One Size Fits None

GEORGINA BURKE
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

An inch here, a pound there. No matter your shape or size, the fashion industry wants to diminish you.

I live in the biggest city in America and I tear my hair out trying to find clothes designed for my body. Even though my size is right in line with the “average” American woman (who wears a size 14 by the way), finding the right piece is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. What I realize now is that this is the whole point.

It took many many years of work in the fashion industry, and countless throwaway comments (made by my co-workers no less!) that casually disparaged my body for me to arrive at this truth. But I suspect it’s a truth a lot of people will relate to.

It’s simple at the nub of it: Fashion is an aspirational industry, and in order for clothes to be aspirational, they must demand their wearer make some sort of “improvement” in order to be worthy of wearing them.

An inch here, a pound there, the point is that you can’t sell someone an aspirational product by telling them they are good enough for it “as is”. This is just a fact… and I hate it SO much.

When I bring it up to my friends in the industry, they’re always surprised, as though my very existence as a working model is proof that my frustrations can’t be real. And it’s true that the industry has started to show different kinds of bodies recently.

But even when designers decide to showcase some diversity, they still always reach for extremes. The athletic girls look like they do boot camp 7 days a week. The curvy girls have proportions that come with one-in-a-million genetics. Despite the shape or the color of the girl in the ad, high end fashion’s message is always the same: You aren’t good enough.

I know this because I’ve lived it. I’ve been ordered to increase my salt intake for a week before a shoot so I can take on an idealized (and completely unhealthy) “puffiness”. I’ve been force fed wine on set to achieve the same result. I’ve been shot in a fat suit and I’ve been vocally criticized for going to the gym because of what it did to my curves.

I always knew that this was fucked up…it wrecked my head on a regular basis. But what I’ve gradually realized is that no one wins when the industry chooses to represent women in such unrealistic and extreme terms. Whatever about the impact on the individual model, it’s so damaging to the psyches of millions of women who see our photos and think to themselves “I’ve got to do better” or “I’ve got to get that body”. Because they never will — those bodies don’t actually exist! And even if they could, my industry would find a way to tell them it wasn’t enough. So… I’ve had it. And I’m trying something different. Go take a look around my site and see if you want to try it with me.

No joke, I sometimes feel like I've packed about three different lives into the one I've had so far. Australian women living a New York plus size life.

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