Many of the stick-thin models we see on runways today are wearing super push-up bras, taking whatever small amount of fat they have left on their chests and magnifying it. But this gives women and girls the illusion that you can be drastically underweight and still have boobs, which is rarely true. If women could see that we mostly lose our breast tissue when underweight, they might be a little more hesitant to get too skinny!
Hipbones are not meant to hold your pants up, like two little shelves jutting out of the skin. We don’t want to see that anymore. Hipbones are a part of your skeleton, which should be mostly padded with fatty tissue and flesh — that’s what protects your organs. We’d like to see less hipbones that protrude out past the tummy.
A woman’s collarbones are beautiful. Most women, even at a healthy weight, will have apparent collarbones. You don’t need to be stick thin to have this elegant feature. It’s terrifying seeing collarbones that protrude so much, you swear you could fit your grip around them.
That ad you’re looking at might say the model is wearing size 6 and, and she may in fact be draped in a size 6 dress, but it’s been clipped several times at the back to fit her size 0 body. It’s a gross misrepresentation to make people believe a size 0 is a size 6.
Don’t try to fool us: the model in that commercial doesn’t take one bite of that burger. If she does, she probably spits it out immediately after the take. Portraying women with supermodel, stick-thin bodies eating cheeseburgers in fast food ads will quickly have young girls believing they can eat nutrition-void, calorie-loaded food and be in good shape. The ad is just spinning the lie that thin people regularly eat fast food.
We no longer want to see frail, size 00 women with sinews popping out of their arms and the shape in their buttocks completely gone from lack of muscle mass sporting workout clothes down the runway. They haven’t had the strength to work out in years. We want to see workout clothes on women with toned, strong muscles, and vitality in their faces. We want to see those clothes on women who look like they eat a diet that could actually support a workout.
If we wanted to see what clothing looked like on a hanger, we would just go to the store. We watch fashion shows or look at ads to see how clothing looks on a body—a real one. So we no longer want to see models swimming in the clothes they’re advertising. That gives us absolutely no idea of how those pants make a woman’s butt look, or how that blouse accentuates a waist.
Size 0 models with large fake breasts spew the same lie as the intense push-up bras on tiny models: it tells women and girls that you can be underweight and still have great breasts. Women need to know the truth: if they decide to lose almost all their body fat, they lose the boobs too.
When a woman—a grown woman—rests her arms at her sides, the fleshy inner part of her arm should press against or at least touch the outer side of her rib cage. It should be fleshy in the first place. The only place in nature where you see a gap between those two parts of the body is on girls 12 years and younger. When women are eating enough, their arms round out slightly.
To see triple-zero dresses on models wearing clothes made by a designer who only sells sizes 2 and up in stores, is a complete joke. What the designer is essentially saying is that no woman who would fit into his designs is good enough to model them.
Age requirements have been made in recent years for runway models, with the age varying depending on the country, after fashion show critics complained that having pre-pubescent teens walk the runway doesn’t send an accurate message of what a woman’s body looks like. However, designers still just push the limit, and put up the youngest models they’re allowed. Can we please see some adults walk the runway?
As a sub-point of the last point, we don’t want to see 19-year-old’s modeling for Ann Taylor Loft or Chico’s. Those are brands we all know are targeted towards mature women, and women who may have already had children or gone through menopause shouldn’t have to see 19-year-old’s in the dress they’re considering buying.
Can we please stop pretending that these teeny, tiny lingerie models are “strong” by using tanner and toner to give them little six pack abs? There is a difference between abs you earn by eating healthy and doing stomach exercises, and the abdominal muscles that just appear when all fat has withered away on top of them. And most models have the latter type. Let’s not make it look like something it’s not.
What used to be a part of the gorgeous silhouette of the female figure–the full, round thighs that, when pushed together, create that gorgeous pear shape–has become something women are ashamed of. You almost never see a model out there with thighs that touch in the middle but a woman’s thighs are supposed to touch!
Please designers, please, do not try to tell us that your runway models wear a size 8 when you know your size 8 would actually be a size 2 in off-runway lines. Because when a real size 8 looks at your fake size 8, she thinks she’s been deluding herself when it is in fact you deluding her. Just because you sew the number 8 into a clothing tag does not mean the clothing is a size 8.
How have designers gotten around using actually curvy women for their “plus size” models? Typically by choosing very, very tall models. Sure, their 6’2″ models might be a size 8 or 10. But that’s thin for a woman who is 6’2″! Shrink her down to the typical 5’8″ runway model, give her the same body mass index, and she’d be a size 2.
As for designers and clothing lines that do employ actually curvy models, it seems that those models always have their breasts exposed, or are in spandex, bending in some suggestive way–as if to imply the only use the designer may have for curvy women is over-sexualizing them.
