Do Plus-Sized Models Really Represent Us?

Don't get me wrong: the fashion industry, and all the fawning media that backs it up, could definitely use some variation. Beauty, as the hackneyed phrase goes, comes in many sizes, and women who are not 5'9" and white with skeletal bodies could use some representation as well.

But no matter how unconventional (according to current standards) the shape of a model may be, no matter her color, will she ever represent us? Will womankind every rally around a model saying yes, this is who we are?

Of course not. Because life doesn't have the same homogeneous beauty standards of the runway, the Hollywood red carpet schmooze, or the printed page, where no matter your size or skin color or nose or anything else, you're going to be draped in money, gloss, makeup, and gorgeous clothing. You're going to be, in short, a model.

The back and forth in the thousands of comments on this Jezebel post, featuring a preview of V Magazine's plus-size issue, call attention to this point. Some women express relief at seeing a model that makes them feel good about themselves, others resent feeling forced to relate to a model of a different body shape, and still others complain about the fact that the models don't have cellulite or acne. A few ask, "Why don't MY rolls look as pretty as theirs?" 

Sigh. Will it ever end? Will there ever be a model everyone relates to, who expresses the individual quirks and idiosyncrasies and stories of every woman's body?

The commenter nobodyr put it this way in a response to all of the back and forth about whether V's plus-sized issue was a big step forward for women and their model "representations" or not: "Its kind of like, 'Oh, you don't have to be like the one type of fashion model. You can be like this other, equally selective, type of fashion model.'"

Why are we trying to look for ourselves in fashion models?  Why do we try to relate to them, to use them to make ourselves feel good or bad?  They are beautiful women, for sure, from Gabourey Sidibe to Dakota Fanning -- but if you look closely at these latter two examples, you'll see that for as far apart as they may seem, they're flip sides of the same coin. Both are made beautiful in a very particular way by fashion and Hollywood.

Let's celebrate many different sizes, colors, and kinds of beauty in fashion magazines and films. But let's remember that all these women, at the end of the day, are shined up and idealized in the media and the second they're on a magazine cover, they are an ideal. An ideal which ultimately says -- be beautiful like me.

And I say, you can respect and admire their beauty, but beautiful isn't everything. It isn't the most essential quality of a woman -- an assumption all fashion magazines make, plus-sized or not. And while we can -- and I argue, should -- value the beauty of many different models with different aesthetics, at the end of the day they are all models, they are all striving towards physical beauty and the mediums we see them in are idolizing it, and they encourage us to want and need physical beauty. It may be plus-sized beauty, or African American or Latino beauty, but it is idealized physical beauty nonetheless.

So maybe instead of constantly griping and fretting about who represents us and who doesn't, who we can relate to and who we can't, we can say, yes, she's gorgeous, and yes she's gorgeous, respecting all different types and shades of beauty and at the same time saying, I don't need a model to represent me and I don't need to be "beautiful" per any physical standard. I can just be me, without needing an idealized form of me to strive for on the glossy cover of V.

Photo: greencandy8888's Photostream