FAT SYMBOL

The new column that gives voice and space to boys with bellies and anyone who needs to create a shield to face the horrendous society we deal with every day that pretends that now everything is accepted but in reality it really differentiates people.

By Simone Botte, creative director of Simon Cracker, the truly inclusive and eco-sustainable brand, which for years has been fighting together with his right-hand man Filippo Biraghi in shows that really demonstrate what fashion can only imitate by truly believing in the messages they send on catwalks.

In the next articles we will also collect your experiences and try to give you the space you deserve.

NO BODY IS PERFECT!

by Simone Botte

There is no fat, thin, muscular or curvy person who feels 100% comfortable with their body.

We complain because society doesn’t accept us as we are physically when we are the first to criticize ourselves in front of the mirror.

I have been an accordion with my body all my life, so I know for sure that if things don’t change in our brain, in front of the mirror there will always be a filter that clouds our eyes and focuses them on the thing we like least . When people say to me “but you’re fine like this, you’re not fat” I think of the hours I spent in front of the mirror in my underwear trying to understand how others saw me with the strangely distributed fat on my shapes.

I was 123 kg and paradoxically I looked better than when I then lost weight up to 68 kg and in everyone’s eyes I was a skeleton but I was focused on broad bones and it wasn’t good anyway. I don’t think that something is really changing in society with regard to “body positive” because otherwise there wouldn’t be a need to talk about it so much and there wouldn’t be categories that feel excluded. It would make sense if it was a general thing encompassing all bodies and not just the weirdly interesting ones. When real change arrives, it can be seen in everyday reality when you encounter episodes in life that surprise you and show that something is moving in a different direction. What I constantly notice is a series of episodes told by people I know and they convince me more and more that perhaps this is the worst moment for someone who looks at the cover of a magazine and sees a curvy girl wrapped in elastic bands that compress her or in tight-fitting press offices that the true size of that person does not have it due to brand policy. It’s easy to talk about clothes for everyone and one size fits all when creating tubes in elastic fabric that fits everyone but doesn’t really fit everyone because it wasn’t designed for multiple widths.

Trying on some elastic knits in a “xyzx” shop I didn’t feel comfortable just because it fit me and not even lucky because the designer in question had thought of writing “one size fits all” on them, yes indeed there was only one size but it wasn’t the mine and I didn’t feel beautiful at all. The world of fashion that from one moment to the next does not discriminate and include? It remains a dream in theory but a big bullshit in reality.

It has never been like this and it still isn’t now.

A guy who is part of the Crew of my brand that I founded told me that he was recruited by other designers after showing for us. He wasted days and time doing unpaid fittings, which for a guy who isn’t a professional model means changing shifts at work and thus investing his free time.

Without further updating and after repeatedly trying to contact the staff he had dealt with, he received a message the day before the show that his body was not easy to dress so he would never do anything with it again. This is an attempt at inclusiveness in a recipe style which is now a series of rules that leads you to be a cool brand without believing in what you do, it hurts more than one person because clothes must be designed for a body type from the start and not that in the end you need a buttery boy to transgress smothering him in pants that don’t zip and shirts with laughing seams.

Sweater KNOTWEAR by Gaia Segattini – Kilt SIMON CRACKER

As much as one may be at ease with one’s body in that situation there is discomfort for everyone, but under the light and in the center of attention there is him and he alone will go home thinking about that horrendous situation, while after a second the creative crew will damn themselves for a hem to fix, he will continue to think about that feeling of inadequacy even with the light off on the bed. Sensitivity is the basis of everything and if that is missing, it is impossible to speak of true inclusiveness even if at Mondadori 70% of the magazines have people who once cried about us on those covers because in those newspapers they addressed everyone but them.

The curvy woman has been fighting for a few years and taking everything, I am very happy because I have really seen some friends come out of a shell that perhaps had never really let me know them in all their beauty, but the guy who struggles even to enter in a shop asking for the size of a pair of trousers he is still in the same situation and feels he has no voice in these times where men are swollen and think that the first solution to discomfort with one’s body is to conform to the general image of a man who likes going to join a gym. The first work to be done is on ourselves, analyzing what are the real discomforts we have, because if we don’t face those horrendous monsters that have led us to hate ourselves, building muscles on them will only fossilize them by transforming us into an unpleasant person like those who they make us feel wrong.

I’m not talking about those who are already proud and put a mesh and glitter on their love handles, they have already conquered the world and broken through a thousand barriers.

I’m talking about that part of guys who, after a series of my “vent” posts on Instagram, wrote me messages describing their discomfort in situations in which they collide every day and most of them work in fashion and on social networks they are unable to post even a selfies because you can’t even see your face in any way.

A boy thanked me because with what I had written I had given him a voice since he usually can’t even talk about it with friends due to the discomfort. I have always had control over my body with clothes, balancing volumes and fabrics that leaned against nothing, I was a mathematician who calculated the weights and lengths of the garments to see me with the right silhouette. Now I wear what I like without calculating anything, I create my own refuge garments where I feel comfortable inside, safe, that silhouette is no longer there to haunt me as it used to be, the journey is long and I don’t know if it will ever have a fine but the mission we all have is to find a way to sweeten it and as I always tell my friends try to imagine our defects as strengths that characterize us and detach us from the herd.