Death of the Size Zero Ideal?

If you’ve been around EAC long enough you know that one of our main topics of discussion is the fashion industry’s idealized standards of beauty, especially as it relates to the Size 0 Ideal. But some suggest that this trend seems to be coming to an end. And even though the runway might always be filled with very thin women, the gaunt (and flat out scary look) that we have seen on the runway the past few years seem to be dissipating.

One writer, Kate Spicer, says:

“At last, slowly and from within, it seems fashion is falling back in love with the things that make women truly beautiful: confidence, sex appeal, health. They’re lauding the ample, sexy behind of Joan, Mad Men’s smoking-hot secretary, and beginning to reject the boniness of eastern European skinny-minnies. Could it be that, finally, we can put those two incendiary little words, “size” and “zero”, behind us, and that Lowe and her softly cut ilk are the poster girls for a new aesthetic of womanliness and personality that lies ahead? While catwalk girls will always be thin, there has been a bit more bounce lately in the bottoms and flesh on the bones that walk in London, Paris, New York and Milan.”

Using model Daisy Lowe (above) as an example, Spicer says that Lowe exudes sex appeal and confidence without being “model thin.”

Spicer adds:

“It’s been in the air for a while. The real titans, the ones who kept their lips buttoned when the size-zero debate raged, have also begun to speak out. Kate Moss was overheard saying how sexy Lowe and the shapely girls sporting hundred-quid frillies looked at the recent AP perfume launch. The super-stylist Katie Grand has talked of being tired of “the tedious stereotypes of what it is to be a wonderful 21st-century woman”. Even mean old Karl Lagerfeld, the wicked fairy godfather of the cruel world of fashion, sent some girls away from a recent show, a first, saying: “They looked as if they had grown up in a Third World country with no food to eat.”

Once again, this is not to assume that extremely thin women are all walking around starving themselves or that there is anything wrong with being very thin if that is your natural body make-up. But the idealization of extremely thin women (or any body type for that matter) in fashion and tabloid magazines is wrong. I would personally rather see all types of women represented on the runway, together. Rather than differentiating between “plus size” runway and “regular” runway, why not put all women together and call it runway? (See “Plus Size” and the Normalization of Thin).

I disagree with one of the comments left recently which suggested that people don’t want to see a 250-lb woman in a magazine because it wouldn’t sell. It’s really a matter of what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Who dictates what sells? The buyer who will stop buying if they are not given what they want (I am talking strictly media consumption here)? Or the people who set the trends in fashion magazines and dictate what’s “hot” and what’s not?

I personally believe that we are a product of our culture, and we will buy and consume what is put in front of us. Take Skinny Jeans for instance. When they first came out, I was like “What in the world?! I wore those when I was like 8 years old! No thanks.” I now own 5 pairs. Why? Because I eventually got bit by the Skinny Jean bug and I feel like my wardrobe wouldn’t be complete without them. My point is that, generally speaking, we buy what “they” tell us to buy. We may resist and criticize a change at first, but eventually, we get on board. And to suggest that “people wouldn’t want to see that” is not necessarily true.

This is not to say that we don’t have minds of our own, but there is a reason psychologists hold jobs at advertisement agencies, there is something very powerful about the power of suggestion. Trends come and go and whose to say that a trend in this area can’t change?