Plus-size Women Recreate Fashion Ads

Women pictured in magazines and advertisements typically uphold the societal standards of beauty and what the ideal body is. However, in recent years, this is starting to change some as plus-size women enter the modeling industry and are featured in main magazine articles. When plus-size women are featured in these settings, the response from viewers tends to be comments about how special the issue is or how strong the women photographed are for being willing to reveal themselves in such a manner, even when the audience is plus-size.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheridanwatson/plus-size-women-recreated-fashion-ads?utm_term=.ai2OBm1k8#.txx8ebBzl

Buzzfeed posted an article on Oct. 31, 2016 about plus-size women recreating modern high-fashion ads, that originally feature very thin women. The premise of the article is this: “If you open up a magazine or drive down a street, it’s clear that plus-size women are rarely in high-fashion advertisements. In an industry where beauty standards seem so limited, we decided to break the mold and insert ourselves in the world of fashion” (Buzzfeed). The women photographed by Buzzfeed gave comments about how the experience made them feel, ranging from empowered to uncertain.

“I’ve heard so many times that my body isn’t really capable of doing ‘beautiful fashion things’ that seeing myself actually do it felt like a mistake.”

“When I was all glammed up and finally got on set with the couch, I felt sexy and I felt empowered.”

“Growing up, I never really saw myself as the model type because I always thought that to be accepted, or thought of as beautiful, you had to be a small size, or be a certain height.”

These quotes sum up many of the thoughts surrounding plus-size women modeling and showing off their bodies. Seeing themselves do what the media shows only thin women do shows them that they are capable, empowers them, and makes them feel good about themselves. Women are taught that to be a proper woman, one must be small, take up a little space as possible and be quiet. But not everyone fits that image.

This article stood out to me after reading and discussing LeBesco’s work on fat studies. LeBesco is interested in the stereotypes of fatness and the ways that can be changed in a culture, a shift from tolerance to acceptance. An idea that stood out to me was that the act of making a collection of bodies public, is a political statement. LeBesco argues that fatness is a subversive cultural practice—the concept disrupts the cultural norm of bodies. This idea means that fat people should have agency and fight back against cultural norms that say they cannot do something a thin body can do or that they do not belong in advertising or magazines photos. Through LeBesco’s writing, the way to intervene in the hegemonic ideology of fatness is by politicizing—through the discourse of the medical community, the dieting industry and the representations of fatness in the media. By politicizing and changing the language around fatness and by providing other representations in the community and in the media, a different concept starts to develop.

Buzzfeed is making a political statement in this article about plus-sized bodies absence in advertising and the empowerment that comes with sharing that image with the world. Personally, I had never thought about this type of article as being a political statement, though seeing plus-size women featured in the media always appeared to be a unique and different representation. The women that were photographed for this article, pose for Buzzfeed for other articles about plus-size women—whether the article is about one-size fits all clothing, Halloween clothing or feeling good about yourself regardless of size.

The comments the women made following their photos give them a space to show agency to direct how they are viewed and push back against being hidden from media. These women are changing the way they think about themselves and bodies like their own in the media, and in turn changing the discourse around plus-size modeling. When the women say that they felt like they were making a mistake by modeling or that they didn’t think they were the right type to model, they are reinforcing the historic image that thinness equaled beauty. But when they look at themselves and realize that they are capable, that they feel sexy and that their thoughts have changed, they are pushing against that idea and challenging others to do the same.

Having this article and discussion posted on Buzzfeed puts it on an international scale and targets a, generally, younger audience that will think about and adapt to the changing discourse surrounding thinness and plus-sized bodies.