Further Reading for The Size Conversation

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Much as we love to hear ourselves and our wonderful contributors talk, the whole point of a conversation is also to listen. We’re acutely aware that the pieces in this package are barely a fraction of a percentage of all there is to consume and discuss and do about the problems endemic to clothing, bodies, and size — and to that end, we wanted to start an ongoing reading list.

This is meant to be a breathing document; a place where our reporting can live alongside others’, where multiple experiences and perspectives can be found. So please send us your recommendations! You can reply in the comments, talk to us on Facebook, or email me and Meredith at alanna@racked.com and meredith@racked.com (guess whose is whose), or tweet at Racked, or, idk, mail us a letter? (Do not do that, thanks.) What we want is to hear your voices as well as the voices you’re listening to — the ones that helped you see the world a different way, the ones that named something you never knew you felt in the first place.

Also, “reading list” is a somewhat misleading term here — we want to include podcasts and videos and however else people are getting their Content, so if you have a suggestion that colors outside the lines, so much the better. Thanks so much!

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From Racked:

In Between Plus and Sample Size, There Are Millions of Women, by Erika Adams

Androgyny Shouldn’t Just Be for Thin People, by Lindsay King-Miller

The Embattled Plus-Size Industry Is Taking Matters Into Its Own Hands, by Chavie Lieber

Why Aren’t Fashion ‘Disruptors’ Serving Plus-Size Customers? by Amanda Mull

Torrid’s NYFW Show Reaffirmed Fashion’s Disdain for Fat People, by Amanda Mull

Stop Sending Me Links to Clothes That Don’t Fit, by Amanda Mull

Hey J.Crew, Why Don’t You Want My Plus-Size Money? by Dallas Thompson

Who Gets to Be Low-Maintenance? by Nora Whelan

After Hey Gorgeous Shutters, Its Founder Says Plus-Size Has a Long Way to Go, by Chavie Lieber

What Do We Really Mean When We Say Something Is ‘Flattering?’, by Gray Chapman

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From elsewhere:

What Fullness Is, by Roxane Gay for Unruly Bodies on Medium (honestly, just check out the entire series)

The ‘perfect body’ is a lie. I believed it for a long time and let it shrink my life, by Lindy West for the Guardian

What Do You Do When “Loving Your Body” Is Hard, by Kelsey Miller for Refinery29

Tell Me I’m Fat, an episode of This American Life featuring Lindy West

Plus-Size Fashion Can’t Be Ignored Anymore, by Ashley Ford for the Cut

“Fat Derangement Syndrome” Puts a Name to Something We Know & Hate, by Sarai Walker for Refinery29

J. Crew put a size 20 label on size 14/16 jeans and people applauded them, by Alle Connell for Revelist

You’re Right, I Didn’t Eat That, by Alana Massey for The New Inquiry

The 67% Project, from Refinery29

Getting Rid of Clothes I Hated Helped Me Love My Body, by Arianna Rebolini for BuzzFeed

Why can’t we recognize fat anger? by Your Fat Friend for Medium

Before and After: A Mythology, by Lesley Kinzel for Medium

The Dressing-Room Diaries of a Size-14 Woman, by Virgie Tovar for Refinery29

Let’s Talk Fat Positivity and Radical Self-Acceptance, an episode from Bustle’s BodCast featuring Ushshi Rahman

Body + Pos, an interview with Ushshi Rahman

Bad Fat Broads, a podcast by Ariel Woodson and KC Slack

‘I Feel Pretty’ and the Rise of Beauty-Standard Denialism, by Amanda Hess for the New York Times

We Analyzed 750 Pairs of Jeans and Found Definitive Skinny Bias by Us Retailers, by Amanda Shendruk for Quartz

Tess Holliday’s Health Is None of Your Business, by Ashley C. Ford for Self

And from Vox.com, a video about why women’s clothing sizes don’t make sense: