I’m a size 24 and Lottie’s a size 12 – being fat shouldn’t change how you dress
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past decade you’ll be aware that Britain has an obesity problem. Two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese according to the latest NHS Health Survey for England, published in December 2022, with an estimated annual cost to the NHS of £6.1 billion. We are constantly lectured by health experts that it is our consumption of unhealthy fare such as ultra-processed and junk foods and lack of exercise that is feeding this epidemic and that we must change our habits. Of course we all agree, yet our high streets are packed with tempting fast-food outlets and we don’t even have to leave our homes to tuck into takeaway pizza and any other food we fancy.
We know what a negative effect fat-shaming can have on an overweight person – research by University College London found that weight discrimination makes people eat more to compensate for the stress of being picked on. But sadly this hasn’t stopped the barrage of fat-shaming abuse overweight people have to face both online and in person. Add into the mix the stampede for weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, heralded as a “miracle” cure for the obese, and it’s a lot to navigate for those who struggle with their weight.
Laura Adlington and Lottie Drynan are trying to make sense of society’s contradictory messaging. The friends are no strangers to poor body-image issues. Adlington, 35, and a dress size 24, was a finalist in 2020 on Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off, founded an award-winning podcast, Go Love Yourself, and is the author of a book called Diet Starts Monday, a guide to body acceptance in a looks-obsessed world. Drynan, 32, is a former size 6 bulimic and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) sufferer with yo-yo weight and bloating problems described in her blog The Tummy Diaries.
Aghast at fat-shaming, the friends decided to show women that being a bigger size does not mean having to lead a smaller life. In 2021, they started Same Dress Different Bodies on Instagram, in which they try on and discuss a variety of identical outfits to illustrate to followers that clothes can look good on any body shape and size. They also hold confidence and fashion makeover events across the country. With more than one million online followers and a sell-out, pilot stage version of Same Dress Different Bodies in June 2024, the pair will be bringing their live show to the London Palladium in March.
Here, they tell us about their campaign to help women feel good about themselves whatever their size.
Why start Same Dress Different Bodies?
Lottie: It’s about instilling confidence, an “unlearning” of those rules for bigger bodies we grew up with like you can’t wear horizontal stripes, you have to wear black, you have to wear Spanx. Black leggings and a black, oversized top is a universal uniform for women who don’t like their bodies. When I had my eating disorder I was extremely skinny but I’d wear that uniform because I still hated my body.
Laura: I thought it would be a fun way to show people that you don’t have to be a certain size to look and feel good in nice clothes. That’s what we’re all about. We’ve grown up being told the whole point of dressing is to make you look smaller. That’s what we’re fighting against. We want to inspire women to feel better in what they’re wearing and how they feel about themselves.
Are you excusing being overweight and obese?
Laura: One of the things I struggle with is when people say “you’re promoting obesity”. That’s not what we’re about, we’re just saying don’t live a small life just because you’re bigger or have got insecurities. Research shows that weight stigma has more of an effect on your health and wellbeing than the extra weight itself. Lottie and I have been there, done that, got the T-shirt but yes, we’re still works in progress because we should all try to be the healthiest version of ourselves we can be. The diet culture has a focus on weight and appearance rather than health anyway.
What sort of women are you appealing to?
Lottie: Women from 25 to 60 but predominantly 30 to 40-year-olds who have grown up with fad diets and television fashion shows and magazines with women’s bodies circled and cellulite highlighted and showing how we weren’t allowed any wobbles. Followers tell us “this is healing my soul from all those 1990s and noughties shows”.
What is the fashion industry’s attitude to bigger women?
Laura: It mostly excludes them.
Lottie: What’s opened my eyes is that when we go to the high street or shop online it’s rare to find anything to fit both of us.
Laura: Asos started its Curve range in 2010 and other brands like Simply Be, Next, Sainsbury’s Tu, FatFace have slowly started to expand but it’s still not brilliant and choice is limited in-store. A lot of brands stop at size 18 or 22 so I’m cut out of those, or they’re just plus size and don’t do Lottie’s size 12-14. It’s crazy because if the average UK woman is a size 16, surely you’d have as many above that as below. I want to be able to go out and try things on like everybody else does. We keep hearing the high street is in trouble, maybe if shops catered for more women it wouldn’t be.
Lottie: Why shouldn’t you be able to go and pick up your bunch of bananas and a T-shirt on the way? Your money is just as worthy as a size 8’s.
Is our diet culture also to blame?
Lottie: Yes. We’ve grown up thinking we must conform to trends. One minute you’re told you’ve got to have an hourglass figure, the next you need to be wafer thin. I was bulimic until I was 28 because I felt I had to be skinny for my body to be acceptable and loved. I always wanted to be petite though I’m not built like that. I tried my hardest and nearly killed myself for it and still didn’t fit society’s perfect body.
Laura: My mum was constantly trying the latest fad diet and trying to get me to do that too. I was 11 when I went to Slimming World which messed up my relationship with food because I was taught certain foods were sinful so I yo-yo dieted. I’d lose weight, feel really good and imagine what my life would be like when I was smaller – Laura version 2 will wear nice clothes, won’t live in black, have great boyfriends, loads of friends. After a week or two the restriction was too much and I’d binge and be back where I started.
Lottie: Some 95 per cent of diets fail because as soon as you eat normally again you put the weight back on. The diet industry wants you to fail because if it works they make no money.
What would you say to women who want to be a size 10?
Laura: Women get too hung up on the size on the label and correlate that with their worth as a human being and a woman.
Lottie: It’s about the confidence an outfit gives you and how it makes you feel, size has no part in it. I’ve been a size 6 and I hated myself. Now I know that being a certain size doesn’t equal happiness and it definitely doesn’t equal health because I couldn’t have run a marathon when I was size 6 but I ran two as size 12-14.
What is your idea of body positivity?
Laura: That you can have fun with fashion and deserve to look and feel good in clothes. On Bake Off you’d probably have described me as bubbly but that was performative. Growing up fat, you overcompensate. You try to be “the fat funny one” or “the fat caring one” – the good fatty. As I’ve got more comfortable in my skin I don’t feel the need to do that.
Lottie: You deserve to feel confident in your body no matter your age, size or shape. You can’t hate yourself into a different shaped body. Some clothes suit me more, some Laura, and some suit us both. We have different styles – I like bright colours, girlie things, whereas Laura likes simple, elegant clothes – but now we’ll dress in ways we wouldn’t have had the confidence to do before. Laura didn’t think she’d be wearing a pink, frilly dress for our SDDB pilot, she’d never have picked it three years ago.
Laura: No, never. But I loved wearing it. Lottie is a great one for dressing for joy and that’s rubbed off on me.
Lottie: And Laura will pick something I’d never have thought would suit me. Like a fitted, sequin skirt I’d never have chosen because I’d think it’s going to show my tummy, but I loved it.
Who are your role models?
Lottie: My two-year-old daughter Pennie because when she wakes up she doesn’t care about anybody else’s opinion. She’s not affected by the outside world and will choose what she wants out of her little wardrobe that’ll be comfortable and bring her joy.
Laura: When I’m having a confidence wobble I look to people like Lizzo because she’s in a bigger body and exudes confidence and sexuality. Also, Aubrey Gordon, a fat activist in the US. She’s written books about what it’s like to be in a bigger body and pushes against the stereotype.
Why do people find it so hard to lose weight?
Laura: There are many reasons. One is socio-economic, it’s hard to eat nutritiously.
Lottie: The other day my husband Ross got a healthy chicken wrap and bottle of water for £15: you can get a triple burger, cola and chips for £5.
Laura: Processed foods play a massive role because they’re highly addictive; we should look at the inundation of fast food restaurants on our doorsteps. The other big one, which I feel passionately about, is that we don’t address the underlying issues. More needs to be done to understand the emotional and psychological reasons why we overeat.
Lottie: It’s about food noise. A constant buzz in your head saying “you need to eat, you need to eat”. That’s not all I think about now because my eating disorder is cured with support from Ross but when you have food noise it’s “when is my next meal going to be, what am I going to have, where am I going to get it from”?
What do you make of fat-shaming?
Laura: I take issue with media reporting on people with bigger bodies that paints a stereotype of them being fat and lazy. I’ve had to overcompensate all my life and actually I’m intelligent and don’t need people to think I’m stupid because of my size. We get beaten with a stick, everything’s our fault. When people say “eat less and move more” we know that but for people like me, it’s the hardest thing in the world. Food is my best friend and worst enemy. I think about food a lot, I don’t know why. I swim and do Zumba, but we’re labelled as a moral failing and a drain on the NHS.
Lottie: When I was tiny I was taking up NHS time because I was constantly ill with my gut. I didn’t exercise because I was too frail but I wasn’t branded as lazy. Society says fat people should exercise more, but when Nike launched plus-size mannequins here [in 2019] there was uproar: how dare they show a woman – who was probably size 16 – in workout gear. We want fat people to exercise yet laugh at them or won’t make clothes that fit them. Is it that we want a secret underground gym for people over size 16?
Are weight-loss drugs the answer?
Laura: I can see they’re beneficial for people who like me have struggled to get their weight down and who’ve never been able to quieten that food noise. I still battle with that. Why I wouldn’t take them though is because it’s akin to a fad diet: when you stop taking them you put the weight back on.
Lottie: Drugs don’t change our brain chemistry. The noise quietens but it doesn’t cure that relationship with food or the socio-economic factors that have got you to where you need a drug. It’s the same with exercise. You shouldn’t exercise because you hate your body. When I was told to exercise to burn calories and earn my food I didn’t enjoy it. Now I exercise because I respect my body and mind and want to look after them. Running makes me feel good because it releases endorphins, quietens my brain, and makes me stronger. It’s not to earn my pizza.
What is the answer?
Laura: Help for people who want to get a grip on overeating. Us being called a burden on the NHS frustrates me because it’s hard to be a burden on a healthcare system that doesn’t really include you in the first place.
‘Same Dress Different Bodies’ is on March 23, 2pm, at the London Palladium. Tickets: LW Theatres; 0203 925 2998
