The Fat Girl Flea Market

This weekend my stylist, JoJo, invited me to The Fat Girl Flea Market. As a PSP, finding vintage/used clothing in my size is like finding a needle in a hay stack. So for me, The Fat Girl Flea Market was a “must-attend”. Being the good PSP that I am, I invited my friend Dana to tag along. The plan was to meet up around 12pm, do a little shopping and then have brunch.

We walked into the room where the flea market was being held and it was bananas! There were piles of clothes on tables sorted by size ranging from 1x to 6x. Wedged between them were racks of dresses and coats, and wedged between them were PSP’s stripping down and trying on used clothing to their hearts content. For those of us who were more modest, an open dressing room was created with a partition in the middle of the room.

JoJo, Dana and I went our separate ways, at first I was a bit overwhelmed, but then I began to dig and found a few things that I liked. I was looking at a shimmery top when JoJo dragged a girl over to me. “This is her!” JoJo said, pointing to me. I looked at her blankly.

“CeCe, this is Josie…reads your blog… she’s a fan!”

I felt my face getting hot, JoJo and Dana know about my blog, but for some reason I feel like I can be more honest and open when I write anonymously. JoJo knows this, but I think she got caught up in the moment when she met Josie, and understandably so. Josie was super cute, with blunt bangs that hit just above her eyebrows, she had bright piercing eyes, high cheek bones and a warm smile.

“Hi…” I said slowly. I was still processing everything.

“I’m Josie – – I read your blog all the time!”

I looked at JoJo, who was beaming. Josie was grinning too, so I decided to embrace the moment.

“That’s so random…” I laughed nervously.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry, I’m just so geeked-out right now!” Her smile then changed to a frown. “Where have you been?? You didn’t write at all last month!”

We laughed, I apologized and made some small talk. Josie was new to the city and so genuinely sweet, I couldn’t just leave her with a greeting and a goodbye, so I invited Josie to brunch with us.

I took my clothes (and my stylist) into the dressing room and began trying on the pieces I had pulled. Just as we were leaving, A girl who was without a doubt the smallest woman at the flea market was there trying on an adorable dress that we’d all been coveting but were unable to fit. She was a 14, the size where you can flip flop between mainstream and plus size clothing. I overheard another PSP compliment her on how she looked in the dress (and her ability to fit into it).

“Thanks,” she replied. “You know, I actually believe you! I have a thing about skinny women who compliment you in dressing rooms, because those bitches will lie and tell you how great you look in something and then get the same dress so they can out-do you! But if a woman is plus-size, she will tell you the truth!”

JoJo and I exchanged glances and walked out shaking our heads.

I left with 3 dresses, 1 skirt and a pair of yoga pants all for $22.00! We decided to walk up a few blocks to a restaurant in Chelsea that served unlimited mimosas on Saturdays.

Although I had spent time out and about with JoJo and Dana separately, as a rule, I was used to being the only PSP in the room when hanging out with my (skinny) friends. As we sat down at our table, I realized that (outside of The Scene) I had never hung out with this many PSP’s at one time before. I started thinking about how sitting at the table with Dana, JoJo and Josie called more attention to my size, this made me feel guilty until JoJo interrupted my thoughts when she said.

“Did you notice everyone looking at us when we walked in the restaurant?”

Okay! I wasn’t crazy… a flock of fat girls does draw a certain amount of attention. We laughed it off and toasted. Brunch was fun, Dana and JoJo hadn’t spent time together before, so it was interesting watching them get to know each other and we were all able to give little Josie advice and forewarning about starting to go out to the BBW clubs, which she plans to do later this month (maybe with a few chaperone’s).

As we paid our bill, two obviously gay men in matching bubble gum pink polo shirts walked by our table.

“This is the place to be!” one of them said, as he made his way over to our table. He shimmied up to Josie and looked down her shirt. “You need to put those away… even a gay man might get tempted!” and with that he reached over and grabbed her boob.

What a way to end the day….