Tags
bodice, body positive, corset, Journeyman Leather, ohio renaissance festival, Orchard Corset, pirate, Plus size, plus size fashion blog, Renaissance faire, The Swordsmen
Last Saturday, I went to my most favorite place in the world, the Ohio Renaissance Festival! I wait all year to go to that magical place, where trees wear sweaters, men wear tights, and I feel like I belong. It is my paradise, and nothing will ever make me ashamed of it. It was the pirate weekend, and my best friend Amber accompanied me as my first mate.
The first thing we did was watch The Swordsmen perform, and they were absolutely hilarious. They got the audience involved, and made kids cuss. It was great! I know one of us got a picture of them, but I can’t find it, so you’ll just have to make do with this one from the website.
After that, we wandered about the many shops, all the while being serenaded by traveling minstrels, and having adorable men take us by the hand and lead us in to look at their wares. Her most serene majesty Queen Elizabeth was enchanting as usual, and made me want to be a redhead again.
One of my lifelong dreams is to be someone’s muse. For an artist to be inspired by me is just the most incredibly flattering thing I can think of, but I didn’t even think “artist’s muse” was a thing nowdays. But hold, as The Swordsmen say while holding their butts, a renaissance faire is not “nowdays”. I was a muse, you guys!
So there I was, taking the above picture, and this guy comes up to me and says, “You! Come with me!”. Being the kind of person that I am, I started to freak out and asked him what I did. “You’re going to be my sample!”, he gleefully tells me, while pulling me to his shop. Naturally, I thought I was doomed to be some kind of mannequin for his stuff, but no! Turns out, his friend makes amazing leather corsets, and they both fell in love with my corset as soon as they saw me. His friend couldn’t figure out how to make an underbust corset work for fuller figures, but he said he was going to try after seeing how great I looked in mine. So he measured my corset against his, and was incredibly excited to have me there. Now, I’m usually the wallflower type, even though I dress in a rather loud fashion, but I could tell that these men were so passionate about what they do, and in no time I was talking to them like they were my best friends. They wanted to make women feel good about themselves. It wasn’t just about the money for them. They made me feel so important, celebrated even. He said most corsets don’t do curvy women any favors, but I was the the sexiest thing ever! I have never felt like that before, and it was positively intoxicating. I’ve always been “cute”, but never sexy. Not once was there any comment about how it was too hard to make something in a larger size, or “That would look great, if only your boobs, hips, waist, etc. was smaller.”. The corset maker asked me if I could touch my toes while wearing a corset, and I told him I can’t do that anyway because my boobs get in the way, and he got a case of the giggles and said, “Oh, she’s so cute!”. I have never had that much positive attention directed at me before, and I can honestly say it was one of the best moments of my entire life.
Sometimes I think there should be an It Gets Better movement for chubby girls, because it really is true. You just have to find people that make you feel good, and get rid of the ones that don’t. It’s not worth it to stay with people that bring you down, when there are people that will make you feel so wonderful that you cry from happiness when you think about them.
Well, thank you for reading this far. I don’t usually get so into emotional type things, but that was one of those tell-your-grandchildren-about-it moments that I will treasure forever, and I want every single person reading this to know that they are worthy of a thousand moments like that.
Now I’m making myself uncomfortable, so here are some more pictures.
The Ohio Renaissance Festival is every weekend from September until mid October, and I highly recommend it if you live anywhere close. Say hi to the queen for me!