Journalist Alla Bogolepova - about the dubious characteristic of "plus-size", the excess weight that has turned into a business, and how the fashion industry perceives ordinary women.
I am fat.
Sometimes thicker, sometimes less.
By the sea, on the beach, I'm losing weight. In the metropolis, at the TV - I crackle chips and condensed milk straight from the can.
I poke two holes in the tin and drink it with a loud squelch, sitting on the couch and fencing myself off from the world with pillows and a cat. This is important - a combination of condensed milk and a sofa. Very tones and brightens the winter.
But even if I counted calories in a disciplined manner, didn’t skip workouts in the gym and kept track of my weight, I would still be fat by the standards of the fashion industry. Because my weight ranges from 60 to 65 kilograms.
Wait mentally or out loud to call me crazy.
You are also fat if you wear a size larger than S and do not meet the parameters 90-60-90. However, these parameters are the upper limit, that is, the first step towards becoming considered fat. This is how the world fashion industry and fitness trainers who are not well educated have perceived us for many years.
In the framework of general political correctness, we are called "plus size", but in fact it is just an offensive, but in fact legally safe synonym for the word "full". Well, or fat, to be honest.
And suddenly - Tess Holiday. A woman weighing one and a half centners on the cover of one of the main women's magazines in the world. Hurray, this is a revolution, this is a change, everything that opponents of "imposed standards of beauty" and fighters with adolescent anorexia have been talking about for so long have come true.
Nothing like this.
This whole story with "the largest model in the world" is a rather unpleasant mixture of naked calculation and poorly photoshopped hypocrisy.
Firstly, Tess is not the first plump woman who is presented by gloss as a kind of social breakthrough: for ten years now these "plus size" industries have been rather shamelessly used to attract attention or, as they say now, hype. And it works every time because it causes some shock. That is, a woman who wears clothes over size forty-four and at the same time works as a model is a heroine. And hundreds of millions of women living in their fifties are mass-market consumers who need to sell miracle pills for slimness and miracle programs to reduce the waist in photographs.
Secondly, no matter how much Tess and her plus-size colleagues talk about their disdain for standards and about loving yourself as you are, they themselves are playing by the rules. A thin, even embossed face. A figure with a pronounced waist. Long legs. Take a closer look, for example, to Ashley Graham: her body fits perfectly in the proportions required for a regular model. It's just bigger.
That is, we kind of have the right to be complete, but only "correct" full, so that you don't have an "apple" addition: they say, if you have a face like Ashley or Tess, then we'll talk, but for now, go lose weight.
And finally, let's be honest: Tess Holiday does not sell clothes, cosmetics, or cars. Tess Holiday is selling her weight. She can be considered a freak or a fighter against stereotypes, but it is impossible not to see a competent business strategy that turns every kilogram of a girl into money.
However, Tess did not reinvent the bicycle - why should it, if the classics are still selling the best. The fat girl who was bullied at school grew up, became rich, famous, loved and generally happy. And now she can show a virtual middle finger to her offenders - which, in fact, Mrs. Holiday is doing. And all this has nothing to do with modeling as a profession. As well as to some tectonic shifts in the attitude of society towards full people and in their attitude towards themselves.
The fact that several women, not alien to shocking, managed to break through the cordons of the dimensional grid, in the life of ordinary women does not change absolutely anything.
There is no fashion for completeness and is not expected, weight over sixty is still considered indecent in the fashion industry, otherwise the very concept of "plus size model" would not exist.
After all, no one calls Natalia Vodianova “minus size”. They talk about her simply and modestly: a supermodel. Without specifying this very "size".
Tess Holiday is not a trend, but just a deep marketing curtsy and an absurd concession to the consumer: don't you dare accuse us of discriminating fat people. Whereas the question should be fundamentally different: why do you think we are fat at all? What kind of "plus size" is this - plus what? What size? What is the starting point and who determined it?
Global changes in consciousness are not when “the largest model on the cover of a glossy”. This is when weight, size and waist are not discussed at all. Because they just don't matter. When there are no thin and fat, but there are just people.
