Monday, March 1, 2010

IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ



Ladies and Gentleman, I come to you today with something that has been on my mind for a couple of days, and now, Ive come across something that only strengthens its presence in my mind.

Lately, I've been reading about body image and models who are considered ''too fat'' for the runway. Vogue January 2010 featured a story about a model who is a size four and her struggle to fit in. Lara Stone, a model who has the look of tough-meets-naieve, is considered a curvy model. “What they say is ‘curvy,’ but you know they mean fat,” she says, enunciating the word 'fat'. Stone, who stands five feet ten and wears a size 4, described herself as "androgynous quality, except for the boobs" And she says that its often happened that she be at a shoot and people start whispering in the corner after she'd been trying on clothes. “That,” she says, “is when I know I’m about to be canceled.” However, she has been on the rise, doing ad campaigns for "Givenchy, Calvin Klein, and Hugo Boss. She’s walked the runway for almost every major designer, including Marc Jacobs, Balmain, and Isabel Marant. In modeling, she has endured long past the usual sell-by date. The fact that she has done it while being a good two sizes larger than the minnows currently walking the runway makes her all the more unusual. But it has not been easy." Karl Lagerfeild describes her as having "a gorgeous womans body"


So, honestly, I can't see how in the WORLD people are thinking that becoming a skeleton is "art". Despite the Council of Fashion Designers of America's attempts to raise awareness about eating disorders, girls are still scarily underweight. Let me just say, WOMEN ARE SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPOSED TO HAVE BREASTS! WHETHER THEY LOOK LIKE MOSQUITO BITES OR MELONS, THEYRE THERE!!! AND YOU CANT CHANGE THAT! THATS THE HUMAN BODY AND FAME OR FASHION DOES NOT EXCLUDE ONE FROM BEING A HUMAN BEING. AND ONCE YOU GET PAST SEVENTEEN, ITS GOING TO BE VERY HARD TO KEEP FROM DEVELOPING CURVES, EVEN IF THEY ARE VERY SMALL.

"Designers who use the superskinny girls defend the trend, saying clothes hang better on a coat hanger. But the opposite is also true—some clothes look better on bodies with “boobs,” which is why Stone’s career has flourished. “Lara makes clothes look good,” says Virginia Smith, the fashion market editor of Vogue. “It’s refreshing to see her come down the runway. Sometimes I’ll call in a piece, it will arrive, and I’ll think, Why did I think I liked that? Then I’ll remember, Oh, because Lara wore it.” Photographers also appreciate Lara’s fuller silhouette. “I have never thought of Lara as fat,” says Mario Testino. “It is just a matter of different shapes. It reminds me of when I started to work with Gisele; everyone used to think that she was too voluptuous. Look at where she is now!”-Vogue.

Can you believe it?! Gisele! But, she has gone on to work for Victorias Secret and Sports Illustrated-who pay the big bucks but decidedly arent high fashion. This distorted illusion of what one should look like isnt only affecting models who are old enough to make their own decisions. There are fifteen year old girls who are being told they need to take pills to suppress their appetite. The new slew of models are children.

And it doesnt just affect ;people in the fashion idustry. Its the general public. I am 5'0 3/4 and 113-115 pounds depending on the day..and I have found myself sometimes looking in the mirror at my curves that I gained genetically and from ballet and acrobats, wishing I were thinner. Why? I love my body. I love the way I look. But for me, its been about fitting in the cruel fashion world. So, then, I awake out of that trance and slap myself, so to speak, and realize that I am beautiful, and those people I see dont even feel beautiful. Theyre depressed. This all brings me to what I stumbled across this morning...

Meet Coco Rocha. A size four who has had some controversial press lately in the New York Times titled something like "Coco Rocha Too Fat for the Runway".



She has decided to take a stand. She speaks out on her blog, and you can read it all here.
Its a must read. And take time to look at some of the comments. Loads of young girls commented, telling that they were aspiring models and how they feel like its an impossible dream because of how the agencies critized their already tiny bodies. There was a thirteen year old girl who said she had tried to lose weight so she could model. THIRTEEN! And one commenter said that she went to a ralph lauren shoot with her friend who was the model. The model had lost all the weight she could, and was withered away to nothing. They were still shaving pounds off of her on photoshop.
 
Anyway, Im gonna just let you read it and get off my soapbox. I'm long winded, I know, but Im going to close with this...
 
People. Guys and Girls included.
                      YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL.
Do NOT think that you have to look like what
you see in magazines, because not even those
people look like that. Whether you are long and lanky or short and petit or medium and curvy...
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL.
 
 
xoxo
 
 

3 comments:

  1. Lara Stone to me is amazing and gorgeous and perfectly sized. I am very much against this anorexic thin thing that dominates fashion so often.

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  2. Wow, this is a wonderful post. thank you so much for posting this, i cannot begin to express how important it is to address issues like this. i think there is always a very strong tension, almost a conflict of interest that exists in the world of fashion. i think it stems from the tension between empowering women by having them feel confident and beautiful in the choices they make to how to express themselves (such as through their clothes), and also the severe oppression that goes on with these disgusting standards of what it means to be feminine, or beautiful. it's a hard battle in the fashion world, something that always makes me stop, think, get frustrated, and just hope to create awareness. but as you said, with the likes of Lara Stone (and have you heard of Crystal Renn?), perhaps there is a movement going on...

    so thank you so much for creating awareness. i am definitely going to tweet a link to this article, i want everyone to read it! :)

    you are wonderful,
    rose.

    ChaiLoveVintage

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  3. my first ever post was about crystal renn! :)

    http://chailovevintage.blogspot.com/2010/02/inspiration-of-day-crysal-renn.html

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Thank you so much for taking time to comment! I love to read every comment and opinion! This is a great opportunity to find lovely new inspiration through you readers! I will always try to comment back and leave some love. So go ahead, dawls! Tell me what youre thinking! xoxo.