The buzz in the modeling industry as of late has been: thin, but not too thin. Models deemed too skinny were banned from walking the runway in Spain during fashion week 2006. Some felt it was a long-overdue step in the right direction.
Earlier this month, the Council of Fashion Designers of America hosted a panel to discuss “The Beauty of Health: Resizing the Sample Size.” It appears that the industry is taking steps to address the often unattainable and impossibly bony proportions sample sizes require.
At the panel, Doutzen Kroes revealed, “I don’t do runway shows because I don’t fit the sample size. I might have fit when I was 11 or 12 [years old].”
It’s also recently come to light that model Coco Rocha isn’t booking as many runway gigs as she used to due to her weight.
She’s a size 4.
Four. Not fourteen. Or forty. F-o-u-r.
And Doutzen isn’t a slouch in the fit department, either.
Not to mince words: these women are small. Tiny, even.
For someone to suggest that they are anything but is ridiculous. It’s detrimental to their respective self-images, and also strengthens the message to women and girls everywhere that no one is thin enough.
If a Victoria’s Secret model can’t escape the scrutiny of her waistline, what hope does the average American woman have?
If a size 4 is too large, what message does that send to the average size 12 woman?
We all know it hasn’t always been this way. Marilyn Monroe, often touted as one of the most beautiful women of her time, was a size 10 (some speculate she may have been an even curvier 12 to 16). The Supermodels of the 80s and early 90s (Linda, Cindy, Naomi, Chirsty, Claudia, etc.) were long and lean — but athletic, voluptuous, soft.
Not waif. Not starving.
I’m ready for things to swing back to way they were in the day of the Super. Aren’t you?
Totally true!
And who are these people, anyway? The ones that set the rules for the sample size? Are they skeletons?
Great post! The fashion world needs to wake up!
If Doutzen is too big, I’m a HOUSE.
I’m so happy that people in the industry are speaking out what we have all known for so long- super thin is not healthy for most people! To present that as the “standard” is wrong.
On a boyfriend note- my boyfriend, and every other guy I know, don’t think that the skinny girls on the runways are attractive at all! VS models are another story, of course. 🙂