A Plus-Size Problem

With the fashion industry under fire in recent years for its reliance on increasingly thin models, a new market for their plus-size counterparts has begun to emerge. Designers are starting to recognize the potential economic benefits of including average-sized women in their shows, and as a result, fuller-figured models such as Crystal Renn, Robyn Lawley, and Marquita Pring are finding success on the runway and in editorial work.

Plus-size models are hardly a new phenomenon—their existence dates back some 60 years to clothing brand Lane Bryant's use of larger women in its catalogs. Modeling agencies did not formally represent such women, however, until the late 1970s, when pioneering plus-size model Mary Duffy founded Big Beauties Little Women, which specialized in plus-size and petite models. Similar agencies like Plus Models soon followed, while existing management groups like the well-known Ford Models opened plus-size divisions. Today, a number of respected agencies make it their business to manage plus-size women—most of whom are either employed in catalog work or model for brands marketed specifically at plus-size women—but a select few of which go on to walk for high-end brands like Jean Paul Gaultier and Zac Posen.

It's encouraging that larger women are finally making their presence known in the wider industry, but here's the thing: plus-size models aren’t actually plus size. One might argue, in fact, that fashion does not understand what it means to be plus size. In reality, the women we see marketed under this label average out to roughly a size 12 (on women who usually stand between 5’8” and 6’); compare these numbers to the average American woman, who at 5'4” wears a size 14, and it quickly becomes obvious that the very meaning of the word has become painfully distorted—a truth which Robin Givhan, fashion editor of The Washington Post, conceded in an interview with NPR. "There is a real disconnect between what the fashion industry considers to be a plus-size model and what the average person considers to be plus size," she said.

Certainly, top design houses such as Yves Saint Laurent and Dolce & Gabbana continue with astonishing stubbornness to cater exclusively to a slender clientele: a quick visit to each brand's website reveals that very few items in their collection come in any size above a size 10. These limitations are hardly surprising given that the aforementioned Crystal Renn, arguably the highest-profile plus-size model today, is herself a size 8, measuring 33-27-37 inches in her bust, waist, and hip, respectively. For a woman who is 5'9" in height, these numbers are not only contradictory to our conventional definition of plus-size—they're downright skinny. And describing someone of Renn’s proportions with a term that is commonly understood to mean “larger than average” is just as unhealthy, or perhaps even unhealthier, than populating the catwalk with teenage waifs.

The ugly irony of the situation is that many of these so-called plus-size models have trouble fitting into the clothes provided for them to wear in photoshoots—not because they are too large, but because they are too thin. Enter padding, the utterly baffling practice of wrapping plus-size models' hips in foam so that they are able to fill out the clothes they have been hired to wear. Why not hire larger models? Perhaps it has something to do with proportion: rather than a model who is bigger all around, as a larger model would be, plus-size brands want models who are slim-waisted and full-hipped in a way that can only be achieved through a combination of a smaller model and strategically placed inserts. At the end of the day, there is as prescriptive a body standard for plus-size models as there is for straight-size models—the former might be larger in size overall, but agencies nonetheless hold them to a specific and ultimately unattainable standard that brings about its own set of unhealthy eating practices, with many women consuming large quantities of high-sodium foods to retain water weight.

It would seem, then, that the emergence of plus-size models, while well-intentioned, does not address the underlying root cause that gave rise to the plague of underweight models in the first place: the idea that models, whether straight- or plus-size, absolutely must look a certain way, conform to certain measurements, even if those measurements can only be attained by  filling one’s skirts with packing peanuts. It is no less artificial to stuff your way to beauty than to starve your way to it. But if the fashion industry had its way, we’d all choose one or the other. For the imposition of rigid restrictions on the way a plus-size model is “allowed” to look is merely a way to create a new unattainable size zero for the fuller-figured, a size for which we will forever strive, forever grasp—an impossible ideal for which we will always fall short.