Gasp! Average size models at Fashion Week
Image by bloomsberries via Flickr
Excuse me for showing some pride in my current country of residence, but Canadian designer Mark Fast put average-sized women in super-clingy knits at this week’s Fashion Week in London. Gasp!
“I think it’s time really,” Fast said in a telephone interview with CBC News. “There’s such beauty out there and it’s unfortunate that it’s only representative in one size … so it’s just a new celebration of all women.”
The good news is, Naomi Campbell approved:
“If the girl’s beautiful and she can model, why not?”
The bad news is that Fast’s stylist walked off rather than help such a scandal take place.
London Fashion Week abuzz over larger models.
The other news is that we can no longer ignore the relationship between the idealized images we consume as models and movie stars and how damn bad we feel about our own bodies. There’s a huge amount of research at this point that shows a correlation between consuming images of extremely thin models and feeling dissatisfied with your own body.
Most girls feel dissatisfied with their bodies by 5th grade. The more women’s and fashion magazines girls read (i.e. the more models they look at), the worse they feel about themselves and the more likely they are to want to diet. Actually, this same study has been repeated on all sorts of people- older people, men, straight, gay, etc. at Bristol, England’s Centre for Appearance Research and guess what? We all feel worse about ourselves if we look at the extremely thin models who grace the pages of these things.
That’s a good thing for the advertisers, right? “Look at me, I’m perfect and skinny and I use this toothpaste and if you would just buy this toothpaste, you might be skinny and perfect too” is how advertising works. It makes us feel insecure about ourselves, creates artificial needs for consumption, and so we buy it.
Perhaps the relationship between beauty, femininity, advertising, and transformation is best summed up by artist Nichola Constantino’s 2005 work, “Savon de corps. ” Constantino literally means BODY soap since she used 3% of her own body fat obtained from a liposuction procedure to make torso shaped, flesh-colored bars of soap. She also constructed an advertisement for the soap using herself as a model to underline the fact that when we buy a product we are actually consuming the image of the person selling it. What Constantino offers with her soap is the opportunity to consume not just her image, but her actual body.
What Fast is offering with his fashion is the opportunity to want to consume women who look like us. A desire for ourselves. It is a radical move, and one that might help Fast sell more clothes. But without selling us a body never achieved but always promised just around the corner if only we buy this product, how will consumer capitalism continue to work?
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I hear you and guess you must be right. But I still don’t quite believe that everyone everywhere is so gullible and so tied to consumer culture that airbrushed, photoshopped anorexic people are supposed to be our (only) role models for beauty. Hello, they are fake. Real people eat food. Real people do not have hipbones sticking out like table corners.
People whose political views we find abhorrent, on whatever side, we tune OUT. Ignore ‘em and they lose their power. I don’t run around thinking “OMG, I should really get behind death panels, what was I thinking?” because a ton of people are shouting that this is The Truth. I know better and have the strength of convictions. Why is “beauty” so totally different?
Surely anyone over the age of…12?…25? can think for themselves and, while enjoying the amusing spectacle, and terrific creativity, of $2,000 designer shoes, dresses and handbags, know it’s all about as real, or worth emulating, as a Disney cartoon. No? I don’t look at Nadia Vodianova or Kate Moss and think “Yeah, I can be just like her.” Get serious.
Do you really think people are so gullible? And why is that? Lack of imagination? Lack of self-confidence?
Caitlin Kelly, just a reminder: your skirt length, your slacks, your makeup, your hairstyle — are they not “in” fashion? You’re influenced as much as anyone, and some, sure, are influenced more, but high horses really amount to blaming the victim here … IMO.
In response to another comment. See in context »It has to do with the amount of exposure- so probably you don’t spend most of your time reading Cosmo or Elle, right? But these studies are interesting: they sit you down and measure your body image, anxiety, feelings of self worth– then they show a control group ads without humans and the experimental group ads with models in them- and the ones who see models ALL have decreases in self worth and increase in anxiety, etc.
In response to another comment. See in context »Why? Dunno. Maybe because we all know that those forms are considered beautiful and a size 12 is a “fat cow”? If we didn’t value human skeletons as beautiful then they would lose their hold on us, I guess.
Laurie Essig — That we’re still battling over whether sizes 12 and 14 are appropriate for women is beyond my understanding. And talking about understanding: I don’t get the whole paragraph on Nichola Constantino’s “Savon de corps” (bizarre). Was it a “shove it” message? A wake up call? What?
I think Constantino was just commenting on our notions of commercialized beauty- kinda gross to get lipo and then make soap, but interesting “art” nonetheless.
In response to another comment. See in context »Actually, I read all the women’s fashion mags but WWD and Cosmo, even British Vogue on occasion. Which is why, given your own incisive nature, I don’t get why you think (?) the rest of us readers are so credulous.
I look at these magazines as a fun mix of cartoons (i.e. not real), inspiration (how to mix colors, textures and styles) and escapist fun. I certainly don’t look at a coltish 14-year-old model whose insanely long, lean thighs are thinner than my forearm and start to weep in frustration that I do not look like her. I’m nowhere near model size, never have been, and couldn’t care less. As any woman with a brain knows, our bodies do a million more important things than meet some size 0 standard of beauty.
Any girl or woman who give a rip about this truly needs her head examined and needs to get a life. Go to a museum filled with paintings of Rubenesque women with enormous boobs and hips. OMG! Read a book. Volunteer at a hospice where thin-ness means someone is likely about to die soon. That might add a little real-life perspective to this endless, literal, navel-gazing.
Caitlin, I wish I didn’t have to say it, but maybe you’re in the minority on this one (how you think about the content of fashion magazines, runway shows, etc.) I never looked at size 00 models and “wept in frustration” but I did internalize those shapes and figures as “the norm” and even, sometimes, as aspirational. I think that’s how a lot of otherwise smart, confident young women think: they don’t tear out magazine photos and put them on their wall, but they do assume that the images being published are representative of a normal way of looking and a normal shape for one’s body to take. Not to mention that so-called “fitness” magazines publish photos of women running, swimming, biking, etc, with bodies that could *never* support that kind of activity.
The fact is, when I eventually ran my body down to a size 00, I was so sickened by it that I couldn’t look at myself in a mirror. Weird, right? So much for normal. And I’ve seen plenty of Rubenesque museum paintings, I’ve watched grandparents waste away with cancer and I’ve read many a book. But that’s what it took for me to get some real life perspective.
So if magazines and fashion shows can do something as (in my opinion) simple as represent a diverse array of women’s body shapes and sizes, maybe fewer of us would have to go seek that real life perspective somewhere else. We’re inundated with these images, nothing to do about that. So let’s at least make them less destructive.
It’s not what I “think” about “you people” – it’s what research shows about “all of us”- myself included. Although I not a size 0 anymore, I am rarely as big as a size 6- why? Because even at a size 6 I feel “fat”- not because I’m a chump, but because I live in a culture that values thin bodies. It is a nearly universal human trait to imitate those bodies with the most prestige- what anthropologists call “prestigious imitation”. We cannot help ourselves- well, maybe some of us can, but I for one am influenced by media- as is nearly everyone tested by social psychologists. As long as thin bodies have the most prestige and average bodies have low levels of prestige, most of us will want to imitate them.
I clearly need to move to Mars.
I have never ever been a size 6. Maybe my left thigh is a size 6.
I left size 10 behind a long time ago. I’m lucky enough few people would accurately guess my weight because I’m loaded with muscle. Maybe that’s why (excuse me) I don’t give a shit what these skinny models look like — and I can’t believe I am the only adult woman who’s able to tune out this toxicity.
I’ve been a nationally ranked saber fencer, hit to the outfield and scaled a 100-foot rigging 10 times a day on a Tall Ship — all of this first accomplished past the age of 35. So why, given my body’s strength, agility and power, do I care if I am not skinny? It’s like asking a dog why he’s annoyed he can’t sing opera or make an omelette — it’s not something he even cares about! Katie, you’re such a jock. Why would you care?
The only annoyance, and it’s a real PITA, is not being able to buy the most gorgeous clothing in sizes beyond a 10 or 12. That’s where you get punished and made to feel ugly.
Every time I walk down the street in NYC I see women so skinny they look like freaking praying mantises. I want to take ‘em out for a plate of pasta. I get their pitying looks and I find them risible, both these looks and their absurd standards.
I have a relative who spent her entire life doing nothing but focusing on her beauty and expensive clothing, mocking me for my lack of savoir faire, size and lack of style. She died a brutal fast death of cancer; sneering at others’ bodies will do nothing to save your own. Sad but true.
A wise friend told me to find, and date, a Hispanic man who might culturally be more accepting of — let alone enjoy and cherish — my curves. I did and he does.
On behalf of all men, I’d like to say that we are going to stay so far away from this discussion that you couldn’t find us with the Hubble Telescope.
All interesting comments and I have to agree with the Hubble hyperbole.
In response to another comment. See in context »