Too fat for fashion?

[Angalin]

[quote name='needle' post='1690768' date='Feb 18 2009, 07.16']Plus, we'd be deprived of some of those great comedy falls on the cat walk.[/quote]
Indeed, it's hard to walk when your shoes weigh more than you do.

I wonder a little bit how fashions will change if the global economy takes a prolonged dive, and not just because of the supposed hemline-stock market correlation. Will the designers go for poverty chic? Not grunge, or maybe cleaned-up grunge.

[Gerold Hightower]

OK, here are the facts. From the quoted article on [url="http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/celebrity-gossip/2009/02/12/heidi-klum-too-heavy/german-designer-wolfgang-joop-says-she-is-no-runway-supermodel.html"]bild.de:[/url]
[quote]The designer is not the only person in the business to feel this way about the star. Model agency head Louisa von Minckwitz (45, ‘Louisa Models’) said: “Heidi has hips and voluptuous curves. Ideal measurements for a catwalk model are 87-58-88."
Heidi has 91-69-94.
Von Minckwitz also thinks Heidi is too short: “At 1.76 metres she is five centimetres too short. But, despite everything, she is a dream woman, an advertising icon and a superstar.”[/quote]
Looks as if Joop just stated the facts when he said Klum is too fat for the catwalk. I think people have to get the idea out of their heads that being a fashion model has anything to do with beauty or having the perfect body. They have to be a specific size. That's it.

[Eponine]

I had to convert that into inches. So Heidi's measurements are 36-27-37 and height 5'9".

Definitely slender and healthy, but neither "abnormal" nor "too skinny".

[Angalin]

I see your point, GH, but catwalk models weren't always that emaciated. Klum's measurements may not be "right" for the catwalk, but what I would say is that the expectations of how a runway model should look are out of whack. If many of the girls are starving themselves to have the right "look" to present the clothes, maybe the clothes should be altered to fit the models rather than the other way round, no?

The expectations put on runway models are more extreme than for the ones who mostly do magazine work and advertising, but not by much, I'd say.

[Lyanna Stark]

I'm baffled by the measurements. A woman who is 1.76m tall is very tall, even by Swedish standards, and we have some tall people. If you add in the waist/hip/breast measurement of someone of that height, it becomes stupid.

I only know two women who are taller than 1.76 and both of them were considered extremely tall. Both were slim as well, but I doubt they were anywhere near the measurements mentioned here. I'd say the needed measurements for a catwalk model encourages unhealthiness and should really be regulated by legislation if they can't manage to change it themselves.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

GH,

[quote name='Gerold Hightower' post='1690927' date='Feb 18 2009, 11.32']OK, here are the facts. From the quoted article on [url="http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/celebrity-gossip/2009/02/12/heidi-klum-too-heavy/german-designer-wolfgang-joop-says-she-is-no-runway-supermodel.html"]bild.de:[/url]

Looks as if Joop just stated the facts when he said Klum is too fat for the catwalk. I think people have to get the idea out of their heads that being a fashion model has anything to do with beauty or having the perfect body. They have to be a specific size. That's it.[/quote]

Which is why they should simply stop using women and shift to tall pre-pubesent boys.

Stego,

[quote]Hips, ass, breasts, WOMAN! I LOVE A WOMAN! I have no desire to tongue bathe a 14yr old boy strung out on heroin.

Let her be fat, I don't give a shit. We can eat appetizers off her belly while I worship her clitoris in the sloppiest of manners. I'll bust out a matchbox car and go off-roading on the mountains of glorious femininity. Fuck these uber-scrawny bulimic freaks of nature whose entire job is to avoid eating food that makes life grand. I don't need to get 'The knee bones connected to the -- meniscus, quite obviously, because I can see the entire fucking outline of your musculature and skeletal system' stuck in my head every time I am about to mount and ride to infinity.[/quote]

Preach it brother. I have this odd concent in that I find women who look like women attractive.

[Gerold Hightower]

I think there are practical reasons for requiring that all models are the same size. That size currently is rather skinny but the real problem here is young girls being encouraged to pursue a career as a fashion model at any cost. If you aren't the right size that job is not for you. There are many others. And being the host of "Germany's Next Topmodel," Klum is part of the problem. She effectively promotes the very standard by which she is "too fat."

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

GH,

So, it's not possible high fashion clothing designers have screwed up views about how women should look?

[Bronn Stone]

[quote name='Ser Scot A Ellison' post='1691057' date='Feb 18 2009, 10.24']GH,

So, it's not possible high fashion clothing designers have screwed up views about how women should look?[/quote]

It is certainly possible.

Of course, it is certainly possible that by discounting a subset of women whom nature has granted slender features, that you do as well. The idea of setting that subset as the ideal is undoubtedly misguided, but to discount women not granted the curves many of them would aspire to as members of a class equivalent to overgrown boys is equally disturbing.

[Gerold Hightower]

[quote name='Ser Scot A Ellison' post='1691057' date='Feb 18 2009, 19.24']GH,

So, it's not possible high fashion clothing designers have screwed up views about how women should look?[/quote]
I wonder about the power those fashion designers must have to do so. Why on earth are fashion models considered role models these days?

[Eponine]

[quote name='Bronn Stone' post='1691086' date='Feb 18 2009, 13.37']Of course, it is certainly possible that by discounting a subset of women whom nature has granted slender features, that you do as well. The idea of setting that subset as the ideal is undoubtedly misguided, but to discount women not granted the curves many of them would aspire to as members of a class equivalent to overgrown boys is equally disturbing.[/quote]
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

I certainly don't think that fashion models have the only body type that women "should" have. But I can't say that I am sorry that there are women who are glorified in society who are not "curvy" or large breasted. The "all men like women with big boobs" shit gets hammered into us quite enough.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Eponine,

Slim women are women but the fashion industry is in a position to glorify and glamorize a particular body type. They have been going with the "heroin scheck" for quite a while now. Some of the women they put on those runways are so emacated they barely look like women.

[Lyanna Stark]

[quote name='Eponine' post='1691109' date='Feb 18 2009, 19.51']THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

I certainly don't think that fashion models have the only body type that women "should" have. But I can't say that I am sorry that there are women who are glorified in society who are not "curvy" or large breasted. The "all men like women with big boobs" shit gets hammered into us quite enough.[/quote]


A woman who is 1.80+ with those measurement is not slim, she is a walking skeleton. I don't think it is right to promote unhealthy ideals, and that is not healthy.

[GoN]

I don't think anyone is saying that thin women should be told not to be thin, only that no one- slender or curvy- should starve themselves to fit an archaic idea of what looks good on a cat walk.

[Angalin]

Hey, I'm for women of all shapes and sizes, curvy and straight, but there are very few women who come by the runway look naturally. Most models risk their health to get it.

[Tobin]

The stick stereotype causes brain damage and self-image issues in normally smart women.

My sister pissed me off by saying she was getting too fat.
I gave her a black look - "I'm sorry that not all of us can fit into our HS jeans at 49yrs old."
She then dug herself deeper: "But I'm getting up into size 10s and 12s now!"
Me: "Oh. My. God. The tragedy. I'd be fricken over the moon if I could find something halfway decent for my size 20 butt - so don't whine to me about being 5 or even 15 pounds overweight." :tantrum:

Fat girls aren't supposed to have pretty clothes.
It's a fact I get reminded of every time I go to a store to find anything decent.
It's like retailers are punishing you for being big by making all the pretty stuff doll sized.

I've lost 30pounds, but have another 50 pounds to go.
I'm determined to get into pretty clothes by Christmas.
Plus, I've still got [i]my[/i] HS jeans in the bottom of the closet.

[Bronn Stone]

[quote name='Ghost of Nymeria' post='1691156' date='Feb 18 2009, 11.16']I don't think anyone is saying that thin women should be told not to be thin, only that no one- slender or curvy- should starve themselves to fit an archaic idea of what looks good on a cat walk.[/quote]

At least one person said that a man who chose to date a woman who is naturally thin did so because of pedophilia. Even though the woman to whom she referred ate cheese or sour cream on almost everything, matched me glass for glass of wine as often as not and when I met her wore such baggy clothes that I had almost no idea at first what shape she bore. I just knew she had gorgeous eyes, sweeping long hair and a laugh that came from her heart.

[seastarr]

[quote]Fat girls aren't supposed to have pretty clothes.
It's a fact I get reminded of every time I go to a store to find anything decent.
It's like retailers are punishing you for being big by making all the pretty stuff doll sized.[/quote]

This makes me incredibly sad, and angry, too. That's what I meant by saying if someone really wanted to be "avant-garde" in the fashion world, they'd start designing and modeling clothing that drastically shifts the focus away from the current look.

I'd love to see short and tall, knobby kneed and voluptuous, thin and heavy women walking the walk, because I think it would be good for women to stop getting so hung up about this stupid shit. Body image issues are so common place as to be boring. A woman who is comfortable in her body is the freak of the 21st century.

If the designers are such paltry artists that they can't design clothes for every kind of body, what are they doing designing clothes in the first place? Get a little creativity flowing. To claim that using skeletally thin models is somehow avant-garde is like saying Britney Spears composes avant-garde music.


And sorry, Bronn, but Christina Ricci is not all that avant-garde, either. I think we could push the envelope a little more than that. But I can see the well-meaning within your remarks, and bless you.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Seastarr,

That's the catch, the designers want people to be "radical" as they define "radical" which rather misses the point of being "radical."

[Stego]

[quote name='Tobin' post='1691176' date='Feb 18 2009, 14.28']I'm determined to get into pretty clothes by Christmas.[/quote]




Good for you!

You'll do it, woman.