out. I was so happy to be reunited with these clothes that made me feel so good, so confident. They were strategically drapey and oversized in just the right way. I felt beautiful—not in a sexy kind of way— just really comfortable with myself and my body.

But the thing is, we were in the middle of quarantine (and we still are), and I never got to wear those OOTH clothes. Some time has gone by, and I’ve continued to lose weight. Those clothes fit great at 160 pounds, when I bought them, and in the 160 range when I took them out again (I didn’t know my exact weight at the time). I got down to 154 (my first weigh-in in six months), then 150, and now 147.2. Last night, I tried some things on thinking that now they’d be even more oversized, and would only look better than ever. That was not the case. I tried on my J. Crew wide-leg chinos, and they were too big in the waist to stay up. I got out a belt and cinched them in. They didn’t look quite right. I carried on, and decided to try some tops with the pants. The way they draped only seemed to accentuate my pudgy belly, clinging to it where the belt divided it in two. (Despite being relatively thin, my body is not a perfect shell of hard muscle, and is especially soft in my belly.). I pulled out another pair of pants— my one remaining pair of skinny jeans. I know, I know. We’ve been over and over how I hate skinny jeans. But I hung on to these black ones, thinking that they might come in handy for dressing up. They needed a belt, too.

I put on an oversized, silky camisole, my giant, silky square top, my long-sleeved, silky blouses; and the same thing happened, where you could see the belt (and my belly) through the tops. I was showing Matt all these outfits, asking his opinion, and he said the skinny jeans just didn’t look like me. I looked like I was “going to the club.” I realized he was right. Yes, for the hundredth time now, skinny jeans are not for me. I look skinny on the bottom and too big on top. It’s a proportion thing.

It’s made me wonder if maybe my pencil skirts aren’t really “me” either. I bought those skirts when I was still singing, thinking I’d finally found a silhouette that would work for auditions. I’d discarded all my dresses, and settled on a pencil skirt with one of my long-sleeved drapey blouses as audition-wear. But now that I’m not auditioning or singing concerts, it seems like maybe they’re just too fitted (like the skinny jeans). (I have to admit, I also feel like there’s something just strange about not having any pants on. I always feel more vulnerable in a skirt— less capable.)

So now I’m left thinking that some of my clothes are too tight (skirts, skinny jeans), but most of them are too big. The shirts draped right when I was heavier, and the pants didn’t need a belt. Oversized dressing just isn’t as easy as it looks. Somehow my clothes feel more revealing now that they’re bigger.

Complexities aside, I still feel oversized dressing is the answer. Billie Eilish proved it.