"It disguises things that society decided aren't attractive."
An examination of one little word.
flat·ter·ing /ˈfladəriNG/
adjective
(of a person or their remarks) full of praise and compliments.
"the article began with some flattering words about us"
pleasing or gratifying.
"it was flattering to have a pretty girl like Frances so obviously fond of him"
enhancing someone's appearance.
"I don't think anything sleeveless is very flattering"
One day last week, I shared some photographs on Instagram – photographs I had taken earlier that day, with the purpose of asking my sister which of four possible outfits I should wear to a wedding that weekend.
Her pick was a fuchsia pink Banana Republic dress I’d borrowed from her; that same dress had been the source of great consternation when I realised that she’d bought it out from under my nose (I had sent it to her in a text – “my dream dress!” I’d written. “But sold out…” – and she had immediately clicked the link, by some miracle seen our size in stock and bought it, without a thought for me, the one whose dream dress it was). I half suspect that she wanted me to wear it to alleviate her own guilt; she may have bought it, but she gave me first wear, which anyone who buys nice dresses will know is no small thing.
But I wasn’t convinced. For one thing, the sleeves, which appeared deceptively airy on the model, were incredibly tight on my upper arms. For another, while the polyester fabric looked, honestly, a lot more luxe than you’d think, it was very heavy and would, I was sure, feel oppressive on what was forecast to be a 30-degree wedding day.
So I asked my Instagram followers – I have 44,000 or so, although my stories are watched by between 4,000 and 12,000 people, depending on the day and the content – for their opinions, I’ll admit in part because I hoped they’d like my favourite, a pair of olive-green shorts paired with a dusty pink blazer and white T-shirt, but also because I will never not find it fascinating to see the vast difference between people’s responses to a fashion choice.
Unsurprisingly, the green shorts were not a hit – although I wore them anyway, to the Friday night rehearsal dinner, and chose a different floaty, oversized pink dress for the wedding itself, a choice made entirely with the heat in mind – although I’ll admit I was surprised by the level of vitriol directed towards them.
What also surprised – and interested – me, honestly, was the number of people who responded to my stories to tell me which outfits were and weren’t flattering. It’s a word I don’t use that often, always seeming to me to be another way of saying something conceals one’s “bad” bits. Once I truly absorbed the lesson from my Dad that “clothes don’t have the power to make you look fat, or thin, or tall, or short – your body is your body, no matter what you’re wearing”, I stopped believing in the very notion of an outfit being flattering or not.
In a way, it was freeing; as Alysse Dalessandro says, writing for The Body is Not an Apology1, “there’s a level of manipulation behind the word flattering that says: how you look is not okay, but this garment will make you look better”. I try really hard, now, to buy – and wear – clothes because I like their colour, or cut, or because they make me feel a certain way (and that way is not “thin”; as my Dad said, after all, clothes don’t hold that power).
So when dozens of my internet besties started responding to me, telling me that the oversized muumuu dresses I favour aren’t “flattering”, I initially felt a bit… irked. Uncomfortable. Shaken. I felt a bit like I was being told, “these clothes only make you look fatter”, the implication being that one should be striving, always, to look thinner. Not to mention the fact, I thought, bitterly, that no one ever tells a very thin woman that the structured, designed-to-be-oversized dress she’s wearing is “unflattering”.
But I knew that so many of these thoughts I was having were just that: thoughts, preconceived notions, assumptions I was making in my own head, based on my very specific and subjective feelings about my body (I would say, largely negative but I’m working on it) and my experience living in a small fat body for most of my adult life.
It seemed pretty easy to interrogate these assumptions, by asking my Instagram followers to respond, via a question box – which limits responses to a line or two – and let me know what the word “flattering” means to them.
Something that suits your body shape well to accentuate some positive aspect, i.e. curves
I received 477 responses – hardly enough on which to base a scientific study (although Andrew Wakefield would probably make a good go of it), but enough to screenshot each and every response, type each and every response into a Word doc and then use said doc to create a word cloud, a visual representation of people’s responses.
As you can see, I’m not alone in assuming that people’s employment of the word “flattering” is body- or size-related, although it could be argued that “best”, in terms of one’s body, is as subjective as my own assumptions were. If someone suggests that I “accentuate my best bits”, what’s to say that they don’t mean my belly, the cellulite on my thighs, the jiggly bits on the underside of my biceps?
As a plus-size girl, when I hear “flattering” it makes me think “hides your shape / size / fat”
I think we all know, though, don’t we, that that would not be a good-faith argument. Anyone who admires an outfit based on its ability to “highlight” one’s “assets” is not, we are absolutely safe to assume, including belly rolls among that list.
The word itself first appeared in the 13th century2: flateren, flaterien, "seek to please or gratify (someone) by undue praise, praise insincerely, beguile with pleasing words," from Old French flater "to deceive; caress, fondle; prostrate, throw, fling (to the ground)".
In the late 14th century, it’s used to mean "pleasing to the imagination; dishonestly pleasing; having a false appearance of favorableness,” which is probably veering closer to its present-day interpretation, and hints to its employment as suggesting something that hides the “bad” and accentuates the “good”.
The fact that its earliest meanings include those links to deception is interesting, too, and carries through to its modern-day use; in a Racked article from 20163, Jennifer Ogle, a professor at Colorado State University whose research specialises in body image, media influence and the psychological, social and cultural aspects of dress, said, “Various socio-cultural institutions — mass media, the fashion industry, families, et cetera… convey cultural conventions about how to dress various body shapes so as to ‘hide’ culturally-constructed ‘body flaws’ and to create the illusion of a ‘perfect’ body, as defined by society.”
Something that highlights your best physical traits and hides your not so great ones
The “rules” around what is and isn’t flattering are widely known, insidious, and absorbed at an early age.
I knew, from my early teens, that horizontal stripes were “unflattering”, at least to me, who was already a size or two larger than my friends (although, of course, when I look back at photographs now I just see a girl, not the ogre I perceived myself as). A kick flare is a great choice to balance out wide hips; white clothes are for thin people only (ditto anything with food on it; a T-shirt that says “fries over guys” is only funny if you’re thin); belly tops require at the very least a suggestion of muscle definition; a peplum hem will hide a multitude.
The list goes on.
That something suits you and highlights your good physical qualities
What we’re talking about, ultimately, when we drill down to the root behind all of these rules and all of these meanings of the word “flattering”, when used in terms of clothing, is anti-fat bias. It is better, at least by the standards of our society, to wear clothes that make us look less fat or, at the very least, do not draw attention to the fatness of our bodies.
It is not a word I have ever heard used about men’s clothing, or used to men about said clothing; similarly, it is not something that is usually said about women’s clothes that are worn by thin women. In my time as a fashion writer, I have read at least 500 runway reviews, and I cannot call to mind a single one in which an outfit – as shown on a straight-sized runway model – was described as “flattering” or “unflattering”.
This is not meant to be didactic; I’m not campaigning for or against the use of the word itself, necessarily. But it is interesting to examine the deeply held beliefs that lie behind everyday assumptions, especially (to me, anyway) when it comes to body image, fashion and style as a mode of self-expression.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t offended by people’s use of the word when giving their opinions on my outfit choices. I had asked for their votes, after all, but above all that it’s not particularly useful to sit in judgment on other women for their (our!) adherence to diet culture standards and the anti-fat bias that has been so embedded in our culture for all of my life, at least.
And, if nothing else, I take comfort in the fact that, though the word is seeing a slight uptick in use since the late 20th century, we’re still doing a lot better than our counterparts in the 1800s, who were, quite frankly, obsessed with flattering, and being flattered. It must have been exhausting.
Use over time for: flattering4
“Why Must Plus-Sized Fashion be ‘Flattering’?” by Alysse Dalessandro, for The Body is Not an Apology: https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/fck-flatteringwhy-i-wear-what-i-want-so-should-you/
From the Online Etymology Dictionary’s entry on “flatter: https://www.etymonline.com/word/flatter#:~:text=flattering%20(adj.),Related%3A%20Flatteringly.
“What Do We Really Mean When We Say Something Is ‘Flattering’?” by Gray Chapman, for Racked: https://www.racked.com/2016/11/28/13425116/flattering-flaws-body-positivity
Google Books Ngram viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=flattering
Really enjoyed thos..tho I would say white is for people who do not have children/dogs/cats/ and possibly eat very tidy