A size 16 in a size 6 world

Cathy Horyn weighed 190 pounds when she took her first job as a fashion writer.

Still, the question of my fitness was relevant, more than relevant. I couldn't fit into the clothes. I weighed 190 pounds when I arrived in Detroit, which would be my weight four years later when I went to The Washington Post. And if I couldn't fit into the clothes I presumed to know about, what did that do to my credibility as a fashion writer and, eventually, a critic?

Nineteen years later, with her cholesterol at 300, Horyn ditches her unhealthful ways and loses weight.

What led me to think about this and to question, at least retrospectively, my fitness for the job was that in the last eight months, after a decade of slowly inching downward, I have lost about 30 pounds and now weigh 137. For the first time since my early 20's, I can wear a size 8. People in the industry have noticed and complimented me on the change. But the picture wouldn't be clarified until I went to see Andy Port, a friend and editor at The Times Magazine, to ask if she thought there was an article in any of this.

"Oh, definitely," Andy said. "Especially given your job and the way the fashion industry views weight." She added, on the verge of a shriek, "I mean, just think how many times a designer, after getting a bad review from you, said, 'That big fat bitch!' "

...

When I began this course nine months ago, I had no thought of fashion. I did it for reasons of health and because I feared John's words. But when this spring I found that I could fit into clothes from McQueen and Balenciaga, labels that had been off-limits, I had the feeling that a world had opened to me. Before, I had been able to squeeze into size 14, crucially aided by Lycra, but this still put me at a distance from clothes that are constructed, whose style is achieved through line and cut, all values I grasped intellectually.

But standing before a mirror at Barneys in a fitted black wool Balenciaga dress with a hem of navy chiffon while a friend screamed, "Buy it!," I now understood why so many women skirmish like the dawn patrol on sale days.