Trigger Warning
This piece addresses body image, disordered eating, and chronic illness. If you find this subject triggering, please take care of yourself and consider stepping away or reaching out to a friend or professional.
They tell you shopping is supposed to be fun. That it’s a little indulgence, an hour of escaping, the comfortable clack of hangers and the soft light of a dressing room where you can try on a version of yourself you like a little better. I go in thinking that. I leave with a tag in my hand and a knot behind my ribs that doesn’t belong to the outfit.
There are two invisible things that show up with me: one is loud and internal — the eating disorder that whispers measures, deadlines on how close I am to failing. The other sits under my shirt, visible through shape and silence — the pump’s faint bulge, the adhesive of a sensor, the small plastic piece that keeps me alive and reminds me that bodies are complicated machines.
Trying on clothes when both of those things living in your body is a practice in negotiation. With myself. With seams. With devices and a condition I didn’t choose to have and rules I didn’t write.
I know exactly how I look in mirrors now. I can list the parts I am ashamed of before the fabric even touches my skin. That voice — the one that counts and judges — lives like a roommate that never pays rent. It argues that a dress will make me look too soft, too visible, too… human. It counts calories in the pleats. It measures the circumference of hips the way other people measure cup size. Dressing rooms amplifiers that voice because the light is honest, and the mirrors do not lie the way my head lies.
They say dresses are effortless “Just throw one on and you’re done.”
That’s the pitch — soft fabric, a single zipper or stretch of elastic, and suddenly you’re “put together.” For me, the idea of a dress is intoxicating: easy, pretty, forgiving, powerful. The reality? It’s a battlefield between my body, my brain, and the little machines keeping me alive.
Jeans, at least, give me somewhere to clip a pump. A waistband to anchor tubing. A pocket to hide something that doesn’t belong in glossy fashion spreads. Dresses are… blank. Smooth fabric, no obvious anchor points, no real hiding places. Where do you put the pump? Where do you route the tubing? How do you sit down without tugging at an infusion set that already feels raw on your skin?
I’ve tried so many “solutions”:
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Strapping the pump to my thigh with a band. But then I’m hyper-aware of it shifting every time I walk, terrified the bulge is obvious.
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Clipping it to underwear or tights. That works until you need to use the bathroom, and then it becomes a juggling act that no one talks about.
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Carrying it in a bra. Which can work with certain necklines… but not with the sundress I want to wear to a friend’s wedding. And not without feeling like a wire box is pressing into my ribs.
Every option feels like a compromise — a choice between dignity, convenience, and invisibility.
There are so many things to think about when your shopping for clothing and wearing diabetes technology, as well as having a Eating Disorder. There’s the pump, the sensor, the tape that insists on sticking to skin that’s already tired of being examined.
There’s a logistical choreography I never expected to learn: which bras hide the tubing, which waistbands won’t slide under a site, where pockets won’t press on a transmitter. A zipper in the wrong place is not just annoying — it can be a panic trigger. Is there space to clip the pump? Will the sensor be pressed into an uncomfortable angle? Will a tight waistband dig into it and send my blood glucose careening? These are not theoretical questions. They are daily risk and daily negotiation that turn a trip to the shops into an hour of planning a small evacuation.
I’ve tried to be stealthy. I’ve tried to be brave. I have also cried in dressing rooms with a dress pooled around my ankles, a little soundless thing behind a curtain. Sometimes I cry because nothing fits. Sometimes I cry because something fits and my brain says I don’t deserve it. Sometimes i cry because something so simple for other people is an exhausting equation for my brain and sometimes I cry because the pump feels like proof that my body is constantly under repair and therefore not whole, not beautiful in the way advertising teaches us beauty should be.
But there are also small, fierce victories. The bra that has a soft seam but still holds; the dress with a seam that hides a sensor perfectly; the cardigan whose pocket is shallow but exactly deep enough to cradle a pump without pinching. Those moments are tiny reliefs, like finding spare change in a coat pocket when you needed coffee. They are also reminders: my priorities are not always the same as fashion’s. Function is a kind of beauty, and safety is a kind of dignity.
These are not the questions magazines prepare you for when they show “the 10 summer dresses you need this year.”
People sometimes say: “Just wear leggings under the dress and clip your pump there.” Or “Just use a crossbody bag and keep it in there.” Those aren’t terrible ideas — I’ve done both — but they turn the ease of a dress into something complicated and layered. What’s supposed to be “throw it on and go” becomes “layer leggings, adjust tubing, pack a bag, tape everything down.”
It kills the magic. It kills the simplicity. It kills that fantasy moment of spinning in a dress and just feeling light.
And then there’s the bathroom issue.
Have you ever tried to wrangle a pump from under a dress in a public stall? Tugging, untangling, making sure you don’t drop it in the toilet — all while trying not to cry or laugh bitterly at how ridiculous this routine has become? It’s exhausting. It makes me want to give up before I even leave the house.
There is the emotional weight too also consider. Sometimes I wonder if this is why so many of my clothes stay in the closet, tags still on. Not because I don’t like them, but because they feel like a fight waiting to happen. My eating disorder tells me my body doesn’t deserve them. My diabetes tech tells me my body doesn’t fit them. And I tell myself I don’t have the energy to argue with both voices at once.
But the longing doesn’t go away. I see friends in beautiful clothing that i wish i could wear, and I ache. Not because I want to look exactly like them — but because I want that feeling of ease. That casual “I just put this on” freedom. That’s the part chronic illness and eating disorders steal first: ease.
There are, though, tiny wins I hold onto like pearls:
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A dress with hidden side pockets deep enough to cradle the pump safely.
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A loose linen maxi that hides tubing so well it feels like a secret between me and the fabric.
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A wedding where I danced all night and the sensor stayed put, and for once, I didn’t care if anyone noticed the bulge under my dress.
These wins don’t erase the struggle, but they soften it. They remind me that clothes can be effortless, they don’t have to be impossible.
If you are also somewhere in this intersection — of body shame and life-saving technology — know this: you are not the problem. The store layouts weren’t designed for us, and fashion has rarely been gentle to bodies that do not adhere to its narrow scripts. That does not mean we disappear. It simply means we learn new rules. We learn to ask for wider fitting rooms, to try clothes over gentle layers, to inquire if staff can fetch another size so we don’t have to do the whole strip-on-strip-off thing while fragile. We learn to carry tape and a small pouch of supplies like secret armour. We learn where the seams can be our friends.
And yes, there’s fear. There is fear that someone will see, that someone will ask. There’s fear that my vulnerability will be met with cruelty or ignorance. Sometimes a sales assistant will be kind; sometimes the world will be unkind. Mostly, we learn to be our own advocate in the moments when no one else knows to.
I wish designers thought about bodies like mine when they made clothes. Pockets aren’t just a quirky trend — they’re survival tools. Flexible seams aren’t just comfort — they’re accessibility. Longer hemlines aren’t just style — they mean tubing can move freely without tangling.
Mostly, I wish someone told me: you don’t have to choose between beauty and practicality. You can be both. A pump on your thigh doesn’t cancel out the glow of your smile in that mirror. A sensor patch on your arm doesn’t make the dress less yours.
Shopping is not a medical procedure, yet it becomes a management task. I schedule a short grace before I go: a snack that’s safe, a deep breath, a phone with a playlist of songs that make me feel like me. I practice a kind of pre-game pep talk: “You are allowed to want nice things. You deserve to be comfortable. You can take this off if you need to.” It sounds small, but those sentences are stitches in the seam of my day.
I wish the world were easier. I wish dressing rooms had hooks for pumps and soft, private chairs for when your hands shake. I wish sizes were stories and not sentences. Until that day, I fold dignity into my purse like bandages — discreet, practical, necessary. I will not let my equipment be an apology.
If this is your story too, here are a few things I’ve learned — practical and tender:
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Bring a small supplies bag: tape, spare adhesive, and a zip bag to protect devices from accidental spills.
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Try clothes over a thin base layer if you need to avoid exposing sites but still want to check fit.
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Look for high waistbands or side pockets if you need space for a pump; loose knit tops can hide tubing without compressing.
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Don’t be afraid to ask for help in stores — a larger dressing room, a different size, or someone to hold clothes while you put them on.
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Have a breathing technique or quick grounding phrase ready for when the voice becomes loud.
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Celebrate the small wins. They are not small.
I am learning to make peace with the fact that my body is a map marked with medical history, with tenderness and utility. The pump is not a shame; it is a conversation. The sensor is not a scar; it is survival. And the eating disorder? It is a thief in the night. It will try to steal the pleasure of a new shirt, the way light makes a collar glow, the way fabric can feel like a promise. But I am working on reclaiming those small promises.
We deserve to walk into stores and see ourselves reflected honestly — not just the polished versions that magazines sell — but the whole, messy, complicated selves who are doing the work of living. We deserve pockets that fit our equipment and mirrors that do not ask us to apologise for being here.
So yes, the dressing room will still be a battleground some days. But there will also be days when I spin in front of the mirror and laugh — a real laugh — because the dress fits and the pump tucks away and my voice for once is quiet. Those days are worth every second of the chaotic, charged hours that came before. They are proof that there is space for us, that we can take up space, that fashion can meet function and tenderness at the seam.
The trouble with clothing is real — and so is the grief. But slowly, painfully, stubbornly, I am learning that I get to decide what beauty looks like on me. It might mean tucking a pump into a makeshift pocket, or layering leggings under chiffon, or taping tubing in place before a night out. It might mean crying in the fitting room, then trying again next week.
It might mean reclaiming clothing, even if it isn’t effortless, even if it takes work.
Because my body — messy, wired, patched, argued-over — still deserves to spin.
