#NoSizeFitsAll
Fashion Weeks.
They happen twice a year, all around the world, and showcase the latest collections from the hottest fashion designers, brands and houses. Invites to these events are scarce, with your best chance of attending being that you’re a) a designer, b) a model for a designer, c) an A list celebrity, or d) simply “in” with a), b), or c).
Alas if you’re like me, a mere peasant in the eyes of the Fashion Week invitees, you’re resigned to getting your FW fills by stalking the designers, models, and socialites who you quietly resent for being invited instead of you. This is exactly what I did during this year’s London Fashion Week.
I used Instagram, Snapchat, and fashion periodicals to experience the exquisite Virginia Woolf-inspired designs from Burberry, Christopher Kane’s absolutely bizarre shoe choice, and the utter perfection that was Erdem Moralioglu’s Spring Ready-To-Wear collection.
Initially, as I was caught up in the hype of the event, I hadn’t particularly been paying attention to the bodies that occupied the clothes. I was in awe of the innovative beauty of the pieces, but then one other feature started to draw my attention — just how thin the female models were. I mean, you know models are going to be skinny, but once I began to notice the hollow cheeks and skeletal frames on the runway, I couldn’t stop focusing on the sickly aesthetic of the models.
I’ve always known that a certain type of woman is chosen for the runway — the tall, thin, and perfect bone structured ladies have always epitomised the runway prerequisite. However, in recent years I have seen that many people seem to have a preference for curves and bodies with more (realistic) shape. Women are striving for Kardashian-like booties and strong Michelle-Obama-arms, rather than thigh gaps and collar bones, and popular television shows like ‘The Mindy Project’ and ‘Orange Is the New Black’ feature female characters with a range of body types, rather than just the petite and athletic. I think this is why I was so taken aback by what I saw at LFW, I believe society’s general perception of body image is changing, but it seems this change is being ignored by our high fashion overlords.
This ignorance was exemplified when popular plus size model, Ashley Graham, alongside fellow big-name plus sized models including Sabina Karlsson and Jordyn Woods, walked the runway at New York Fashion Week, receiving thunderous applause and copious amounts of praise through social media. It was fabulous to see more realistic body shapes on a high-profile runway, however some of the joy is taken out of this win when you realise that these curvaceous ladies were modelling for Graham’s own line of plus size lingerie and not a designer that had ‘seen the light’ — it would be nice to not have plus sized models kept in a corner so to speak, and rather see them modelling for the likes of Versace and Carolina Herrera, pieces that have previously only been worn by the size zeros.
Surely I’m not the only person to be genuinely concerned with the state of model health? It couldn’t be only me who was seeing these woman as they truly were; poor emaciated souls.
I turned to Google in search of those who shared my concern. I found ONE article that chastised ONE LFW designer for their ‘skeletal’ model choices. One. The fact that no other publications chose to comment on this issue is evidence of how widely accepted an unhealthy female body image is, but I digress. The remaining search results were all related to one entity, the UK Women’s Equality Party. Oddly enough, the party had been mentioned in several articles as it had launched a social media campaign to coincide with London Fashion Week of which aimed to challenge the fashion industry’s approach to body image and the impact that this has on professional models and all women and girls.
The campaign uses the tag #NoSizeFitsAll and asks four things:
№1: We are calling on the British Fashion Council to commit to ensuring that fashion designers showing at London Fashion Week show 2 different sample sizes in every range, one of which must be a UK size 12 and above.
Although LFW designers did not pull through this year, it would be amazing to see other body types alongside thin ones on runways in the future, just like Chromat did at this year’s NYFW (see below). This would benefit women in particular, especially young girls, as it would alleviate the growing pressure to conform to the one body type; promoting healthy lifestyles that don’t involve undereating or overexercising.
№2: We are campaigning for a change in the law so that fashion models below a BMI of 18.5 must be seen by one of an accredited list of medical health professionals, and deemed well before a modelling agency is allowed to employ or reemploy them.
Although insisting that models’ BMIs be monitored may seem to be placing women under enforced scrutiny, the Party’s head, Sophie Walker, claims that it will do the opposite. This BMI monitoring ensures that those who choose to model can do so in a healthy way, rather than having to be unhealthy in order to get paid. In order to be booked for a job, a model usually has to obey the whims of casters, which usually involves having to drop a few (unnecessary) kilos — as this is not the case for other occupations, why should it be acceptable for those in the modelling profession?
№3: We are asking for a commitment from UK-based fashion publications to include a minimum of one plus-size (UK size 12 or above) editorial fashion spread in every issue.
As magazines are one of the most pertinent predictors of body dissatisfaction, the introduction of plus-size editorial spreads would assist in building the self-esteem of readers, combatting the negative perception of body image that many experience after reading a magazine that features only one body type. And if editors have a problem with this, Raven can tell them what’s up…
№4: We believe that body image awareness must be made a mandatory and core component of personal, social, health education (PSHE) in schools, with a specific focus on media depictions of beauty, delivered by trained experts as opposed to teachers who specialise in unrelated disciplines.
By building younger generation’s awareness of body image, we can empower them, and draw their focus towards healthy lifestyles. In my opinion, this should already be a thing, yet very few schools offer lectures directed at helping students to accept their bodies.
Basically, this is one of the best campaigns against unhealthy body image ever (and there’s been a lot of them)! Its ‘asks’ are not unreasonable, and the consequences of implementing just one could make a significant impact to the epidemic of underweight women, both in the modelling industry and outside of it.
Whether they like it or not, designers have a responsibility for their consumers’ health, and using unhealthy models as the only agents of fashion is detrimental to the health of many. Although in the fashion world there may be one “ideal” body type, that is not the reality, and it is time to reflect what women actually look like.
To read more about the #NoSizeFitsAll campaign, visit http://www.womensequality.org.uk/nosizefitsall
Originally published at The Isthmus.
