This morning on BBC news there was a report detailing the use of plus size models on a runway show for the first time at New York Fashion week. This move, it has been suggested, has been prompted by a rise in obesity levels with some 28% of Americans now classified as obese.
First of all plus sized models are not obese, they aren’t even overweight. Watch that video and tell me that those models are anything but normal. The whole notion of a ‘plus sized’ model is nonsense, they maybe plus sized compared to a quadruple zero model but they are just average to anyone with any notion of reality. The whole language is designed to make us think these perfectly normal models are exceptionally large, they are plus. Plus = extra = overweight = obese. It’s rubbish. Has our perception of what the ideal body should look like been skewed so much that the only way we can rationalise a more reasonable sized model is by associating it with obesity? That thought alone is depressing enough but the report didn’t stop there.
Some have expressed concerns that the use of these perfectly normal looking models might encourage obesity. So bad is it that ‘normal person takes to catwalk’ that as a result of seeing these non stick like figures fashionably attired we are all going to go out and start stuffing our faces. I’m surprised someone hasn’t put a stop to it although I understand McDonalds are setting up a mobile stand outside the show in preparation.
The idea is ridiculous and if anything the complete opposite to what really happens. Surely the unattainable model look we are so used to seeing reinforces the discrepancy between our appearance and our perception of the ideal? Eating disorders are nearly always as a result of low self-esteem, low self-esteem no doubt enhanced by the countless images of ‘perfect’ bodies we see in the daily papers to bill boards 10 feet high.
If this is the case then a move for more average sized models can only be a good thing. A good thing now completely ruined by the media’s insistence to point these models out as exceptional, plus sized, and therefore not normal.
