Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling (24 page)

Yes, how are any of the bodies of fashion considered healthy? When, if at all, does the issue of health come into play? The answer is simple—never. The fantastical images that emphasize the sensuality of ample curves omit the health risks associated with maintaining a static body size at all costs. The aesthetic labor process, itself, demands that a model ignore the dangers associated with forcing her body to fit a desired mold. These are manufactured bodies shaped to fit an aesthetic value without concern for how they were created.
¹⁷

Fashion perceives these models as voiceless bodies with dyeable hair and fixable features. If their measurements are not in perfect proportion, they stick padding onto their hips or “chicken cutlets” onto their breasts and squeeze them into a pair of Spanx. Photoshop eliminates the remaining imperfections, such as acne, cellulite, and extra rolls of flesh. Agents take their plus-size models to dinner, encouraging them to eat and gain weight. If a fit model loses weight, she is told to do whatever it takes to gain the weight back before the next fitting, even if that means binging on fat-laden foods that can wreak havoc on an individual’s body. If these efforts fail, the client and/or agent will easily replace them. The organizational structure within the field of fashion conceals the destructive potential of these severe bodily management practices. “Whatever it takes” is the unofficial mantra, all behind the camera and hidden from the consumer’s view.

My brief time as a model paralleled the journey of many others, a path marked by doubt, discomfort, thrill, and a whole lot of rejection. I began
without a clear sense of my marketability or possession of basic modeling skills. I knew little about fashion. Yet, I dreamed of my image emblazoned on a billboard in Times Square. These starry-eyed thoughts of fame danced around my imagination, prompting me to make one more call or send another email in hopes someone would “discover” me.

While none of these fantasies came to fruition, I experienced the world of fashion from the inside. I stepped in front of the camera and onto the runway. I peeked behind the curtain and found women who yearned for a fashion authority to recognize their intelligence, confidence, and beauty. They wanted to change the way people thought about beauty, diversifying its definition to include curvy bodies. They championed for size acceptance. Ultimately, they remained voiceless dolls, dependent on agencies to direct their careers and clients to mold their image. Instead of challenge a social system that perpetuated preoccupation with the body, these plus-size models reified it. In order to succeed, they altered their bodies according to others’ specifications. If we want to seek out actors who challenge hegemonic beauty standards, we must look elsewhere. Instead of the objects in the billboards, we must look to the designers of those billboards.

I journeyed into a fantastical world governed by strict aesthetic rules. According to its logic, I was no longer considered an average body type but, rather, “plus size.” One agent urged me to “stay the same [weight],” while another presented me with an option to either gain or lose weight. Given these conflicting messages, I wondered whether I could be myself—accept my body—in this industry. Was this experience empowering me or, alternatively, suppressing me? When women like me seek personal validation by entering a field dominated by aesthetics, what does it say about our culture and its fixation on physical appearance? Why did I need someone to say, “Yes, you are pretty enough to model”?

Despite my academic credentials, the engendered cultural pressures to embody beauty continued to weigh down my self-esteem. I envisioned that this opportunity would finally silence my internal critic. To an extent, it did. I rocked the fashion runway and learned how to accentuate my assets. These experiences and gained aesthetic knowledge empowered me—to a point.

After many years of neglecting my body to focus on mental pursuits within an academic setting, I felt uncomfortable and overwhelmed by the continual focus on the physical body in a fashion setting. From the moment I entered the fashion district, strangers wrapped tape measures around my body, styled my look, and paraded me before an audience. No one asked for my thoughts and opinions. I had simply gone from one extreme to another—from books to looks.

As a woman, I felt enough everyday cultural pressure to “do looks.” I no longer wanted to compulsively measure my bust, hips, and waist and enslave myself to a number on the bathroom scale. I tired of the unpredictability and need to be in a constant state of readiness—always groomed and fashionably dressed—to drop everything and run to a casting at my agent’s beck and call. I was simply not interested in doing beauty
all
the time.

Soon after my jaunt down the runway and a series of failed castings, my size became an issue. I was too small. In order to continue modeling, I needed to gain weight so that my body would fit into a plus-size sample size. Given fashion’s unpredictability, I may have had to then lose weight in the future to match new aesthetic demands. I did not want to play these kinds of body games. How could I be authentically me while continually manipulating my physical body according to clients’ specifications? Changing my body to meet the requirements of another is antithetical to the pursuit of embodiment.

In the end, I (and my body) retreated in defeat, refusing to match the aesthetic ideal required for plus-size modeling. The larger cultural discourse that fosters bodily insecurity and hegemonic body standards won. I could not willingly act to make my body larger. I rationalized that my role was not to embody the changing face of beauty but to understand its construction; however, truthfully, the stigma of fat was too great.

As I now sit, comfortable within the halls of academia, I recall the sight of plus-size models gathered together in the hallways of a Manhattan studio, waiting for their chance to wow the casting directors. These women laughed together, shared work-related horror stories, and showed
off their skills in impromptu posing contests. While I sat with them, feeling nervous and out of place due to my lack of experience and aesthetic knowledge, I marveled at their confidence and sheer joy at a casting. I wanted to experience that level of festivity, as well. Their glee, however, understated a painful journey of self-discovery. As Chris, a size fourteen/sixteen model, revealed:

I struggled with self-esteem for many years due to my weight. I was bigger than everyone. I didn’t look like everyone else . . . Even when I first started [modeling], it was difficult—all that rejection. I had to learn to not take it personally. When I started to book jobs, it was a huge boost. I began to get comfortable with my size. Now, I am fine the way I am. I don’t want to be a size two . . . As a [plus-size] model, I feel pressure to be a role model, but I accept that. I didn’t have someone to look up to growing up that looked like me. I want to represent a positive message and give girls someone to look up to. I accept that mission. We [as plus-size models] need to.

While these plus-size models are marginalized by an industry that treats them as novelties, they focus not only on fighting this resistance to further their careers but also on the impact their presence in fashion has on other women. Models like Chris share the burden of representing self-identified plus-size women. Many did not begin their modeling careers with this intention but often end up embracing the mantle of spokesmodel for body acceptance.

Although I am not on the front lines of the battle to redefine beauty to include more types of bodies, I applaud those who have the courage to withstand fat stigma and bare their flesh for all to see. These curvy women are working diligently to bring sexy back to the full-figured. The plus-size models may not be in control of the image, itself, but it is their bodies that are on display. They are the ones who risk exposure to public ridicule. On the runway, they are alone and vulnerable. Their confidence amidst popular opinion on fat is admirable. Their mere presence in fashion is a step toward expanding the definition of beauty beyond a size six.

1
. Bordo 1993, p. 212.

2
. For example, in Antebellum America, Sylvester Graham and other dietary reformers perceived excessive body weight as an indicator of moral failings. Intemperate and gluttonous behavior, which resulted in this excess of weight, illness, and even social disorder, could be remedied by abstinence from meat and starches, as prescribed by Graham. Salvation, via the stomach, was the ultimate goal of these dietary reformers of the 1830s. This concept of weight, with its moral implications, posited weight as an indicator of spiritual well-being. See Banner 1983; Gilman 2008; Schwartz 1986; Shryock 1966; Stearns 1997 for more on the history of the fat body.

3
. See Czerniawski 2007, 2010 for a history of the creation of height and weight tables. Used originally as tools to facilitate the standardization of the medical selection process throughout the life insurance industry, these tables later operationalized the notion of ideal weight and became recommended guidelines for body weights. The height and weight table was transformed from a “tool of the trade” into a means of practicing social regulation. The popularization of this tool by medical, educational, and public institutions produced a new way of classifying bodies into underweight, overweight, and normal weight categories. With these guidelines established, Americans internalized a normalizing gaze and employed individualized disciplinary practices in order to conform their bodies to an established ideal. By tracing the history of the height and weight table, we see how weight guidelines serve to discipline populations by shifting public attention toward a body that needs to be measured and disciplined.

4
. See Czerniawski 2007. Since the origins of these tables, physicians and actuaries have criticized their applicability to the general public. Before 1908, height and weight tables for women were not based on collected measurements but rather extrapolated from the men’s table.

5
. In recent years, scientists have debated the utility of BMI, given its inability to distinguish between the weight of muscle versus that of fat, e.g., under the current scale many Olympic athletes and professional football players would be classified as obese. Some studies even suggest that BMI standards need to be adjusted to account for racial and ethnic differences in body composition. An example of this can be found in Deurenberg et al. 1998.

6
. See Popenoe 2005.

7
. See Gross 2005.

8
. Reported in Melago 2009.

9
. Reported in Diluna 2010; Horne 2010.

10
. Western culture did not always equate thinness with ideal beauty. In the 1860s, for example, a more voluptuous body challenged the fragile, thin idealized body of the antebellum era. This new curvaceous figure became the model of beauty, a reflection of health and vigor. By the 1870s, voluptuous women appeared in popular art, theaters, and across the various class sectors of society. Stage actresses, such as Lillian Russell, wore costumes with corsets that emphasized their round shape. This shift toward the idealization of a more curvy body coincided with a standardization of dress sizes due to the emergence of ready-to-wear apparel, drawing more attention to body shape. An 1899 article in the
Ladies Home Journal
described the perfect woman as one with weight proportionate to height: a height between five feet three inches and five feet seven inches, weighting between 125 and 140 pounds, bust measurement of twenty-eight to thirty-six inches, the hips about six to ten inches larger than the bust measurement, and a waist between twenty-two and twenty-eight inches. Retail drove a cultural preoccupation with body size and proportions. See Banner 1983; Gilman 2008; Schwartz 1986; Shryock 1966; Stearns 1997 for more on the history of idealized bodies.

11
. Some of the models identified as fat while others as “normal” or “average.”

12
. Reported in Vesilind 2009.

13
. Female fashion models are, on average, between fourteen and twenty-four years of age, at least five feet eight inches tall, and wear a size two through six, with measurements close to 34-24-34 inches. Typical runway models wear a size zero or size four, depending on each design season’s aesthetics.

14
. Some of the top-ranked modeling agencies will include the occasional size eight model on their plus-size roster. Generally, the models are from size ten to size eighteen, but most of the models in the top modeling agencies are size ten to size fourteen, alluding to a status system based on size. Plus-size models, similar to models in other divisions, face height requirements, as well. Models need to be a minimum height of five feet eight inches with a usual maximum of six feet tall.

15
. There has been a change in the nomenclature for plus-size clothing, a subdivision of specialty retail, from “larger sizes” to “plus size.” The labeling of clothing as plus size gained prominence in the 1990s, replacing the term “larger sizes.”

16
. See Hilbert et al. 2008; Puhl and Brownell 2001; Roehling 1999; Schwartz et al. 2006.

17
. See Puhl and Brownell 2003.

18
. See Schwartz et al. 2006.

19
. See Schwartz et al. 2003.

20
. To be clear, Goffman does not focus on the body per se but on the presentation of the self that is produced through interaction. He situates individuals in a social
context where the self is part of an interactive social project. See Goffman 1963a, p. 35; 1963b.

21
. A stigmatized individual, as defined by Goffman, is tainted and possesses a failing or handicap that creates a discrepancy between the normative expectations or stereotypes concerning that individual (i.e., his/her
virtual
social identity) and the attributes and abilities the individual demonstrates to possess
in actu
(i.e., his/her
actual
social identity). See Goffman 1963b.