Long Bones

http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/ok-mr-lifshitz-why-must-models-be-so-skinny

The above is an article at DoubleX that I found really interesting. Well, I found the question really interesting and the fashion industry insider’s answer.

Models are long and skinny because clothes hang better on them. The clothing on display at major fashion houses and runways is all about art, about fantasy. Not about what a real woman wears.

Here is my corrolary question then: Why not design clothing that looks spectacular on curvy bodies? I’m not by any means an artist, but I did minor in art in college so maybe I have a smidgen of authority here. When I create a piece I am naturally drawn to rounded forms. I find the play of light and shadow more interesting on a sphere then on a plank. The commenter says “Quite frankly, any kind of buldge (fat, breasts, hips, a butt) distorts the line that clothing was “designed” for, particularly avante garde clothing.”

I find it a little bit lazy that designers don’t work with that. They have picked thier medium and their canvas is the female form. If fashion designers were truly interested in a sleek form with minimal bumps and curves they would design for men. After all, it isn’t about what real people really want to wear.

So its a cop out. I respect the creative skill of my favorite designers, and even the ones I don’t like, to not just compensate for but celebrate a woman’s figure. Fashion is about fantasy sure, but women with real bodies are buying into the fantasy. I don’t think its responsible for the titans of haute couture to present an unattainable, unhealthy ideal and then when women are making themselves sick to achieve this ideal (or sick because they can’t) they disclaim it because it’s all about the image.

That said, it isn’t entirely their fault. They don’t have any power we don’t give them. The subtle encouragements of a society which celebrates figures which are for the general population achievable by a rigorously enforced regimen of heroin and anorexia affect all of us. And we all, or almost all, enforce it. After all, we buy the glossy magazines, we gawk at cellulite. If we could secretly photoshop our family pictures, how many would resist?

I don’t have a solution. I’m still going to buy fashion magazines and I’m not going to stop dieting. But I am going to hit my healthy weight and not try and go further. I’m going to buy clothes that suit my body and not let it get me down when something looks good on the rack but not on me.