I guess “plus size” now means positive integers rather than zero or negative ones
“Curvy” models unite, you have nothing to lose [emphasis mine]:
Inga Eiriksdottir began modeling in her native Iceland when she was just 14 years old. But as her body changed, the modeling industry didn’t change along with her. Although she had appeared in campaigns for brands like Dolce & Gabbana and Max Mara and had worked with esteemed fashion photographers including Patrick Demarchelier and Steven Meisel, her agency, Ford Models, switched her over to its plus-size division when she was 21 years old. The 5’10” Eiriksdottir was a size 6 at the time…
For those of you guys who don’t know what a size 6 is, it’s very very tiny. And to be a size 6 at a height of 5’10” is to be a really skinny person.
I assume Eiriksdottir (LOVE those Icelandic names!) is now a bit bigger than a 6. But only a bit. She’s 30 now, and here’s a more recent pic of the barely-zaftig Inga:
And here’s a video of another plus-size model, who’s not exactly going to break any chairs when she sits down. Who says I don’t give you some cheesecake now and then?
Personally, I think part of the current rise of the plus-size model has to do with the success of the TV show “Mad Men” and its un-thin star (I refuse to call her fat, because she’s not) Christina Hendricks.
Wasn’t Marilyn Monroe at her peak a size 12?
jack:
No. That’s a common mistake.
I wrote about it here.
Also, see this.
I guess but the woman of my younger days were not skinny girls … MM, Jane Russell etc.
Maybe that’s why Kate Upton is so popular today.
Christina is my ideal style woman. Models (even plus size) look too much like little girls. They just don’t get my attention. I like steel and iron tools, I like metal components, and well made. And I like a woman who has enough mass to be interesting. I sort of feel sorry for skinny women. My guess, for most of them, it is slavish devotion to a losing cause, or at least a childhood that will never be again, or a disease of mind or flesh. Curves are just as important as long hair and a smile. When I see really skinny obviously otherwise adult women, I think “daddy issues”, for example.
IMO physical beauty that leads to attraction, desire, and love (or just plain old lust) is not a matter of having one single idea of what constitutes female physical beauty. Christina Hendricks has a voluptuous figure that is stunning and very desirable to all males from 13-109, but Aubery Hepburn was also possessed of a stunning beauty that was very easy on the eyes. Both Hendricks and Hepburn are/were beautiful. I have spent 44 years on the Hepburn side of the scale of female form. I have never for one second considered myself to be anything other than extremely fortunate.
Is this not sufficient proof that the fashion industry hates women? It is for me.
Doom:
The problem as I understand it is not and never has been the definition of beauty by the models themselves, but by the people they work for. Many of the industry leaders are grotesque from the psychological point of view, and they have in recent decades, throughout my adult life, driven the look from the 1950s’ attractive and female to anorexic, starved, gaunt, pale, drugged, haunted faces….highly paid concentration camp inhabitants.
Yep. started in the 1960s. As did so many bad things.
About 20 years ago, I met a woman named Anne at a downtown New York party. She worked for the Ford Model Agency, then at the very top of the profession.
She told us that they recruit girls who are 12, 13, and 14 years old, Never older: because they start to get the faint “parentheses” from nose to the outer corners of the mouth, and their skin has to be child-flawless.
That the “supermodels” who are older than that are almost as rare as unicorns: the vast majority of the “women” you see in photos are girls made up to look like women.
And she noted, with amusement, that most of these children have harsh New York or New Jersey proletarian accents — the tony prep schools forbid the model-recruiters to come on their campuses. (That last may have changed.)
In 1950, a woman wrote a very funny, cheerful take-down of the modeling industry, a book called “The Fairy Conspiracy.” Her theme was that gay men, being envious of women’s ability to attract the great majority of the men, went into fashion as a form of subtle revenge, and concentrated on making women look ridiculous. She also said we women were real birdbrains for taking up idiotic fashion trends.
For some reason I can’t find that book anywhere….
Don Carlos–
Twiggy.
Neo-neo
It may be possible that Marilyn Monroe with a 22 inch waist wore what was called a Size 12 back then. Dress forms are labeled by dress size and year–because the dress size is not standardized. Size 12 dresses from 1938, 1948, 1958, etc., are all going to be different–and not just because foundation garments changed over the years (a dress form from the 1950’s will have pointy breasts because that was the fashion, plus girdles were worn) but also, just because. Forty years ago, no one wore a zero–not because no post-adolescent female was that small, because what is now a zero back then was probably a four. Maybe a two.
Good bit on the differences over the decades:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Vintage-Sizing-vs-Modern-Sizing
Lee:
Thing is, I was around back then, and I remember the sizes. And a 22-inch waist was never a size 12 in any American sizing at mid-20th-century.
Curves. Love them!
Curvy ≠fat, as far as the ‘curvy’ that men typically find attractive.
Upton has a strange shape though. Not as plus-sized as you’d think. She could almost model mens’ jeans.
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