chapter 24

"Has he contacted you yet?" Amy asked as soon as they were back at her flat.

"We've been together the whole journey, if he had contacted me you would know."

Amy sank into the couch and buried her face in her hands. "My mom is going to kill me."

"No, she won't," Chloe said. "Lucky for you, there's a big ocean in the way."

Amy looked down at the coffee table, still covered in junk food, and felt a twinge of something that was much worse than hunger. It was food that she didn't need and really shouldn't eat but oh God, how she wanted it. She wanted to bury her emotions under a mountain of chips, to drown her thoughts in a sea of candy but she resisted and instead she turned on Chloe.

"Thanks. You're just full of the reassuring words tonight."

"Come on, Amy, you know I was just joking."

"It's not just that. Best friend tip: earlier, when i said Daniel hated me it was your cue to tell me he doesn't. Even if you don't believe it."

Chloe sighed. "Oh, honey, he doesn't hate you. You've been shutting him and your mom out for so long that he barely even knows you."

"Please. Not this again." Amy groaned.

"You should be more honest with them," Chloe coaxed gently.

"You don't understand. You don't know what it's like."

"Then tell me."

"It's like to be fat is to be in a constant state of embarrassment. Embarrassed because you take up too much space, or worse, take up someone else's space. Embarrassed to be seen eating in public. Embarrassed because you never have anything appropriate to wear. Embarrassed because you're always too hot and sweat more than everyone else. Even if it's just your imagination, you just feel like everyone is looking at you with judgement or pity. And then there was mom who was always so proud of her straight A daughter and I didn't want her to find out about anything that would turn that pride into pity."

"She would always have been proud of you, even if she knew what Marnie and those other bitches were doing. It's OK to be vulnerable with the people who love you. No one is expecting you to be some perfect person."

"Earlier Daniel accused me of avoiding mom and he was so wrong about why but at the same time, uncomfortably close to a truth I didn't even want to admit to myself. I know it's not fair because she was always working hard to support us by herself but I suppose I do resent her in a way for never noticing that I was faking being happy, for never seeing beyond the surface that I wanted her to see," she sighed and gave Chloe a wry smile. "But then, isn't that why we work in fashion? Because we're good at surfaces? Weaving the pretty lies, concealing the ugly truths."

Chloe shook her head. "Fashion isn't real life, it's just a fantasy world. You can't live your life like that."

"It's not just a fantasy. You can't say it doesn't effect our lives, it leaks out into the real world and distorts the way we see things, the way we see ourselves." Amy said. "Did I ever tell you about the collection that had the biggest impact on me."

"That's easy: Alexander McQueen's VOSS collection." Chloe said. "An obsession with him was the serendipitous thing that brought us both to Central Saint Martins"

"Yes, but I never told you why," Amy said. "I remember being thirteen the year he launched VOSS. You know, that terrible age when the body you've inhabited your whole life suddenly becomes this alien thing that you're both hyper aware of and weirdly disconnected from as it grows and changes against your will. And with that came the awareness that my body didn't really resemble the women in magazines and the catwalk or even just the other girls in my gym class. Even so I was still clinging on to Vogue as an escape from suburban hell and no one was weaving fantasies that I wanted to lose myself in better than Alexander McQueen."

""The world needs fantasy, not reality. We have enough reality today."" Chloe quoted.

"Exactly," Amy smiled. "I remember the excited anticipation of what he might do next. He had already established himself as a maverick, a revolutionary with a penchant for spectacle and controversy and with VOSS he didn't disappoint. I had never seen anything of such ambition and imagination before. The show is structured around beauty and beauty's nightmare: the models are trapped in a box panelled with one way mirrors so they can only see their reflection, not the audience beyond. They stare blankly into themselves and act out madness - we're talking real, hysterical Lady MacBeth and Ophelia shit here - on a stage structured to represent layers of consciousness. Boxes within boxes, slowly delving into the deepest, darkest recesses of the subconscious.
It seemed like the show was over and then it happened: the walls of the central box came crashing down. And what as the horror within? Fat. Fashion's greatest fear stark, naked and staring it straight in the face. It was a grotesque tableau based on Joel Peter Witkin's photograph Sanitarium. An obese woman's bloated body is spread out on a chaise lounge while a rubber mask attached to tubes feeds her what? Oxygen? Food? Both? Meanwhile hundreds of live moths fluttered around her bare flesh. She was a nightmare. A horror. And she was me."

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry it made you feel that way but I really don't think he wanted us to see ugliness in that scene. He said it was about finding the beauty in what isn't conventionally perceived as attractive." Chloe said.

"Bullshit," Amy said bitterly. "Alexander McQueen was a visionary, he wasn't that - for want of a better word - basic. I don't buy that "beauty in everything" schtick and neither did the moth woman herself, Michelle Olley. She knew she was just another grotesque in McQueen's cabinet of curiosities. She called herself "the piggy in the middle" and "the death of beauty." It wasn't about beauty at all, she wasn't an equal to the other models. They were wearing bandages around their heads and dresses that cut and fragmented their bodies in strange ways but Kate Moss was still Kate Moss and Erin O'Connor was still Erin O'Connor while Michelle Olley's humanity was robbed from her by a rubber mask that completely obscured her face and identity. It was entirely about fat. Her unruly body was presented as a kind of madness like the hysteria acted out by the models, a symbol of the loss of control. Just as madness breaks societal norms of feminine behaviour, fat transgresses the feminine shape. It's an excess that breaks the boundaries of the acceptable in the female body."

"You're forgetting that there were butterflies as well as moths, insects of rebirth as well as death. Alexander McQueen said the show was about breaking down and dying and then coming back to life." Chloe said. "I think the image that defines VOSS for me was that incredible razor clam dress Erin O'Connor wore, constructed entirely out of the recycled exoskeletons of sea creatures - a metaphor for death and rebirth in itself. I'll always remember that powerful moment when she ran her hands up the sharp shells, bloodying and tearing her own skin and then proceeded to trash the dress on the catwalk. It was a cathartic symbol of change from destruction, a painful shedding of old skin. Because things do change in life - and even in fashion. It's not the same industry it was ten years ago."

"Sure, Jean Paul Gautier puts Beth Ditto on the catwalk and the world is changed," Amy rolled her eyes. "So different that only 2% of catwalk models in this year's Spring/Summer collections were bigger than a UK size 12 when the average woman is a size 14. So different that plus size clothing brands still dictate what women can wear based on an inherently fatphobic standard of what's "flattering". Thin women can wear clothes to reflect their personalities and show off their bodies but fat women are policed into dressing a certain way with a single end goal: to pretend they're not fat. As if plus size clothes only function as an optical illusion to conceal fat."

"Typical Amy: knows all the facts but completely misses the point," Chloe sighed. "I'll never be as smart as you but I guess what I'm trying to say in my own clumsy and clunky way is that you think you've killed your past but you're still wearing it like the sharp edged armour of those razor clam shells. It's why Daniel doesn't understand you and it's what's pushing him and your mum away."

Amy turned from Chloe and looked at the city lights blurred by raindrops outside her window. She could feel the tears welling in her eyes but no, she wouldn't be weak. She wouldn't be that girl anymore. She blinked them back, she hadn't cried in so long and these tears too would fossilise as just another fleck of grey in her blue eyes.

Chloe stood up and lightly kissed Amy on the top of her head. "You know I love you, right?"

Amy nodded.

"Come on, I'm going to make us some tea while we wait for your idiot brother."

"I think my milk has expired."

"Oh, Amy..."