On models, plus-size models, and what bodies actually look like
I originally posted this on Tumblr right here.
There have been a lot of really fantastic posts on Tumblr about the difference between plus sized models and "big girls." That is, the difference between what the size sixteen women used as models look like versus what an average size sixteen woman looks like.
(FYI, I'm American, so when I say sixteen, I mean a US 16, a UK 18, a European 46, and an Australian 20. I'm going to keep using American size guidelines in this post because that's my most natural frame of reference, but I acknowledge that the sixteen I talk about is not the same sixteen for everyone reading this.)
Anyway, I'm a big fan of those posts, the ones highlighting the reality of our bodies versus the bodies we're shown in magazines and catalogs. That disparity was actually the thing that first brought me to fat activism and the world of HAES (health at any size). I saw posts saying, "Real Women Have Curves!" and I thought, "Fuck you." Because I'm built like a fridge.
I have been a lot of sizes. At my most terrifyingly thin (terrifying because it was a symptom of me starving myself very close to death) I was somewhere between a US 4 and 6. At my heaviest, I was a 28. And though my weight changed, my ratios didn't. My waist and hips will always be within just a couple of inches of one another. My breasts have always been a B-cup. No matter what size I've been, I've always had a flat ass. This is the reality of my body and you know what? Plus sized models made me feel shitty, not empowered, because that was what fat women were supposed to look like and my body was wrong.
In the desperate search for something else, for something that reflected the reality of the bodies I saw around me every day, I found HAES and fat activism and the amazing Two Whole Cakes podcast done by Lesley Kinzel and Marianne Kirby, which appealed to me immediately despite the fact that I was in the middle of a dangerous ED spiral that involved me doing things like not eating for days at a time and only drinking sips of apple juice when my blood sugar started to plummet so I didn't pass out at work again and scare my boss. Not on purpose, mind you, not like I sat down and went, "Okay, this is what I'm going to do," because eating disorders aren't logical, they're a sickness, and you just do things that are stupid because they feel like the only option.
Anyway, listening to those two punk rock, funny, radical women talk about bodies helped me take a step back and realize what was important, and helped me apply to myself what I already thought about other people, which is that I don't give a fuck what their bodies look like. I have never hung out with someone and thought that their body was wrong. I also very rarely apply the same standards to myself and to other people. I'm working on that.
That was just one of the many, many elements that got me out of active sickness and into a place where I could think logically about bodies and size. And this is a really, really long winded way of saying, you know what? Models never look like average women.
We have this idea that everyone knows that skinny models on the cover of magazines don't look like the average women, but we somehow forget that when it comes to plus-size models. We're so desperate for representation that we forget that plus-size models don't actually exist to represent us, they exist to sell us things.
I don't mean the models themselves. I'm sure most of them are lovely women and they exist for whatever reasons they've decided they do.
I mean plus-size modeling as an industry exists to sell us things just like skinny models as an industry exist to sell us things.
Italian Vogue isn't using plus-size models because they want to take a stand against body tyranny and tell the world that women are beautiful regardless of size. They're using plus-size models to sell clothes just like they're using skinny models to sell clothes. It's the exact same sham, the exact same bullshit, the exact same desire to show stunningly beautiful women in stunningly beautiful clothing in stunningly beautiful locations in order to get us to fork over our cash.
Beauty magazines are designed to make you feel bad about yourself. That's what they do. They show you what you're "supposed" to look like, and you know you don't look like that because your body's not built that way and you can't afford $500 every time you get your hair done and you don't have somebody following you around and photoshopping your existence and you have to go to work so you couldn't spend six hours a day in the gym even if you wanted to. You don't look like that so you buy the stuff they recommend. You buy the new lipstick, you buy that amazing moisturizer that all the celebrities use, you buy the boots, you buy as much as you can and you still don't look like you're supposed to look so when the next issue comes out, you buy more.
I mean, I love lipstick. I love pampering myself with awesome skin care. I'm obsessed with knee-high boots. But you can love all that shit without buying into the lie of beauty magazines. No matter how many plus-size models fashion magazines start using, they're not on your side. They're not using plus-size models because they feel like they have to represent every woman in their pages, they're using them because they've realized that they're missing out on loads and loads of cash. If you don't see anyone even close to you in a magazine, you're not going to buy it. But, oh, if they've got an entire spread of plus-size models, man, that means that fashion magazines have embraced you!
They haven't embraced you as a human being, they've embraced you as a customer. Don't let them make you feel shitty. Or, if you do feel shitty, know that it's your brain lying to you; your body not looking like a model's body does not mean that your body is wrong, no matter what dress size that model happens to wear.
This entry was originally posted at http://janesays.dreamwidth.org/26237.html. Comment wherever you'd like.
There have been a lot of really fantastic posts on Tumblr about the difference between plus sized models and "big girls." That is, the difference between what the size sixteen women used as models look like versus what an average size sixteen woman looks like.
(FYI, I'm American, so when I say sixteen, I mean a US 16, a UK 18, a European 46, and an Australian 20. I'm going to keep using American size guidelines in this post because that's my most natural frame of reference, but I acknowledge that the sixteen I talk about is not the same sixteen for everyone reading this.)
Anyway, I'm a big fan of those posts, the ones highlighting the reality of our bodies versus the bodies we're shown in magazines and catalogs. That disparity was actually the thing that first brought me to fat activism and the world of HAES (health at any size). I saw posts saying, "Real Women Have Curves!" and I thought, "Fuck you." Because I'm built like a fridge.
I have been a lot of sizes. At my most terrifyingly thin (terrifying because it was a symptom of me starving myself very close to death) I was somewhere between a US 4 and 6. At my heaviest, I was a 28. And though my weight changed, my ratios didn't. My waist and hips will always be within just a couple of inches of one another. My breasts have always been a B-cup. No matter what size I've been, I've always had a flat ass. This is the reality of my body and you know what? Plus sized models made me feel shitty, not empowered, because that was what fat women were supposed to look like and my body was wrong.
In the desperate search for something else, for something that reflected the reality of the bodies I saw around me every day, I found HAES and fat activism and the amazing Two Whole Cakes podcast done by Lesley Kinzel and Marianne Kirby, which appealed to me immediately despite the fact that I was in the middle of a dangerous ED spiral that involved me doing things like not eating for days at a time and only drinking sips of apple juice when my blood sugar started to plummet so I didn't pass out at work again and scare my boss. Not on purpose, mind you, not like I sat down and went, "Okay, this is what I'm going to do," because eating disorders aren't logical, they're a sickness, and you just do things that are stupid because they feel like the only option.
Anyway, listening to those two punk rock, funny, radical women talk about bodies helped me take a step back and realize what was important, and helped me apply to myself what I already thought about other people, which is that I don't give a fuck what their bodies look like. I have never hung out with someone and thought that their body was wrong. I also very rarely apply the same standards to myself and to other people. I'm working on that.
That was just one of the many, many elements that got me out of active sickness and into a place where I could think logically about bodies and size. And this is a really, really long winded way of saying, you know what? Models never look like average women.
We have this idea that everyone knows that skinny models on the cover of magazines don't look like the average women, but we somehow forget that when it comes to plus-size models. We're so desperate for representation that we forget that plus-size models don't actually exist to represent us, they exist to sell us things.
I don't mean the models themselves. I'm sure most of them are lovely women and they exist for whatever reasons they've decided they do.
I mean plus-size modeling as an industry exists to sell us things just like skinny models as an industry exist to sell us things.
Italian Vogue isn't using plus-size models because they want to take a stand against body tyranny and tell the world that women are beautiful regardless of size. They're using plus-size models to sell clothes just like they're using skinny models to sell clothes. It's the exact same sham, the exact same bullshit, the exact same desire to show stunningly beautiful women in stunningly beautiful clothing in stunningly beautiful locations in order to get us to fork over our cash.
Beauty magazines are designed to make you feel bad about yourself. That's what they do. They show you what you're "supposed" to look like, and you know you don't look like that because your body's not built that way and you can't afford $500 every time you get your hair done and you don't have somebody following you around and photoshopping your existence and you have to go to work so you couldn't spend six hours a day in the gym even if you wanted to. You don't look like that so you buy the stuff they recommend. You buy the new lipstick, you buy that amazing moisturizer that all the celebrities use, you buy the boots, you buy as much as you can and you still don't look like you're supposed to look so when the next issue comes out, you buy more.
I mean, I love lipstick. I love pampering myself with awesome skin care. I'm obsessed with knee-high boots. But you can love all that shit without buying into the lie of beauty magazines. No matter how many plus-size models fashion magazines start using, they're not on your side. They're not using plus-size models because they feel like they have to represent every woman in their pages, they're using them because they've realized that they're missing out on loads and loads of cash. If you don't see anyone even close to you in a magazine, you're not going to buy it. But, oh, if they've got an entire spread of plus-size models, man, that means that fashion magazines have embraced you!
They haven't embraced you as a human being, they've embraced you as a customer. Don't let them make you feel shitty. Or, if you do feel shitty, know that it's your brain lying to you; your body not looking like a model's body does not mean that your body is wrong, no matter what dress size that model happens to wear.
This entry was originally posted at http://janesays.dreamwidth.org/26237.html. Comment wherever you'd like.