on questioning the wrong people about fashion design, modeling, and curves
The questioning of what fashion presents as beautiful is - heaven knows! - far from new. It's a little surprising to me that rail thin is still held up as any sort of ideal, but a glance across magazines and television shows that so-thin-her-ribs-are-showing is still the look of choice.
There's logic to it, of sorts - if you believe sizes for models were at one time cut too small, or that it's a matter of draping. Maybe it's 'heroin chic'. Across the decades, the celebration of thin in fashion has been loud and unstopping.
That said, change is a-coming. Vogue banned too-thin models earlier this month. H-M received a lot of positive press for choosing a 'plus sized' model recently. And Abercromie and Fitch has been loudly attacked for its very public limitation to no sizing over 10. And people are talking more and more about the frustrating crazy sizing of women's clothing. As a woman, you can't go from store to store and assume a size 12 or a size medium is going to be consistent. (Women know this. Men may not.) Some of that..creative sizing is known as 'vanity sizing'...which only addresses the 'you really wear a size 12 but we'll call it a size 10 so you feel better about yourself - here, go buy 12 pairs of our pants!' The reasoning for sizing things like women's t-shirts into a size smaller than you'd expect..well, that still escapes me.
But women are growing ever more aware - and vocal - about calling designers on pushing thin as normality.
And, folks? It's backfiring.
I see thin women being harassed for being thin. Not cool. They're told to go eat a burger. They're told they look like men. They're attacked for what, in all the cases I've seen, is their natural body shape - whether it be because of their genetics or because they work very hard on diet/exercise/lifestyle to look they way they do.
It's ok to be thin. Really. Honest and for true.
I also see people that are so ready to be offended by fashion that they attack designers if a thin model is seen wearing their creations...even if there's a wide variety of sizes in the fashion show.
Case in point? MayFaire Moon.
Here's the webiste:
http://www.mayfairemoon.com/
Go on, take a look. You'll see there's a few different models on the home page alone. For those that don't know the beauty of MayFaire Moon, this is Nikki, the owner and creative genius behind those gorgeous corsets. She's curvy and she wears her corsets at every show her corsets may be found. This makes her the most visible model of her work.
She doesn't put sizes on her corsets. Most of her work is custom, and I don't think there's a woman yet that has asked her for a corset and has been told, "No, you're outside my size range." I personally have seen her do beautiful work for people of all sorts of sizes and shapes.
..And yet.
And yet she gets criticized for not using enough curvy models.
This is one example of a MayFaire Moon fashion show:
http://pixelationphotography.com/2011/09/mayfaire-moon-fashion-show-at-dorians-parlor-september-2011/
Lots of shapes and heights and sizes. But over and over, people will see a shot of one thin woman and question why there aren't curvy/plus sized models.
It is, in my not-at-all-humble-opinion, that people see what they assume is there. When you point out that they're mistaken? I haven't seen a single person back down and say, "Oh..oops. You're right." Or maybe just a 'wow ok so I didn't see my exact body shape represented, so I overreacted.' Instead, there's an accusation and - I assume - a flouncing off rather than a discussion, or a consideration that maybe Nikki is one of the designers out there doing it right.
And so this is my take-away point, Gentle Readers:
Yes. Challenge those who are designing, who are choosing models, who are selecting representations of beauty.
AND ALSO? Pay attention to the entire picture. Acknowledge that yes, beauty comes in all sizes - YES, THIN COUNTS! Just as much as curvy! - and that, as in all things, you need to look beyond the one photo, the one glimpse of a story, before you can form an educated opinion.
(And if we could all start taking the time to remember that there's a *person* or two connected to that photo - that if you say a mean thing about the photo, you're talking about a person and that person has feelings - if all y'all could stop being cruel because you think you're anonymous? That would be pretty awesome.)
There's logic to it, of sorts - if you believe sizes for models were at one time cut too small, or that it's a matter of draping. Maybe it's 'heroin chic'. Across the decades, the celebration of thin in fashion has been loud and unstopping.
That said, change is a-coming. Vogue banned too-thin models earlier this month. H-M received a lot of positive press for choosing a 'plus sized' model recently. And Abercromie and Fitch has been loudly attacked for its very public limitation to no sizing over 10. And people are talking more and more about the frustrating crazy sizing of women's clothing. As a woman, you can't go from store to store and assume a size 12 or a size medium is going to be consistent. (Women know this. Men may not.) Some of that..creative sizing is known as 'vanity sizing'...which only addresses the 'you really wear a size 12 but we'll call it a size 10 so you feel better about yourself - here, go buy 12 pairs of our pants!' The reasoning for sizing things like women's t-shirts into a size smaller than you'd expect..well, that still escapes me.
But women are growing ever more aware - and vocal - about calling designers on pushing thin as normality.
And, folks? It's backfiring.
I see thin women being harassed for being thin. Not cool. They're told to go eat a burger. They're told they look like men. They're attacked for what, in all the cases I've seen, is their natural body shape - whether it be because of their genetics or because they work very hard on diet/exercise/lifestyle to look they way they do.
It's ok to be thin. Really. Honest and for true.
I also see people that are so ready to be offended by fashion that they attack designers if a thin model is seen wearing their creations...even if there's a wide variety of sizes in the fashion show.
Case in point? MayFaire Moon.
Here's the webiste:
http://www.mayfairemoon.com/
Go on, take a look. You'll see there's a few different models on the home page alone. For those that don't know the beauty of MayFaire Moon, this is Nikki, the owner and creative genius behind those gorgeous corsets. She's curvy and she wears her corsets at every show her corsets may be found. This makes her the most visible model of her work.
She doesn't put sizes on her corsets. Most of her work is custom, and I don't think there's a woman yet that has asked her for a corset and has been told, "No, you're outside my size range." I personally have seen her do beautiful work for people of all sorts of sizes and shapes.
..And yet.
And yet she gets criticized for not using enough curvy models.
This is one example of a MayFaire Moon fashion show:
http://pixelationphotography.com/2011/09/mayfaire-moon-fashion-show-at-dorians-parlor-september-2011/
Lots of shapes and heights and sizes. But over and over, people will see a shot of one thin woman and question why there aren't curvy/plus sized models.
It is, in my not-at-all-humble-opinion, that people see what they assume is there. When you point out that they're mistaken? I haven't seen a single person back down and say, "Oh..oops. You're right." Or maybe just a 'wow ok so I didn't see my exact body shape represented, so I overreacted.' Instead, there's an accusation and - I assume - a flouncing off rather than a discussion, or a consideration that maybe Nikki is one of the designers out there doing it right.
And so this is my take-away point, Gentle Readers:
Yes. Challenge those who are designing, who are choosing models, who are selecting representations of beauty.
AND ALSO? Pay attention to the entire picture. Acknowledge that yes, beauty comes in all sizes - YES, THIN COUNTS! Just as much as curvy! - and that, as in all things, you need to look beyond the one photo, the one glimpse of a story, before you can form an educated opinion.
(And if we could all start taking the time to remember that there's a *person* or two connected to that photo - that if you say a mean thing about the photo, you're talking about a person and that person has feelings - if all y'all could stop being cruel because you think you're anonymous? That would be pretty awesome.)