Plus Size From C

It’s been a busy two weeks for fashion faux pas, fat and Photoshop.

The media worked itself into an avalanche of accolades for Glamour’s pictorial of seven beautiful plus size models. Fashion icons and designers worldwide competed in an nauseous game of ignorant one-up-manship belching out what they think the appropriate size might be for a woman.  Ralph Lauren tried to make every curve on women disappear, either through shame or by literally, well, erasing their bodies.  And researchers announced that they have discovered that all models, regardless of size, diminish the self esteem of overweight women.

I might as well start with the sentiment most likely to lose my pep squad award.  I’m just going to say it:  Glamour magazine got it wrong.  (Wrong #1)

Yes, the women portrayed in the piece are gorgeous, the photography is stunning, and idea is a good start – and lord knows – in the fight for size acceptance in the media, we need a good start.  But it took Genevieve Fields, Glamour’s editor, only three sentences to talk about food and size, followed by the inevitable, empty disclaimer that it isn’t really about food and size.

With the current spate of vitriol being spewed in all directions from fashion icons (Wrong #2) – everything from Anna Wintour’s people the size of small houses comment to Karl Lagerfeld’s naked hatred of women’s curves to Christian Louboutin’s asinine comments about Barbie’s freakin cankles – we can’t afford to be giving out points for playing nice.  Particularly when the real sentiment demonstrated is tokenism masquerading as progressiveness.

Tokenism is loosely defined as a practice of limited inclusion of members of a minority group that creates the false appearance of inclusive practices, intentional or not.  It is the language around the base sentiment that gives it away. Good intentions run the risk of morphing into condescension, which is exactly the case with Glamour.  This is apparent when looking at the references Glamour when touting its record of body type inclusiveness.

It is true enough that Queen Latifah has graced two Glamour covers..  It is also true that both articles focused on her recent weight loss, breast reduction surgery and work-out regime.  The underlying message here being that it’s okay to be big (size 12-14) if you have really done everything you can to be smaller.  It is also true also that both Kate Winslet and Jessica Simpson publically embraced their bodies (temporarily) after the press critizied their weight.  Two important facts advance their stories: first, Kate was a size 10-12 and Jessica a size 6-8 when the press pounced; and secondly, both Kate and Jessica changed their diet and work-outs to lose weight after the negative reviews.  Now a size 6, Ms. Winslet recently said “I’ve achieved my ultimate figure.”  In the same article she admitted to struggling with her weight all her life and having used laxatives since her teens.  Jessica has reduced her figure back to a size 2, after proclaiming that “Going from a size 2 to a size 8, that’s not fat. If I weren’t Jessica Simpson, no one would care.”  Except that she did, which hardly makes her the body acceptance poster child.

Further into the article, Glamour states that it all starts with the clothes: read, “It’s really not our fault, they just don’t make clothes that big.”  I suppose it is true that there are a limited number of American designers (umm hello Calvin Klein?) creating fashion for larger women, but overseas fashion designers are far ahead of us in this department. Great clothing – in larger sample sizes – has been available for years.  Even if large sample size clothing has never been previously available, am I really supposed to believe that if requested for a pictorial in a major fashion magazine (given that an editorial calendar runs roughly six to nine months out) that it couldn’t be created regardless of the size.  (Hell, I have my mother’s old Singer, I’d be willing to take a crack at it.)  And don’t even get me started on the preposterous allegation that there aren’t enough truly plus sized models.

When a plus size model isn’t even a plus sized person, and Ralph Lauren is graphically expunging entire women, (Wrong #3) it is clear it all comes back to editorial choice. The choice of what to feature, of advertising revenue, of retail partnerships.  Glamour can’t have it both ways.

Its self congratulatory language rings empty in my plus size ears.  One article doesn’t negate the robust “Don’t” feature on its webpage, where over 100 of the first 200 fashion “Don’ts” are photographs are of large women, whose fashion crime is, well, being big.  It doesn’t negate the fact that over 97% of their cover models have been white, women in the bottom 18% of their weight standard.  Or that dieting ad copy is on the front cover in regular rotation, including the absurd “Lose 10 Pounds by Sleeping” and “Fated to be Fat.”

Skinny celebrities are interviewed about their accomplishments and curvy celebrities are interviewed about their diet and weight.  I understand fashion has always existed within the small intersection that is beauty, illusion and self-loathing, but as I read the article, a nagging voice kept whispering, “If they substituted the word Black, Jew or Hispanic for plus-size, there would be a powerful outcry.”

Ms. Field states that Glamour promises “A continued commitment to showing a wide range of body types—and, of course, racial diversity—in our pages, including fashion and beauty stories.”  Really?  The experience of being a different race and the experience of being plus sized are one in the same?

And finally, we have Wrong #4:  Researchers have stated that simply by viewing a fashion model, overweight women’s self-esteem plummets.  They also found that underweight women increase their self esteem by looking at models.  The researchers conclude their study with the suggestion that plus-size women just stay away from fashion.  Flawed on multiple levels, not the least of which is the study ignoring the thinspiration movement that feeds anorexic self-loathing, the mainstream press has endorsed the legitimacy of the study without question.  After all, every one knows that fat women have low self-esteem, right?

As a sigh rumbles through the whole of my 215 pounds.  I make a pot of tea, curl up with my Marie Claire and read the new column written by their plus-size intern, Ashley Falcon.  No fanfare, no press releases, just a pitch-perfect voice and a big step forward.  Note to fashion world: call Nina Garcia, she got it right.