The robe that almost broke me
On fat-shaming hotel robes, chasing Catskill waterfalls, and the radical act of loving the body you hiked in.
Why is it so damn hard for spas and hotels to provide robes that actually fit?
I’m coming off of a long weekend in the Catskills, which was everything I would want in a springtime escape—brisk, at times, downright chilly breezes, showers and sunshine, and absolutely green everywhere, mosses and ferns and rolling hills and trees. And not Central Texas green, which is mostly a drab brownish-green, colored by our scrubby Cedar trees. In the Catskills, and really all the way from the mountains to NYC, everything was a bright crisp green. The kind of green that seems unreal no matter the backdrop.
We stayed at Piaule, which bills itself as a modern “landscape hotel.” It is landscape forward, though the hotel bit seems like a stretch. It’s 24 tiny cabins, each with a glass wall that allows in these spectacular forest views and the aforementioned magnificent green. I can’t imagine anything more magical, except the same view in fall, with the changing leaves, or in winter, covered in snow. I guess it’s pretty perfect all the time.
Minus the whole reason for going, a concert in Brooklyn, our stay was centered on nature. We spent most of our days hiking. We walked the grounds of Opus 40, a one-man marvel made of layers upon layers of carefully stacked bluestones, tromped through muddy forest trails to rocky outcrops, and stumbled onto a lush boardwalk leading to a hidden lighthouse at sunset in Saugerties. Even the drives along the country roads through the tiny villages were spectacular. It all felt magical.
But Kaaterskill Falls was the real show stopper.
Of course, we were going to see the tallest waterfall in New York. We approached it first from the observation deck at the top, and then made our way down to the middle, then the bottom and back up all 260 feet. It reminded me a lot of our trek up Multnomah Falls in Oregon, a hike early in my diet recovery days, when I was still actively warring with my new body and used that hike as a game of comparison, where I was the big failure.
This time, there was none of that.
We hiked down first, so I had a good idea of what awaited me on the trek back up. Unlike Multnomah, which was a series of tight, steep switchbacks all the way to the top, this one was made mostly of winding steps. My right hip was angry by the time I made it back to the top, but no part of me was at war with my body or my fitness.
And hell yes, I was winded from the climb and had to stop periodically. But I’m in a different state with myself these days. There is so much less judgment. The old, ironically smaller, me would have blamed my fatness for all the huffing and puffing. I’m so much gentler with myself now.
We live in a culture that praises extreme thinness as “fitness,” to a level we’ve never seen before. Just look at the way media outlets have fawned over Demi Moore’s visibly gaunt arms these last few weeks, touting them as “toned.” It’s absolutely bonkers. With so much glorification on this level of thinness, it’s hard not to absorb these as the “new ideals.” It’s a game of active resistance.
Despite the external madness, I’ve never been so zen about my fitness.
It’s not good or bad. All or nothing. Fit or not fit. I’ve finally gotten to a place of understanding, that fitness exists on a spectrum, and I’m not deficient or somehow failing at life when I’m “less fit.” I’m also not in some desperately mad scramble to get back to some crazy ideal, which let’s be real, was never and will never be, attainable for someone who’s basically a linebacker in a woman’s body.
Now, I look back at my life and see that I’ve had periods when I was incredibly fit, and especially strong, and times when I was less so. Fitness ebbs and flows, according to the demands and priorities of life. There’s no mad scramble to get back to “that place.” Midlife me has her priorities straight.
Like at home, where I’m rebuilding my cardio base for mountain biking so I can keep up with my favorite “fasties” by the time our summer Ride Like a Girl series begins. This requires a solid three rides a week, at least one of which is in the afternoon heat. Some weeks, it’s hard to achieve. And that’s it. No judgment.
I was feeling pretty good with myself on our hikes, because my fat fit ass (I use fat here as a neutral descriptor) was mostly keeping up with my husband, who’s got six inches on me and spent the last two weeks in Utah at “fitness camp,” where every morning starts with a three-hour hike.
We chase waterfalls a lot, mostly because my husband’s really into them. If there’s a waterfall, this pisces man wants to be near them, behind them, underneath them. Really, I’ve never seen someone who gets more excited about being pounded by crushing water. He was absolutely delighted by the middle section of the falls, which you could carefully scramble your way around so you could stare at the world from behind the waterfall.
There is something perspective-shifting about reaching a vantage point few people will ever see. Most people choose the easiest path to the payoff. With a little more effort, and sometimes more risk, you get a view that stays with you.
And there’s power in knowing your body allowed you to experience it. I’ve always been in awe of not just what the human body could accomplish, but what my body could accomplish. It’s just that, for most of my life, that awe came with an asterisk.
“If only you were thinner …”
I have so much more respect for my body now than I ever did when I was smaller and constantly attempting to shrink myself. And as an older person, currently plagued by an Achilles injury and staring down the prospect of surgery, there’s an understanding that this body is precious in a way that I didn’t feel before.
And I have real anger about how much of my life I wasted in these silly battles and mind games and futile quests to make my body into something it was never meant to be. And if all I had to do was live with and love and accept my body, with no external interference, I would be healed.
But I’m still living in a world not made for my body. No matter how at peace I am with myself, I’m still reminded of all the ways my body doesn’t fit.
Like the stupid hotel robe.
I forgot my swimsuit on this trip. I normally never leave packing until right before we head out the door, but we attended a dinner party the night before with lovely friends who go all out on hosting, so we spent the evening being wined and dined in their backyard dining nook and caught a super early flight that required waking up in the 4 o’clock hour to pack.
I wasn’t surprised that the hotel didn’t have a swimsuit that fit me. I expected it. Especially in a place like Piaule. What it called “the gift shop” was a few T-shirts and the soap used in the cabins for sale at the check-in desk. They did have swimsuits, tucked in a drawer, all the same black, athletic one-pieces, organized in tiny plastic bins by size. I give them credit for just having an XL bin. Sadly, there were no bathing suits in it though. Que sera. I made do with a sports bra and a pair of my husband’s swim trunks.
But for some reason, this time, the robe situation really set me off.
Our cabin came with two, one for each of us. I didn’t bother looking at the sizes, because robe sizing exists in its own dimension, completely untethered from standard sizing. Of course, it looked too small, but I slipped it on and could immediately tell by how high the arm holes hit that it was a no-go. But I kept going, because I like a laugh at my own expense, and actually got it on. It would not close. I tried the whole just pull it tighter, as if my body could be packed down like a mattress in a vacuum bag, but there was no give. I didn’t bother checking the other robe right away, because it was going to piss me off if the other was bigger, and this was the “woman’s robe.”
After my husband and I got out of the heated pool one night and faced the prospect of walking back to our cabin cold and wet, I asked one of the workers (the same guy who helped me with the swimsuit) if there was a larger robe. Like an XL or something. He came back with a waffle robe that looked slightly bigger than the ones in the room, but still nowhere near big enough.
Thankfully, this one had stretch! It wasn’t remotely robe-size roomy, but it was just enough to cover my major bits.
I shuffled back to my cabin chafed that this was the best they could do, but when I got back to the room, I looked at the size tag and it said XXL.
In another life this would have been the trigger that sent me spiraling into a new wave of self-loathing and active restriction if I wasn’t already in full-on diet mode. It never would have occurred to me that something was wrong with the robe. That it was horribly mis-sized or cheaply made or just defective. I would have just immediately blamed myself as the problem.
And this time, I was also like, what the fuck, I’m not that fucking big. I’m on the edge of plus-size. What about people who are larger than me? What are the men at this place wearing? Not the robes! For a hot minute, I envisioned a new purpose in life: crusading for size-inclusive hotel robes.
I made my husband try on the robe. It fit him better than me, but still not robe cozy. I finally worked up the nerve to check the other robe in the room. It was also a S-M.
I felt vindicated.
Most men would say what’s the big deal? So the robe doesn’t fit? I’ve said it myself a million times. But it’s this kind of shit that eats away at women. These seemingly little size slights that no one would say actually make any kind of meaningful difference.
But they do.
Collectively, they add up to one message: you do not fit in this space.
You can do all the things. You can hike the mountain, climb the stairs, keep pace all weekend long, but if your body doesn’t fit, it really doesn’t matter.
A few years ago, I might have let that feeling define the entire trip. To be fair, sometimes I still have trouble shaking it.
But that wasn’t the feeling that permeated this one.
It was mostly one of gratitude, to be grounded by this level of nature and beauty.
But it was also one of longing, of a different kind.
We travel to these beautiful places, and it all feels so fleeting, like I’m trying to absorb as much of it as I can before returning to a world that feels increasingly hostile: to bodies like mine, to aging, to softness, to anyone who don’t neatly conform.
And maybe that’s why the moments stay with me. Not because they are beautiful, but because there’s more appreciation for the thing that allowed me to do it.
For so long, I thought my body existed primarily as something to shrink. Now, more and more, I see it as the thing that allows me to experience the beauty in this world.
I’d love to hear what you think. Has your appreciation for your body gotten better as you age? Are you feeling more pressure? Less? How do you escape it?