Today on Facebook, while being a bum and watching MST3K, I came across the following status update from April Flores:

Had another meeting re:clothing line this am. Went to American Apparel to see how their stuff fit. No sizes bigger than 2x. When we asked the showroom rep if they ever considered making more plus sizes she condescendingly said “That’s not our demographic.” Hmm I guess they think fat people don’t wear clothes. Their loss!

The current youth culture’s (or “hipster,” although I’m really annoyed by the ways people like to use that word against anyone in my age group) denouncement of fat people (at least in the fashion world) is not something I’m unfamiliar with. I remember the sad day in high school when I officially became “plus sized,” not as a day of “ew! I’m fat!” but as the death of my clothing options. No longer could I order clothes from Urban Outfitters or have any hope of finding something in a Los Angeles vintage or thrift store. I have recently celebrated the discovery of ASOS Curve, but for the past few years, I had worn Torrid and menswear almost exclusively.

It’s funny that youth-centric companies like American Apparel are so fascist about the size of the women they’ll cater to, but are much more permissive when it comes to their male clientele. This is where I found the loophole through which I have been supporting a company that openly discriminates against people who look like me. I wear American Apparel men’s briefs. Almost exclusively. I probably have about 20 pairs. The picture of me on the About page? I’m wearing a purple acid-washed deep V-neck from American Apparel. I have lots of their deep V-neck shirts, not to mention a pair of suspenders, some dresses that are WAY TOO SMALL and two bowties. Not your demographic? Are you fucking KIDDING me?

You know, it’s kind of pathetic that a company can be this shitty to me and still see my business. I wish I had the backbone to just say “fuck you” to American Apparel and be done with it, but I still find myself checking their website every few months with my fingers crossed, hoping to high heaven that they’ve seen the light and have started to make more things in my size. (Like these pants, maybe.) And every time, my hopes are squashed by the reality of their skinny (sometimes verging on pre-pubescent) beauty ideal. So what do I do? I pout and kick my feet and yell “It’s not fair!!” (because it fucking isn’t) and then I buy a different pair of ridiculous tight jeans from Torrid.

I am in my early 20′s. I will wear stupid pants. So will just about everyone else who is my age. Stupid pants are an important part of human development. By not catering to the enormous market of plus-sized/fat/whatever young people, American Apparel, the INDUSTRY LEADER in stupid pants (not to mention stupid shirts, stupid shorts and stupid nipple-baring leotard things) is missing out on a lot of money.

What irks me more than their hard-headed stupidity, however, is this insistence that fat people are not “part of their demographic.” What does that even mean? That fat people can’t be hipsters? Trust me, fat people are just as capable of being vapid, superficial and pretentious as any thin person. We can forgo bathing, smoke lots of cigarettes and dress like hobos. I’m verging on morbidly obese (according to the oh-so-legit BMI scale), and I had an ironic “hobos and Mormons”-themed 18th birthday party. Two percent of my ample MacBook Pro harddrive space is taken up by the entire discography and an extensive bootleg collection of Manchester indie gods the Fall. I complain on a regular basis about the negative turn country music took in the 1980′s. I dressed up as Jean-Luc Godard for French class when I was 15 years old. Pretentious and superficial? I’ve been there and back again.

Thin people simply do not have a monopoly on feelings of sub-cultural superiority. So listen up American Apparel and Urban Outfitters and Top Shop and ModCloth and the rest of your ilk, I will wear the shit out of your stupid clothes, and so will others like me. Your assumptions that fat people are too poor or stupid or uncultured or uncool to be worthy of shopping at your stores are discriminatory and unfounded. Now give us your ridiculous pants while we’re still young enough to want them.