
“Therefore they don't look at our bodies or look at how our belly interacts with the top of our thigh, or how that fold of your belly overhang then integrates into your hip.” “I don't think people can basically bear to look at fat bodies,” she said.
Arq underpants plus#
When I talked to Leila Kelleher, PhD, assistant professor of fashion design and social justice at Parsons School of Design and co-founder of Muna & Broad plus sized sewing patterns, she confirmed a lot of the complaints I heard from folks on SellTradePlus. And yet, if you look at enough fat people wearing underwear, you’re going to see the same issues cropping up. To be fair, there are infinite and seemingly exponential variations on fatness with every body having slightly different proportions. My underwear fits like it was designed by someone who has never really looked at a fat person. When I did a very scientific study about underwear fit issues for fat folks on Instagram, I saw the same complaints cropping up again and again, many of which boiled down to how underwear fits over our bellies: “Gaps in coverage in the gusset area, even in the granniest of panties” “I want there to be fabric between my lower belly and legs” “Belly protruding through leg holes” “Front panel is too narrow to fully cover my apron belly leaving me with the lil side belly flappies” “too high in the back and too low in the front.”

Maybe $28 is not too high of a price for something I’d wear comfortably every day for years, but it started to feel too high for something that wasn’t really doing its job. At $28 a pair, I also felt like I was paying too much. I wobble between two sizes, the smaller of which feels a little tight and the bigger of which feels very loose, with the back waistband going almost all the way up to my bra band. They don’t cause me physical pain, but they aren’t perfect either. I eventually mostly settled on Arq because there was a lot to like: Cotton, cute colors, very high rise, lots of sizes.
Arq underpants skin#
The kind that protects your skin from friction, protects your clothes from body stuff, keeps your organs cozy and supported. And while everyone deserves whatever lacy, sheer, fantastical underwear they want, I was looking for the functional kind. Even the most frivolous, frilly clothing has some kind of usefulness: Keeping out the cold, the dirt, whatever. I’ve always been interested in the utilitarian nature of clothing. Many seemed to fit very strangely in the lower belly so that the exact parts of myself I was trying to protect with underwear poked through.

Some had leg holes that were too wide and others had leg holes that were too tight. Some were too low and rolled down, some were high enough in the back but the front dipped down below my belly button. I feel like I’ve tried everything (that comes in my size) from Cacique to Torrid to TomBoyX to Skims to Yitty to Period Aisle to Thunderpants to various makers on Etsy and I will always regret not getting some from when they were still available. Scroll down to see which size-inclusive underwear brands passed their test and shop their all-time favorite pairs each.And after that breakup, I found it really hard to settle on anything else. All you need is a point in the right direction to find them. But according to the five style experts ahead, there are size-inclusive underwear brands that have mastered the trade in a major way. It's a big job and one that's rarely achieved on all fronts.įor those who happen to wear a size above 16, finding a pair of panties that checks off every box is all the more difficult due to the fact that many of the lingerie world's major players still refuse to design with the majority of women in mind.

Because of this, it's essential that the pairs we invest in are good, meaning that they fit well, are comfortable all day long, and don't show through whatever's worn above them.

Though our jeans, T-shirts, sneakers, and tanks get tons of use throughout the year, not even our most frequented wardrobe items are employed as often as our underwear, aka the starting point for every good outfit.
