My Body Is Changing — And So Is My Shopping
By Shea Everly
I was twelve or thirteen the first time I cried in a fitting room.
All my friends were picking out cute swimsuits — the kind with thin straps and bright patterns that looked effortless on their bodies. I wanted one so badly. But I was a child in a woman's body, already wearing a C-cup bra, and everything I tried on looked like something my mom would return with an apology. Too revealing. Too grown. Too much for a kid who just wanted to match her friends at the pool.
That fitting room was the first of many. I wish I could say it was the last time I cried over clothes, but that would be a lie.
The decades-long fitting room war
Here's what nobody prepares you for: when your body becomes a source of stress at twelve, your relationship with getting dressed doesn't magically fix itself at twenty. Or thirty. Or forty.
For most of my adult life, I hated shopping for clothes. Hated it. Not in the "ugh, the mall is crowded" way — in the way where my chest tightens walking through the door, where I'm already bracing for disappointment before I've touched a single hanger. Weight went up. Weight came down. Weight drifted back up a little higher each time. Every fluctuation meant a new round of trying things on under fluorescent lights while my brain ran its familiar script about what I should look like versus what I actually do.
And then perimenopause entered the chat, and my body decided to change shape in ways I hadn't even considered. The weight shifts got harder to predict. Clothes that fit last month didn't fit this month. I kept needing new things, which meant I kept being forced back into the experience I'd been avoiding since I was a teenager.
I want to be clear about something: this isn't a weight loss story. I'm not building toward a "and then I finally got thin and loved shopping!" moment. What I'm unlearning — actively, imperfectly, every day — is decades of societal programming that taught me getting dressed and looking pretty were the rent I pay to exist in a world dominated by male wants instead of a woman's needs. That's the real work. The closet is just where it shows up.
The part nobody talks about: when clothes physically hurt
There's another layer to this that I didn't have language for until recently.
I am a highly sensitive person. Not in the "I cry at commercials" sense — though, yes, also that — but in the sensory processing sense. I feel my clothes. All day. Constantly. An itchy tag will ruin everything if I can't cut it out. A waistband that's slightly too tight becomes the only thing I can think about. A fabric that doesn't breathe makes my skin crawl in a way that goes beyond discomfort into something closer to distress.
Surely I'm not the only one throwing clothes and cussing in the closet when I have to figure out what to wear to leave the house.
I recently read that neurotypical brains essentially stop registering the sensation of clothing shortly after getting dressed. They just... forget they're wearing things. I have never once in my life forgotten I was wearing things. (I'm researching the autism and ADHD connections to this — more on that in a future article.)
So my clothing requirements aren't just about style or size. They're about survival. I need soft fabrics. Natural fibers. Nothing tight. Nothing scratchy. Nothing with a tag that feels like a tiny act of violence against the back of my neck.
Here's what my actual wardrobe looks like, and I'm not even a little embarrassed about it: Nighttime jammies are what I sleep in. Shorts and baggy t-shirts because, ya know, I'm hot. And during the day, loose lounge pants with a baggy hoodie because sometimes I can't stand the feel of air touching my skin. It's a whole thing. I work from home. Nobody is asking me to put on real pants, and I have chosen to respect that.
Once I find something that works — a fabric that doesn't make me want to crawl out of my skin, a fit that lets me breathe — I want it in every color. Getting dressed should be the easiest decision of my day, not the hardest.
And then: perimenopause in a southern summer
Let me paint you a picture. It's July in the South. It's 97 degrees with humidity that feels like wearing a hot, wet blanket. You are already a person who runs warm, who is sensitive to fabric, who hates feeling constricted.
And now you're having hot flashes.
The clothing situation goes from "I prefer comfort" to "if this polyester blend touches my skin one more second I will set it on fire." Natural fabrics aren't a preference anymore — they're a medical necessity. Cotton. Linen. Bamboo. Things that breathe, that wick, that don't trap heat against skin that is already generating enough heat to power a small city.
Finding those fabrics in my size, in styles that don't make me feel like I'm cosplaying as someone's idea of a "woman of a certain age," at prices that don't make me cry for a different reason? That used to feel impossible.
Used to.
The thing that actually changed everything
About four years ago, a friend mentioned thredUP — an online secondhand clothing store — and I figured I'd try it. I was skeptical. Shopping online for clothes felt like adding another layer of frustration to an already miserable process.
I was wrong. Spectacularly, life-changingly wrong.
Here's what thredUP let me do that no store ever had: I set my exact filters. My size. My preferred brands — the ones I already knew worked for my body and my sensory needs. The specific type of clothing I was looking for. Natural fabrics. And then I just... searched. From my couch. In my lounge pants. With no fluorescent lighting, no fitting room mirrors, and no one watching.
And it's not just clothes — they carry shoes, handbags, and accessories too. So when I need a pair of sandals that won't make my feet sweat in a southern summer or a bag that actually fits my life, it's the same process. Filter. Search. Add to cart. Done.
When something arrived and didn't work? I sent it back. No tears. No shame spiral. Just a return label and a try-again.
When something arrived and did work? I went back and searched for it in three more colors.
That was four years ago. Today, about ninety percent of my wardrobe comes from thredUP. That is not an exaggeration. It is a fact that would have been unthinkable to the girl crying in a fitting room at twelve — that getting dressed could feel this easy, this low-stakes, this much like something I'm in control of.
And the clothes I've outgrown or worn out? They don't go in the trash. thredUP sends you a Clean Out Kit — a prepaid bag you fill with the stuff you're done with and send back. They resell what they can, and you get credit or cash. So the cycle keeps going: someone else gets to wear the things that no longer fit my changing body, and nothing ends up in a landfill if it doesn't have to. It's the opposite of everything the fast fashion industry taught us to do.
The values part (because it always matters here)
I'd love thredUP even if it were just about convenience and comfort. But it's also about something bigger, and if you've been around That's Just Peri for any amount of time, you know I can't recommend something without telling you why it matters beyond my own closet.
Here's a number that made me genuinely angry the first time I read it: the average American throws away about 82 pounds of clothing per year. One garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every single second. Can you believe that? The fast fashion industry is one of the largest polluters on the planet, and it runs on convincing us — especially women — that we need to keep buying new things to keep up.
No. I'm done contributing to that.
Buying secondhand means clothes that already exist get worn again instead of ending up in a landfill. It means I'm not funding the fast fashion machine that profits from making women feel like last season's body is a problem to solve. It means my money goes further, my closet is full of things I actually love, and I'm not participating in an industry that treats both garment workers and the environment as disposable.
That alignment — between what feels good on my body, what feels good for my wallet, and what feels good for the world — is rare. When I find it, I hold on.
Who this is actually for
If you're reading this and thinking that's me — the fitting room dread, the sensory overwhelm, the body that keeps changing, the exhaustion of trying to keep up — I want you to know something.
You are not hard to dress. You are not too picky. You are not "difficult." You are a person with a body that has needs, and you deserve to meet those needs without it feeling like punishment.
thredUP didn't fix my relationship with my body. That work is ongoing, and it's mine to do. But it removed one of the biggest sources of friction in my daily life — the act of getting dressed — and replaced it with something that actually works for me. On my terms. In my size. In fabrics that don't make me want to scream.
If that resonates, I'll leave a link below. And if you end up in your own oversized hoodie and lounge pants scrolling for soft cotton tees at midnight — welcome to the club. We have very comfortable seating.
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