Rebel With Fashion 'Sense': Diana Rajchel

Exploring the thoughts, concerns and passions of women is quite fascinating. When deciding to spotlight women that we would consider “activists” in the plus community, Diana Rajchel immediately came to mind. When visiting her blog, Fat Chic I’ve always felt that Diana is a woman who is very aware of what her readers want to read on a daily basis. On Fat Chic, Diana infuses plus size fashion finds with relevant plus size news. She does a great job of opening the eyes of her readers. Each time I visit her blog, I leave feeling empowered because of her wealth of knowledge she shares with her readers.

In this interview Diana lets us in to her world. She is not only a very opinionated blogger, she’s a woman who respects you for the plus size consumer that you are and she’s using her voice to give you a voice.

On your website you say that you’re not a ‘Fat Activist’ but a “consumer advocate for fat people”. What is the difference between the two?

A “fat activist” takes on a much bigger task than a “fat advocate.” The job of the activist is to confront all underlying attitudes and constantly raise awareness for change. Many of these people view their bodies as political statements against a big chunk of society that mistakes appearance FOR your character. What I do takes a bit less energy and is in many ways more subversive: I address where people have power and don’t realize it. There are three things that companies of any type want right now: money, attention, and emotional investment. What I do is use my research skills to redistribute some of the power that companies have held through the gift of information. I give plus size consumers a place to find sources they might not have time to find on their own, and through new choices they can distribute their money, attention and emotional investment in the way that best suits their own lives.

I also on a slightly more activist level point out when clothing is designed with contempt and then proffered to the plus-sized. There are distinct differences between design misfires, pieces that won’t and shouldn’t work for everyone, and clothing offered with a profound disrespect for the target customer. While I’m actually opposed to the way pathos are used and manipulated everywhere in media, I will send some negative emotional attention to designers who expect plus size women to just wear that upholstery fabric. It can’t change the designer’s attitude (attitudes can only change from within) but it does send a message to women who desperately need to hear it: they deserve to be treated better, and their size should NOT be a factor in the respect they receive. They can’t change the minds of those who view them with contempt, but they can give that time, money and loyalty to the people who do treat them well, and it helps to find those people out and give them some blog love.

Speaking of the word “Fat”, why do you think it’s viewed as being negative?

It’s viewed as negative because somewhere around the 1950s/1960s a marketing agency or ten made it negative. Actually, if you look at flickr photo pools of vintage ads and search “diet” it goes even further back than that. (History: learn as much of it as you can, and take back the world starting with yours.) While I think people are becoming more discerning about when they’re being sold a message about themselves, advertising/marketing has gotten even more sophisticated in delivering those messages in such a way that we feel too badly about ourselves to recognize that we’ve just bought a lie that we’ve been sold. It’s insidious, but not impossible to overcome.

I’ve found that those who are the most sensitive to the word “fat” are usually either not fat themselves, or at the edge of an average range. I’m a size 28, and except for a brief period in my teens, I’ve been fat my entire life. When someone calls me fat as an insult, I just look at them like they’re as insane as they are: fat people know we’re fat, and the point of that insult is an element of surprise.

People assume the word has negative power because fat is meant to imply something about your character, that you’re lazy, that you’re self-indulgent, etc. A whole lot of study (check the FDA health releases over the past seven years, it’s well worth the dig, and dig through Junkfood Science blog) has revealed that yes, some fat people are lazy, or prone to psychological problems, etc. but not even most of them are. Even the ever popular “we’re concerned for your health” fat-yellers are actually not being supported by science long-term.

A few years ago, a relative was mad at a co-worker for something he did, and she was rehearsing a few insults for him. She wanted to dredge up “fat,” because she wanted to “inflict hurt.” (Let’s just say developing good character is clearly not a genetic process.) I called her out: if she wanted to insult him based on his actions and personality, great, but on being fat? Fat is not a value judgment and making it so just tells you the person flinging the insult isn’t bright enough to distinguish between a person’s actions and a person’s body. In the end, I helped her craft a few insults that were actually relevant to his character (when it comes to picking my battles, I end up doing some strange things.) I suspect, however, she still flings this insult around on those it has the power to hurt.

The book the Body Project: an Intimate History of American Girls gives a lot of insight into where diet culture came from, and talks about how/when the assessment of a woman’s character actually began with her looks. It’s well worth a read, especially among plus size bloggers. I’d love to see similar histories published from other countries, as well, especially as body issues formerly unique to the west are becoming common outside the hemisphere.

As a woman with a blog, who some may label as an activist, What issues are you most passionate about?

1)Respect for the consumer.
2)Freeing ourselves from assumptions. Not every size 28 has a DD cup, for instance. Yet there are size 28′s that do. What works on one pear shape may not work on another. Not EVERY woman needs x clothing, but women with x lifestyle may need a given item.
3)Freeing women from each other. I hate – HATE – snark blogs of any kind, because it’s humanity patting itself on the back for being the worst version of itself. Stuff can be funny without cutting down. I also point to fashion information but avoid distributing fashion “tips” for similar reasons: I’m not actively harmed by seeing arm flab, so it’s not my business to make another person cover it, and to do so would make me a bit of a jerk. I’m certainly not going to justify such comments with “just being honest.” It’s much more important right now that women learn how to live in the bodies they have than it is to conform to aesthetics of women who know nothing about their daily lives.

I recently read Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World by Rosalind Wiseman. I’m not a parent, but it was still very relevant to stuff I see in fashion blogging daily, and just in daily life. I recommend it to every female in North America. I suspect this may become a big subconscious influence on what I write for Fat Chic in the future. I think that we’ll become healthier from the inside out if we recognize that these attitudes and patterns are trickling at us from everywhere, and plus size women are especially affected by these outlooks.

What do you think contributes to mainstream medias perception of plus size consumers?

I want to say that perception is shifting, and right now there’s a bit of a fight over it. If you fish through CNN’s website, you’ll see some plus-size positive piece, and it will be almost immediately followed by a slew of “OMG YOU’RE FAT YOU’RE GONNA DIE!!!!!’ pieces of varying accuracy and thoroughness. First, I think that these reporters were raised in the same culture as the plus sized and all have received the same screwed up messages about judging character through the body instead of by the person’s actions. Second, the 24 hour news cycle as far as I can tell has done no favors. Rather than just issuing major headlines like the protests in Egypt and Libya, the cycle also forces a churn of fluff that doesn’t allow the writers to actually research, verify or check for conflicting opinions or even properly assess published research. This means that the easy way out is just to accept the latest headline as “truth” and not look any deeper – the CNN itself is sliding by on a reputation it earned 20 years ago; it in no way reflect their actual work now, and obesity reporting is just one example , one small area, of where they’re doing a really bad job.

Also, most of the media is now just part of the entertainment field. Entertainment has everything to do with presenting “idealized” images, which we forget all too easily is NOT a representation of zeitgeist, but merely what ONE casting agent, ONE producer, ONE director happens to want to have sex with at the time. Millions may be watching it, but what you’re watching is the opinion of just ONE man, somewhere, and his mother really needs to have a talk with him. Perhaps someone needs to talk to his mother, too – he got those messages about women somewhere.

The rise of plus-size women in media is undoing a lot of the power wielded by that “one guy” who has only had to look at and sell what he wants (and he often finds marketing groups that reflect his views.) It’s got to be terrifying for people who have banked on the idea that “this is the way it is,” in any was is meant to last forever.

Your Plus Size News Roundup’s include fashion, business and international news in the plus size community. Why is it so important to touch on all three of these subjects?

I’d touch on more if I could think of them. It goes back to my ideas about advocacy and power distribution: attention is power. The better my readers understand how their purchases affect certain companies, the better they can make their decisions and take a direct hand in shaping the future of their own consumer market. I also get a decent amount of traffic outside the English-speaking countries; I want them to feel acknowledged, even if I’m limited in how much I can do as just one person.

If I had to just follow one, it would of course be fashion. Consumer fashion doesn’t change as fast as designer fashion, for the obvious reason that less than 1% of the world can actually afford designer styles. Even with the vast wealth in the US (even our poverty, by comparison, is considerably more comfortable than elsewhere in the world – not to say poverty is EVER actually comfortable) most US citizens are still excluded from that market. Yet these consumers that can’t afford those designer digs actually do have considerable impact and even power over the designers. It’s our money, however indirectly distributed, that makes that ridiculous opulence possible. It’s our attention that gives them the branding power – and when I direct the attention of the plus-size women consciously excluded from that designer club even if they do have the money for it – it takes that power away from those designers, and weakens both the brand name and the market share. It also motivates designers to give me a reason to give them attention. I’m not consciously trying to “take away” but rather trying to give positive attention to the positively deserving, with more regard for style and quality than for status.