A Response to Torrid's Mass Email Entitled "What's the Skinny?"


Dear Torrid:

Me wearing my anti-bully
t-shirt from Torrid
I have a burning love for your store and so appreciate your willingness to accommodate the awesome girth of women of average size and above (average American woman is a size 14, as I'm sure you know). Given all that, why would you write an email entitled "What's the skinny?" I know what the slang term means and understand you're trying to maintain an image of a hip, youthful company. But since visiting your shop is one of the few pleasurable and non-sizeist experiences we fat girls have, I would really appreciate you not mocking us by employing a term that, as a symbol of all we're not but are told we "should be," has been used in the past to degrade and marginalize us. 

In the future, please rethink the thoughtless use of such terms, no matter how hip and cool they make you sound.

Oh and while we're talking, expanding your size ranges to include larger ones would be amazing. Fat women of all sizes have too few stylish options; we'd appreciate all the help we can get. 

Kindly,
Elle Hill, PhD*



* Note: This is the real reason I toiled through 16 years of college: so I could add weight to my letters of praise and complaint to various companies and politicians.

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