The Duality of My Pattern-Drafting Class (aka I Forgot How Much I Hate All Beauty Industries)
I started my pattern-drafting class last week. I've been wanting to learn more about it for awhile now, since I knew there were many gaps in what I had taught myself just from reading. And although I prefer real-life/hands-on education, it's kind of hard to find that for sewing since most everything of that sort is sent overseas now. This class is really good though, it's a tiny class of eight, and the teacher is a serious wealth of knowledge. And everyone is there because they want to be there and they're excited to learn, which is really refreshing. I can't wait to apply what I learn from this class to my own designing/patternmaking/construction.
Aside from pattern drafting, I'm getting a secondary education in women's body image from this class. It's something I've known for years, but have kind of grown complacent about since it's something that doesn't bother me personally and most of my focus for the past few years has been on food politics. Most of the women in this class have major issues with body image, and that was made obvious by one of our first assignments, learning how to take the correct body measurements. Almost everyone in class moaned and groaned about their measurements, which are just numbers on a stick, but to which we've given arbitrary meanings of negative and positive. Almost everyone had some complaint. Flat-chested, hips too big, shoulders too broad, legs too short. And that's crazy. When I sat down in class the first day, the first thing that came to mind was, wow, all these women are beautiful. And many of them seemed to loathe themselves because they can never find anything to fit them in stores. Which drives me crazy since every one of those mass-produced garments are made to fit an average of all women. So how do so many people come to the conclusion that their bodies are at fault, and not the garment? Probably because there are entire industries that profit off of people's insecurities. I haven't gotten a haircut in a salon since high school because I refuse to support an industry that promotes the idea that a woman needs to come in every month to get her hair cut and dyed in order to feel good about herself. Oh yeah, and since once a month isn't enough, maybe they need to buy a ton of expensive product to style their hair with every day. And it's not just beauty salons and hairstylists, it's the fashion industry with their disposable clothing and trends, it's the bogus health food industry with diet pills and unnecessary exotic foods that will cure anything, and the television shows, music, and movies that support this madness.
And I realize that it's easy for me to think of measurements just as numbers on a stick, or points on a pattern grid that need to be raised/lowered/widened/narrowed because I'm a woman of small proportions and pale skin and that's usually the image those industries promote. So maybe I'm not the best spokesperson for diversity in body image. But it got me thinking, what if I could make clothes that were adjustable? Like instead of the standard S/M/L, I could make clothes that adjust to fit all the range of sizes in between. Or even better, a garment that could adjust to multiple sizes at the same time. Like if a woman was a size "small" in the bust and a size "large" in the hips, it could adjust to both. It would be amazing if I could collect all these disjointed thoughts and make it work. It was something I hadn't thought about in a while, but it came back and poked me like a hot stick!
Aside from pattern drafting, I'm getting a secondary education in women's body image from this class. It's something I've known for years, but have kind of grown complacent about since it's something that doesn't bother me personally and most of my focus for the past few years has been on food politics. Most of the women in this class have major issues with body image, and that was made obvious by one of our first assignments, learning how to take the correct body measurements. Almost everyone in class moaned and groaned about their measurements, which are just numbers on a stick, but to which we've given arbitrary meanings of negative and positive. Almost everyone had some complaint. Flat-chested, hips too big, shoulders too broad, legs too short. And that's crazy. When I sat down in class the first day, the first thing that came to mind was, wow, all these women are beautiful. And many of them seemed to loathe themselves because they can never find anything to fit them in stores. Which drives me crazy since every one of those mass-produced garments are made to fit an average of all women. So how do so many people come to the conclusion that their bodies are at fault, and not the garment? Probably because there are entire industries that profit off of people's insecurities. I haven't gotten a haircut in a salon since high school because I refuse to support an industry that promotes the idea that a woman needs to come in every month to get her hair cut and dyed in order to feel good about herself. Oh yeah, and since once a month isn't enough, maybe they need to buy a ton of expensive product to style their hair with every day. And it's not just beauty salons and hairstylists, it's the fashion industry with their disposable clothing and trends, it's the bogus health food industry with diet pills and unnecessary exotic foods that will cure anything, and the television shows, music, and movies that support this madness.
And I realize that it's easy for me to think of measurements just as numbers on a stick, or points on a pattern grid that need to be raised/lowered/widened/narrowed because I'm a woman of small proportions and pale skin and that's usually the image those industries promote. So maybe I'm not the best spokesperson for diversity in body image. But it got me thinking, what if I could make clothes that were adjustable? Like instead of the standard S/M/L, I could make clothes that adjust to fit all the range of sizes in between. Or even better, a garment that could adjust to multiple sizes at the same time. Like if a woman was a size "small" in the bust and a size "large" in the hips, it could adjust to both. It would be amazing if I could collect all these disjointed thoughts and make it work. It was something I hadn't thought about in a while, but it came back and poked me like a hot stick!