And in case anyone else hasn’t mentioned it in the comments, I think the idea of the first line of the ad is not that Tracy doesn’t care if she’s unfashionable but that Tracy doesn’t care if Mom has to go from store to store to find clothes for Tracy; she just gets to wear whatever Mom brings home.

In the late 80s, early 90s I remember shopping at JCPenney for MOST of my school clothing. I was comparable to the girl on the ad – seemingly normal but with somewhat chunky legs and a bit of a belly. I remember JCP published a special catalog insert for Girl’s plus (extended girls sizing) and another for Boy’s “husky” attire. I was a short kid and had an AWFUL time finding appropriate-length pants in the girl’s plus section. They were always made for taller girls. I hated the cuts of the waists (typically high up and cinching) and despised the jeans with the stupid elastic waists on the back, which seemed to be the norm for the chubby girls.

Luckily, like another poster said – leggings and tshirts were in style at the time. I loved those. Leggings, big tshirts with boy bands (NKOTB, anyone?), and puffy hair was a typical look. I also rocked the DJ from Full house long sweater skirt + leggings look from time to time. These were outfits that my mom and I actually didn’t fight about in the dressing room.

THEN…that went out of style and I became more of a tomboy. I typically wore boy’s jeans and sweatshirts or t-shirts everyday. This was probably at the height of the Grunge movement. Hoodies, band/slogan tshirts, and Starter apparel became more common and I enjoyed wearing them, despite how frumpy I appeared. Maybe this was the point of the ad…I know I enjoyed being comfy and abhorred dress clothing at the time, despite pushes from my mother to dress more feminine.

Who knows. Bit of a creepy ad, anyway.

That said, clothes shopping as a kid sucked, my mom did let me pick out my own clothes very young, and it was infuriating. By the time I was in junior high, I was relegated to elastic waisted jeans, and granny clothes…it was abysmal. Luckily high school brought with it Torrid, which was the godsend of fat girl clothing, and plus sizes, changed a lot.

I do remember the “Husky” and “Pretty Plus” sections at Sears. And when my mom took me there to find clothes it was always a disaster. Me hating my body because it didn’t even fit into these “fat” sizes.

But the real problem started when I grew out of the children’s department and had to find clothing as a teen. But then, a miracle happened. Culture Club released a music video where Boy George was wearing stretchy pants and an oversized shirt! Withing days (it seemed) there were huge shirts, leggings, and genie pants (anyone remember those) everywhere and things got easy for a while.

Then I started the diet cycle of destruction and ended up far more fat than I ever thought I would be.

Back then, children’s clothing in Britain was sized by age (to a great extent it still is), and I was always in a size a few years “above” my real age because I was tall, though not overweight. I have no idea how larger kids (and their parents) coped with this system.

I was also an early developer, and around age 11 was in women’s sizes – hard to find in age-appropriate styles. I remember an expensive but horrible grey party dress which was the only child-styled outfit my mother could find for me to wear to a wedding (she didn’t let me have the one with the ra-ra skirt and off-the-shoulder bodice. She was probably right. I still think I would have rocked it).

It wasn’t until age 13 or so that the focus on having what everyone else had really started. I remember an intense scrutiny of each others’ clothes size; I was a 14 (US10) and it seemed everyone else in the world was a 10 or maybe a 12. Now, you can definitely get everything in a 14; then it was less certain, but the stigma was in wearing a 14 as much as in wearing the “wrong” clothes.

(I wouldn’t be 13 again for a million pounds.)

(I have known four Trac(e)ys. One is black, two are white, and one is Hong Kong Chinese.)

I think the copy on this is just badly written. I didn’t actually read it to mean that Tracy didn’t care about being fashionable (which seems to be the general consensus); I read it to mean that Tracy wanted to be fashionable and didn’t care how hard it was for her mom to find fashionable “chubby-sizes.”

Interesting. Then it is badly written, because I read it the complete opposite way — that Tracy didn’t care at all.

You know what else I think? I saw this for the first time last week. I think I’m tired of talking about it because it amalgamates so many distressing issues.

Or maybe I’m just having that sort of day. I’m due. It’s been awhile.