You Say You Want a Revolution: Plus Size Bodies in the Fashion Industry

A plus size fashion revolution has begun to gain visibility within

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popular culture. Tess Holliday, a plus size model, has challenged the fashion industry through her hashtag, #EffYourBeautyStandards, and her devotion to promoting body positivity. She has earned over one million Instagram followers and has been increasingly gaining recognition from mainstream audiences after appearing on the cover of People magazine in 2015. Fellow plus size model and body activist, Ashley Graham, has also been dominating the fashion industry and similarly challenges limited perceptions of beauty. She attracted attention after appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 2016 Swimsuit Issue and has continued to advocate for curvy, traditionally non-idealized bodies. Graham, alongside other plus size women, such as actress Gabourey Sidibe, also teamed up with Lane Bryant, a women’s plus size fashion label, to create their most recent advert, ‘This Body is Made to Shine”, and current brand campaign, #ThisBody. Body positive messaging is gaining traction with mainstream audiences and is, more and more, demanding to be recognized.

While is promising that the voices of these women are reaching mainstream audiences, their activism is only reaching so far. This movement is dominated by white, cisgendered, heterosexual women and seems eerily similar to the oppressive images of bodies that Holliday, Graham, and Lane Bryant, among others, are seeking to challenge. Lane Bryant incorporates some women of color into their campaign, but images of plus sized bodies in mainstream media are overwhelmingly white. Amy Farrell, a professor of American Studies and Women’s and GenderStudies, tells us that fat bodies have functioned in visual media to stigmatize racial “Others” and reinforce non-Whites as inferior. Historically linked to immigrants, larger bodies signified that an individual was uncivilized and immoral. While all fat bodies carry with them negative connotations, there remains a racial inequality that plagues our perception of bodies. Holliday and Graham challenge beliefs of fat and beauty, but through a white, heteronormative frame. While they stand out in the sea of photoshopped, thin and perfectly proportioned women that have, for decades, dominated the fashion industry, they are only dismantling one aspect of the historical oppression of fat bodies.

There has also been an enormous disparity in the representation of male bodies within mainstream discussions of body positivity and the plus size fashion movement. One reason they may be left behind is due to the fact that men are not as chastised as women for appearing larger than the ideal body type of popular media. In 2015, college student Mackenzie Pearson, popularized the term ‘dad bod’ in her article, “Why Girls Love the Dad Bod”. The ‘dad bod’ refers to a man who is not overweight, but also doesn’t have “washboard abs”. Pearson’s article suggests that men who do not resemble the toned, muscled men that circulate throughout popular culture are accepted and even embraced by women. Unlike women, who are normally marginalized and shamed for straying from visual media’s idealized body shape, men are freed from a similar critique. While is clear that men are not held to the same standards as women when thinking about fat bodies, there exists a portion of men that feel left out of the plus size revolution. Susan Bordo, a feminist philosopher, examines how the male body has been increasingly subjected to the same oppressive and limiting beauty standards as women. Even though her analysis of visual media is outdated, it is worth noting the large extent to which men are being encouraged to think about their appearance and seek a ‘healthy’ lifestyle through obtaining “sculpted abs” or burning fat, while simultaneously gaining muscle. In an interview with The Guardian, Zach Miko, the first plus sized male model signed to the major modeling agency IMG, notes a gendered disparity between male and female plus size models. He explains that men have been taught to not care about their looks, which is reinforced by Bordo’s conclusion that men in advertisements tend to “act”, rather than “appear”, in order to maintain their masculinity and reassure others that they are not consumed by vanity. Ultimately, men’s experiences with fatness are forgotten, as they are both freed from the critical gaze that disciplines female bodies and threatened by the potential of appearing unmanly.

Confronting the fashion industry is only a small step in the right direction to dismantling the negative connotations that plague fat bodies. Activists need to take an interdisciplinary approach to breaking down the areas of culture that reinforce fat as bad and undesired. The Health at Every Size health model advocates for an all encompassing approach to eliminating negative connotations attached to fatness. Not only are individuals encouraged to embrace their body as beautiful, as Holliday and Graham promote, but they should also partake in healthy activities, including exercising and eating well. The food industry is particularly harmful in this regard. It seems that you cannot escape the “low-fat” or “fat free” food products that have seemed to take over every shelf in the grocery store. Low-fat or fat free items are framed as healthy, which continues to position fat as unhealthy, and therefore bad. Even discourses around exercise revolve around burning fat or losing unwanted fat. Once again, fat signifies something that one needs to get rid of. While the fashion industry may be a good place to start confronting understandings of beautiful, fat bodies, other industries should not be forgotten.

While mainstream culture fails to advocate for a diverse representation of bodies and perceptions of health across industries, many individuals are fighting to have their voices heard. For example, an art show in Brooklyn titled, Fatter IRL: a fat art show, combines the work of twelve artists who identify as fat in order to make fat, diverse bodies visible. However, representations of bodies, like the ones that can be found in this exhibition, are taken for granted by mainstream culture. Theses artists are not celebrated on the cover of People magazine or Sports Illustrated. We need to continue to promote a diverse collection of voices and expand our reach to celebrate bodies of all shapes, sizes, sexes, sexual orientations, and the list goes on. The plus size revolution is knocking at our door and it’s time that we let it in and embrace it in all of its entirety.

Fatter IRL: a fat art show - Rochelle Brock