Models still too skinny. Clothing still designed for Platonic form of “model.”
(As you can see from the link, this is a few days old–I bookmarked it to blog, but I was pretty busy all week with the IAP video game design workshop which, incidentally, my team won with our pitch for a Beatles game for the Wii.)
N.Y. lawmaker want weight standard for models
This is the first CNN story on the subject that I’ve seen (and there have been several now) that actually provides a point of reference for the Madrid ban’s BMI requirement of at least 18 by noting that the WHO considers a BMI under 18.5 to be “underweight.”
It’s interesting that this issue seems to be getting continued policy proposals and press–no doubt the anorexia death of a Brazilian model in November helped keep interest levels up. I am fairly pessimistic, however, about the prospect of any real change at all, and even if some of these proposals were actually codified into some form of law, I don’t think that’s the solution anyway.
The big problem is that, for some reason, to be “fashionable” requires the body of an alien. I have just as much trouble finding clothes that fit me well as a size 1-5 (there’s a lot of between-label variation in the smaller sizes for women) as I did when I was a size 12-14. Bring up the issue of clothes never being designed for one’s body type and you can have a lively conversation with almost any woman, regardless of what her body type might be.
So it’s not just that clearly some models are unhealthy; I’m willing to concede that some people just have bodies that tend towards the model ideal. My sister is 5′7″ and coltish. I myself have virtually no hips, not that I think this a good thing. But when the entire clothing industry focuses on a tiny percentage of female bodies that look NOTHING LIKE the majority of the female bodies out there, you have to wonder: What the fuck are they thinking?
Isn’t the idea here to get us to buy their fucking clothes? Which never fit us? So we just look for the ones that fit the least badly? Admittedly, we do need to wear SOMETHING, so as long as the whole fashion industry holds the line, it works.
So yeah, I’d like to see models who are clearly starving taken off the runways, but that’s a pretty small step. What I really want is to see some variation in bodies, because having a single figure, usually an extreme outlier in height and slenderness, be the “in” figure for the season seems kind of ridiculous in a world where we don’t have the technology to grow replacement bodies at will.
That’s right, fashion industry. Get me some serious sci fi body replacement and I’ll stop bitching. But until then, I’d like one damn pair of pants that fits.
February 3rd, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Only since knowing Sarah, who is 5 foot, have I come to deeply appreciate this issue. Nothing fits, and the expectation for what a “petite” body looks like comes nowhere close to any real body, not to mention the accompanying styles that some industries expect a “business petite” to wear. Old Navy used to come around about once every three or four clothing seasons, but now with the new “pregnant lady” factor, all hope has been lost.
February 3rd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Absolutely!
Around Christmas, I bought some trousers. In the women’s department, as opposed to the men’s, where I always end up buying my jeans. It is so rare for me to find women’s trousers that fit my legs and also come up high enough for basic decency and being able to sit down, that I had to try them on again at home in front of witnesses to make sure I wasn’t just imagining that they fitted me.
I can’t help feeling that when a curvy person finds that men’s jeans fit her better than women’s, something is definitely wrong.
February 4th, 2007 at 12:40 am
My bitch about the fashion industry is that my size sometimes falls into the twilight zone between mens and boys. Once I went to Dillards and tried to buy some shoes. They just did not have any small enough. The funny thing was, that the guy selling shows was shorter then me. So most likely, this poor guy was selling shoes at a store where he himself couldn’t buy shoes from. Its like a black guy working at a whites-only country club, just without the generations of racism. Sometimes when I buy pants it seems like they are selling for either really thin guys or really fat guys, in which case I was thinking that perhaps my size is actually popular and the stores are just bad at keeping it in stock.
Whichever it is, I mostly get enough clothes from Christmas etc. that I don’t have to shop myself.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Robin has been very happy lately that capris are back in style, because she can wear them as long pants.