The Power of Reclaiming the Language Around Size

Today Virginia is chatting with Mary Carney, the founder of Towel, a new size inclusive lifestyle brand. Because a towel that doesn't wrap around your body is just a classic example of anti-fat bias in action. 

If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes—including the director's cut of this conversation where VA and AHP answer all of your gardening questions. 

Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

Towel

Meet the towels: Ava, Joni, and Gemma

Towel on Instagram 

BT episode on Old Navy's failed plus size promises

Mia O’Malley on making sure your life fits your body

we have mentioned chairs

Really Big Towel

the viral pajamas

Maddeningly, Virginia's jumpsuit seems to have sold out right before publishing, BUT there is a really good buy / sell / trade group for Universal Standard on Facebook. 

FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Episode 106 Transcript

Mary

So I got out of the shower last year and I had a towel and it didn’t wrap around my body. And I was like, enough is enough. Someone has to fix this. This is a towel. Something I use every single day. I was standing there, just out of the shower and I was like, well, some of my towels are in the wash. Some of them are a little bigger. This one happened to be one from childhood, ironically. But it doesn’t wrap around my body. And I know that I’m not the only person who experiences this. So in that moment, I was set. I was like, I’m going to make towels. It’s should be pretty simple. In hindsight it’s not simple, but…

Virginia

It really feels like it would be! It’s one piece of fabric.

Mary

Yes, it does, right? It’s one piece of fabric. I was just like, “Why hasn’t anybody done this?” So in that moment, I decided to name it Towel because I was like, it’s so simple. It’s an essential. It’s pretty ironic, as well, that it is just one strip of fabric and yet, this one strip of fabric we have in our houses doesn’t fit many, many bodies. And so Towel was conceived.

My first step, because I really love designing and branding is, was to build an Instagram and start to build community. What I realized then is that there are actually so many more people resonating with this idea than I even imagined. At that point, I think, it became about more than even towels. This is a community and these people deserve more in terms of access to essentials and clothing. 

For me, working in the fashion industry, I’ve seen small brands trying to start and know what’s involved. So, a towel is just one item to focus on. I was like, I think I can do that well, and yeah, here we are. 

So this past spring, we successfully funded a Kickstarter, which is amazing. We had 695 backers, and we raised just over $72,000.

Virginia

Wow. Congratulations. 

Mary

Thank you. 

Virginia

So now the towels are going into production?

Mary

Yes. So that round of funding was essentially to launch us into the industry, but also to get the production run started. I want Towel to be a lifestyle brand. There are many more items that we can expand on, but right now, it’s just towels. 

So yes, the production is happening. We’ve had a couple of bumps in the road, but I’m working with a great team to make it happen and they will hopefully be here within a month. We have things going on in the back end.

Virginia

So we are recording this at the end of July and your episode is going to run in August or September. So, as people are listening, towels will either be here soon or may already be here. You are very close to realizing your towel dreams if you are someone looking for this kind of towel, which I definitely am. I can’t even tell you how many nice hotels I go to and the towels are like a travesty, right? A travesty!

Mary

It’s in every house, at the pool, at the spa. And because they don’t have it at the spa or they’re not provided at the hotel, that makes people in larger bodies have to do more work when they enter those spaces, right? They either have to bring a towel or they know that they’re going to prepare themselves to be uncomfortable. Maybe they bring a robe. I would love for one day where all bodies can go into spaces and they know that they’re going to have a towel that’s going to wrap around their body so they’re able to have that comfort that everyone else has.

Virginia

Yeah, anytime I’m in a nice hotel and the towel does not wrap around me I just think, how much am I paying? And I can’t dry myself? This is ridiculous.

Mary

No, no, it’s crazy. I used to do a lot of road trips with my family as a child from the Midwest. I grew up with a dad who was in a larger body and I just remember as a kid, we would bring our own towels for him, or his robe. I think as a kid I didn’t quite understand it. And then when it came time, growing into teenage adulthood, you remember when your towel begins to not fit you. And everyone deserves to have that experience of it fitting, right? There’s so much emotion that go into it, as well. There is a lot of healing of child wounds in this brand for me.

Virginia

Definitely. 

Mary

Hopefully, for other people, too. I have a friend who has one of my samples right now. And she told me that the first time she put it on, she cried. She said it was the only towel that she’s ever had that actually fit her.

Virginia

That’s so powerful.

Mary

I think that this is something that is not only for the fat community and people in larger bodies, it’s for everyone. Because I want my children and your children to grow up knowing that their body is great and all bodies are good bodies, which is what Towel’s mission is. I think just having that message around the house is nice.

Virginia

Whether it’s clothes or whatever it is, these things that we buy should fit our bodies, we shouldn’t be feeling like our bodies don’t fit into these spaces or fit into into these things. That’s such an important shift to make.

Mary

I’ve seen a couple of TikToks online where influencers have a towel wrapped around and it doesn’t fully close. And they say out loud, “my goal is to be small enough to fit into the towel.” And it’s like, let’s flip the narrative. It’s not your body, it’s the towel. 

Virginia

Why do you have to meet the standards of this terry cloth?

Mary

Let’s just get better towels. And the same thing for jeans, pants, whatever. It’s not your body, it’s the clothes. So if the clothes don’t fit, let’s get new clothes, alter them, figure out a way. I know that’s not always accessible, but it’s definitely not your body’s fault.

Virginia

What you’re saying is really pretty radical because I think capitalism, and retail, has trained us as consumers to think we need to fit into what is being offered to us. You’re talking about something that would overhaul a lot of industries, if the industry is shifted to thinking, “How are we making products that are inclusive for all people?”

Mary

Yeah, absolutely. Old Navy specifically is one brand that comes to mind. I grew up lower middle class. Old Navy was kind of like my bread and butter when I was a kid. I loved Old Navy. I wanted to wear their swimsuits in the summer, and their bright, colorful campaigns, etc. I was really excited for their body diversity campaign.

Virginia

Bodequality was the most recent version. We did an episode on it.

Mary

When the Bodequality campaign came out, I was super excited, I was like, wow, this is beautiful. And I went into the store, and I tried on their pants and I was like, “Oh my God, these are terrible.”

I will say, I’m definitely more critical of fit than probably your everyday person because I understand how clothing fits. I understand how they’re made and the technical fit aspect especially. So when I tried on my size, which I believe was an 18, and I had to go up to at 20 or 22 for me to even zip them, I was like, “Something is wrong here.”

In that moment, it’s like, wow, I’m standing in this dressing room. I’m already in a vulnerable place, as we all are in dressing rooms. To be honest, I generally don’t even go into dressing rooms anymore. I don’t know if you do, but I buy my clothes online, I try them on at home, and I return them. But this day, I happened to be out and I was like, let me do it. And so I was in the dressing room and I think I had like five or six jeans and none of them zipped up in my size. And I’m saying that in air quotes, because sizing is all just—it’s all made up, all of it is made up. 

But the fact that they rolled out this campaign that was supposed to be accessible or they were saying, like, we are including all people. I know, because my background is in design, that it’s not my body, it’s actually that the technical design and the pattern making were wrong. But people don’t know that. They’re gonna go in, they’re gonna feel bad about themselves. Even if they do fit, they’re kind of uncomfortable.

And anyways, at the end of it, we know it flopped, we all know what happened. They ended up pulling a lot of the sizes off the floor. I think that they ended up claiming that the community had failed them. But it was like, you failed us! We didn’t have clothes. And not only that, we were in a space where you actually made us feel worse about ourselves because your sizing was incorrect. 

Virginia

I just want to jump in quickly and say, it’s not that it’s a problem to be like, “I think of myself as an 18 and I’m in the 22.” The problem is the person who wears the 22 now needs the 24. And the person who wears the 24 doesn’t even have a size in the store anymore. That’s the problem when you need to size up.

Mary

Exactly, exactly. When we have sizing standards, they’re all made up and it back dates even probably to like the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. And designers follow a standard. They follow their company standard and just as with any family, the company generationally changes. There are certain brands where you’re like, “Oh, I know that’s not going to fit me, because their size standard is not made for my body.”

There’s also something that’s called vanity sizing. Vanity sizing is when they take a size that’s traditionally a larger fit and they put a smaller label on it. And so if you see the smaller size and you normally wear a bigger size, when you go to their store, you wear the smaller size. They’re using fatphobia to make you feel bad about yourself to shop at their store. And it happens all the time.

It’s hard because I know sizing and I know pattern making, but there is this twinge of this old thinking that when I fit a smaller size, there’s a little bit of boost. You’re constantly deconstructing that. 

Virginia

There’s a weird intersection, too, then, of the vanity sizing, which is training us all to think we wear smaller sizes than we do—using air quotes because sizing, as you said, is all made up—combined with the fact that in the plus size range, you’re sizing up because they’re claiming they’ve added those bigger sizes, but they haven’t made them big enough. It’s like vanity sizing in both directions or something. I don’t know, it’s making my brain hurt.

Mary

100 percent. Well, and that gets into extended sizing versus plus sizing, right? Extended sizing brands traditionally use a size medium or a median in their size range, and that’s traditionally on a straight size model. Then they’re going to grade the sizes up. They’re going to expand the sizes into plus sizing or their “extended sizing,” air quotes again. So that pattern is made off of a straight size body. Well, that doesn’t work for the extended sizing. So that’s why when you go in and buy something that you think is your size but it fits much smaller. It’s because of that extended sizing. Whereas in brands when they add in plus size, we can hope that they’re going to be fitting on a range of bodies, as well as plus sized bodies, and hopefully their pattern making is going to get better. 

Virginia

Right? Fingers crossed. 

Some brands are doing a much better job than others. And some brands really don’t seem to be trying.

I had Mia O’Malley on the podcast last year—she’s a fat fashion influencer and talks a lot about fat life in general. She talked about how often when we get stuck in these bad body feelings and feeling really at war with our body, it can really help to step back and say, is my life comfortable for my body?

I think what you’re doing with Towel is a great example of that because it’s really saying, do these things in my life support me? Does my chair at my desk fit my body? Does my car fit my body? Do my clothes fit, etc?

I’d love to hear you talk about what else beyond Towel, what else do you want to tackle that comes up so often in this space?

Mary

So many things. I know you have mentioned chairs previously, and I would definitely love to eventually design a chair. I think for now I’m going to try and stick to the soft goods category and the next thing I’d like to tackle is robes.

Virginia

Oh, great. 

Mary

I’ve never really had a robe that I like to wear. They’re either really silky and dainty and they feel kind of small and they always fall open. I tried to buy a robe from IKEA and it was their XXL and I think it still didn’t fit me, but here we are, right? So that is what I am going to tackle next, is robes.

And beyond that, I think coming back to sizing standards, I really would love to help deconstruct the sizing system. There’s so much that we can do as a community when we all come together.

There are definitely brands out there that are already tackling this, like Universal Standard does a really great job. They have all the sizes, their size chart shows their sizing versus standards that you see out in the world. They don’t break it up into categories, either. I think that’s another piece that I feel really is important is that people in larger bodies are already feeling othered because we can’t go into certain stores. And I think there are so many different terms and identifications that we as a community have used to empower us. But I think in terms of clothing, now, as we know, the average American woman is a size 14/16 or higher. So when you’re saying, oh that’s a medium, medium came because it was a medium size. Well, medium is not a medium is not the medium anymore.

Virginia

It’s not the medium of anyone, anymore.

Mary

Nope. So we need to chuck out the system and create a new system. I think that’s a long line of work, but I would love to be a brand that champions that and helps move the pendulum forward.

Virginia

That’s amazing. Yes, we need this desperately. Can you do it tomorrow, is my main question? No pressure, Mary.

Mary

Yeah, no, I would love to, I think the thing, too, is really giving people the tools to learn about their sizing and to learn about fit. I grew up in the Midwest, and I went to school in a really small town and Walmart was the only thing. I was reading a statistic during the Kickstarter that was like Walmart has the largest market of plus size shoppers and so on. We could talk about Walmart and their issues all day as a capitalistic company, but the thing is, people shop at Walmart because they have clothes that fit them. If other companies made clothes that fit us, we would buy them.

Virginia

I hear all the time from people, like, “I would spend the money but there’s nowhere to spend the money,” so figuring that out is huge.

I think it’s so crucial to demystify sizing, the way you’re talking about. We have such emotional attachments to these numbers without understanding how arbitrary they are. People don’t really understand the process behind it. Empowering people to think differently about sizing, to think more in terms of knowing your measurements because it’s going to help you read a size chart, but also having brands do that education just makes so much sense. It would take so much of the stress out of this.

Mary

That’s why I decided to name our towels with style names rather than sizes, because right now especially if you’re shopping in a store, it says “oversized towel,” or “really large towel” or “extra large towel,” and it’s like, yeah, I live in this body, I get it, my body is larger or it’s large. I exist. I think we just need to retrain our brains and give ourselves a better opportunity to reform these habits. 

We have our Ava, Joni, and Gemma. Ava is suggested fit up to 3x, Gemma suggested fit up to 7x, and Joni suggested fit up to 5x. I would love to one day have it to be where I didn’t need to explain the standard sizing behind it because someone is like, hey, I’m going to grab an Ava or I’m going to grab a Joni and they know that that fits them but we don’t need to talk about the numerical sizing behind it. Not that there’s anything wrong with numbers, but the way that society has framed the larger numbers has put a lot of mental strain on people that are living in larger bodies. 

Sometimes you can choose the model on your e-commerce website, right? Like, oh, you have extra small or you have large or you have 1x, but even the 1x, they’re not a 1x. And I know that because I’ve worked on these photo shoots. They’re saying this is our 1x plus size model, but she’s actually like a size eight or something.

Virginia

It’s infuriating.

Mary

 It’s just smoke and mirrors. So anyways, right now with Towel, I want to see how that goes with Ava, Joni, and Gemma, and hopefully people will resonate with that. There’s a couple other brands out there—one brand that’s called Fat Towel.1 There’s another brand called Really Big Towel. And like, how about you deserve a towel, period?

Virginia

I mean, I think there’s so much power in reclaiming the language around size. You should just be able to walk into any store and get a towel in your size and not have it be this siloed, special thing. 

Mary

100 percent.

Virginia

But one of the things that Old Navy got wrong with Bodequality was that they were like we’re taking away the plus size section and all the sizes will be together. And for those of us who are trained to walk into Old Navy and try to find the plus size section, it just meant that you thought there was nothing there for you anymore. It’s was this weird attempt at equality that totally backfired. 

Mary

Yeah. And it’s really a fine line because it hadn’t been done correctly. If the instruction was there for where your sizes would be, then we would know. That goes for other brands like Loft, as well. I really actually loved Loft’s fit. During the pandemic, they pulled all their plus sizes, which was such a shame because so many so many women were really huge Loft fans for workwear, for just everyday clothes. They were like, well, people aren’t buying them. It’s like, no, maybe it’s not that people aren’t buying them, it’s that you’re not giving us access to purchase them. Are they not in the store? Are you not marketing them enough?

It needs to be a whole shift and relearning and I think that is going to take some time. I do identify as plus size and I shop at plus size stores and I think I ideally one day it would be amazing if we weren’t broken up into categories. Like you said, it is helpful, but it would be great to just go and buy clothing and not have to sift through. 

Virginia

It feels like the shift we need to make is for brands to be thinking not only how do I offer bigger sizes, but really how do we show the customer that we are truly inclusive and that our clothes and products are designed with all bodies in mind. I think that’s the difference, we are used to being shoved off to the plus size corner and having this second best experience—or not even second best. You need to feel centered by the brand. Then you can move towards a store where there are no plus and straight size sections. It’s all together because it would be understood in all of the advertising and all of the models that get used, you would be always seeing body diversity, you’d always be seeing larger bodies.

Mary

I think about Target. They’ve really upped their marketing with all bodies and that’s really beautiful. That’s absolutely visible to me. But then I’ve gone in to find the clothes and they’re not there and I get so disappointed. I’m from Minnesota, I’m from Minneapolis. I’m a big Target fan! It’s so frustrating. It’s like, wow, okay, so you have all these bodies of all different sizes. I’m literally looking at the ad in front of me. There’s a woman who is a 5x in the ad and literally you don’t even have anything over an extra large. This is a joke.

Virginia

It’s wild. I do think some of that has to be because of the shift to online shopping, but it’s also like, okay, they still have stores. They’re telling us who they really prioritize by what sizes they put in the stores, for sure.

Mary

Yeah, absolutely. Beyond what’s in the stores, people don’t even know that they have plus size for certain clothing categories at places like Target. Like the viral pajamas! Everybody loves the pajamas. I don’t know if you know if you have the pajamas. 

Virginia

I don’t know the pajamas.

Mary

Oh my god! They’re these soft modal, comfy pajamas. They’re amazing. I actually found them—I’m not really big on TikTok, although I know it was all over TikTok, I found out later—but I found them in the store. They were like an XXL and I bought them and I squeezed into them at home. Then I went online and I saw that they had all the plus sizes online and I was like, holy cow, this is amazing.

There’s such a huge component where it’s like, people don’t even know that you offer plus size because it’s not in the store. And I get it, yes, we do shop online, as well. But there’s definitely a fine line with big box companies like Target where it’s like, you haven’t rolled out a campaign that says, hey, we have sizes in all these categories, so people aren’t coming to you to shop for them in the first place.

Virginia

Oh, there’s so much to do. I’m so grateful you are working on all of that. I know it is a huge mountain to scale, so we really appreciate your efforts. 

Butter

Mary

So I am a big like, maker of things. I always have a craft. And I’ve recently gotten back into ceramics and I love it. It’s a really great time for me to go into ceramics, put my phone away. Especially because it’s messy, you don’t want to have your stuff out anyways. But like, put the phone away. Just sit down, work with some clay and have it be about like the process, rather than the end goal. I’ve made a lot of work and art over time for monetary gain and for business, and it’s so nice to just find something that’s creative. And that I can just hang out with other people in a space and just get messy and make art.

Virginia

I love anything that helps you get off your phone and be in your body in a physical way. 

Mary

Yes. Absolutely.

Virginia

It’s super tactile.

Mary

It is so much more therapeutic than I even remembered—the last time I did ceramics was in high school. You use your whole body when you’re throwing on the wheel and when I’m doing handbuilding. It’s just it’s really nice.

Virginia

I love it. 

My butter is actually something I was thinking about as you were talking about the need to be cozy, be comfortable. I was thinking, what is the item of clothing that is most doing that for me right now? I don’t have a robe I love, so I’ll be waiting for your robes.

Mary

I will get you one!

Virginia

In the meantime, I have this jumpsuit from Universal Standard. 

Mary

It’s hard to find a good jumpsuit.

Virginia

It’s really hard to find a good jumpsuit. This is the Superfine French Terry jumpsuit.2 I have it in the “deep sea” color. It’s so cozy and their fit is excellent. I am someone who women’s magazines would call “apple shape,” like I’m very round in the torso and then my legs are skinnier. So I have a hard time with jumpsuits. If they fit my middle, they’re giant in the legs. These guys have a tapered jogger cuff, so they are good if you have that similar kind of build because the leg actually tapers in the right way. Not like a skinny jean or anything, but it just fits.

It is one item of clothing that fits both my waist and my legs, which is something that almost never happens for me. And it goes on sale quite a lot. It is expensive, but I got it on sale, so watch for sales. I’m hoping they’ll do it in some more colors because I have the deep sea and I’m like do I need the black? Do I need mustard?

Mary

This is a thing, actually, that I’ve been really wanting to like talk to, like the Towel community about. I feel this need that when I find an item of clothing that fits me I have to buy it in every color because I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m not going to get it again. I don’t know.

Virginia

Totally, but sometimes it doesn’t work! Like, I have done that and sometimes the different color just doesn’t hit in quite the same way. I think color is more important than we realize sometimes. So, I’ve been holding back, although if they go on super sale, I’ll probably grab the black. What I also love about it is I’m wearing it right now in July when it’s super hot because it’s blousy and roomy. But I think it’s going to transition to fall really well, like with a little denim jacket. One of those pieces, those rare transitional, multi-season pieces.

Well, Mary, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. I am assuming folks are going to be clicking in droves to go preorder Towel, but tell us what we can do and how we can support your work.

Mary

You can go to wearetowel.com and you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at We Are Towel. Our preorders are live right now and your towels are going to be shipping this fall. It’s a little bit of a wait, but I think it’s absolutely worth it. We also have Shop Pay, which is amazing, so if you find that something is out of your price point, you can also use Shop Pay to pay in installments, which I just think is really helpful.

And stay tuned! Robes are coming and hopefully some more exciting stuff as well. 

Virginia

Oh, my gosh, I’m so excited for all of us with our towels. It’s going to be the coziest thing ever. Thank you, Mary. This was wonderful. 

---

1. From what we can tell, Fat Towel isn’t a fat-owned company and seems to sell straight-sized towels? Bleh.

2. Maddeningly, this jumpsuit seems to have sold out right before publishing, BUT there is a really good buy / sell / trade group for Universal Standard on Facebook.