“Shockingly thin” is how one of the world’s best-known fashion critics described the models in New York. The women were so narrow that they couldn’t concentrate on the clothes, tweeted Vanessa Friedmann from the “New York Times” in mid-February at Fashion Week. What she addressed in a few characters has occupied the fashion industry for years: How thin is actually too thin, and hasn’t the anorexia been overcome? After all, a lot of money could be made with demonstrative body positivity – the idea that all bodies are beautiful. Numbers now show that models beyond American size zero (size 30) are hardly ever booked, at least not for the important fashion weeks.
Just 0.6 percent of the 9137 outfits at the most recent fashion weeks were presented by so-called plus-size models – with dress size 44 or larger. This was the result of a count by the American industry magazine “Vogue Business”, which evaluated all fashion shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris (the fashion week in Berlin is not included due to lack of relevance).
Among the models were some with sizes 36 to 42, which are considered “medium sizes”. But almost 96 percent wore 30 to 34. For classification: According to data from the Federal Statistical Office, women in Germany fit on average in 42 to 44.
Is the ideal of beauty from the 90s back?
The thin ideal of beauty seems to be as present as it was last in the 90s. Back then, “heroin chic” encouraged women to starve themselves until they resembled emaciated drug addicts. The fashion industry was already further along.
France, for example, banned thin models from advertising and made a health certificate the standard in 2017. Since then, brands whose models do not have one have been facing severe penalties (e.g. payments of up to 75,000 euros). The American lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret even stopped its annual mega show with “Angels” for a while. The criticism that the beauties in angel wings only served men’s fantasies, but not the needs of the customers, had become too great.
And now the efforts to achieve a healthier body image should already be over? The Austrian cultural scientist Elisabeth Lechner, who researches appearance and discrimination, finds this anything but surprising. After all, there were prominent harbingers, she explains to the German Press Agency: “The Kardashian sisters said goodbye to their curves and Gwyneth Paltrow talks about how little she eats in a podcast. Coffee, bone broth and vegetables – that’s all she eats. Such things happen with great publicity.”
Y2K also brings back the beauty ideal of the 2000s
In addition, despite some successes, they have not gotten very far in recent years. Referring to the casting show, Lechner speaks of a “commercial Heidi Klum diversity”: “We now see minimally different bodies on “Germany’s Next Top Model”, but not much more was achieved. Because the ideal has only shifted a bit in the direction of the hourglass figure. But where were the very thick bodies or skin that hangs down after childbirth? Something like that is still considered unpresentable.”
The fashion system, says Lechner, constantly needs new incentives to buy – and creates these with new trends. One of them is called “Y2K” and it’s currently bringing back the low-rise hipsters and cropped crop tops of the 2000s. “This type of clothing is almost impossible for a fat body to wear unless you have the courage to show what you think is imperfect. The stomach simply doesn’t fit into these cuts,” says the cultural scientist.
Dangerous ideals don’t stop on the catwalk
Most products are sold with the insecurities of consumers. According to Lechner, they are currently more concerned with their appearance because there are two worrying developments. On the one hand, the advent of a supposed panacea against bacon in the USA. Celebrities like Elon Musk (51) publicly rave about how they beat their cravings with prescription diabetes drugs. They do not mention side effects such as vomiting and diarrhea – and the fact that the drugs were temporarily scarce even for diabetic patients who actually need them.
On the other hand, minimally invasive facial procedures are increasing. “The popular buccal fat removal basically cuts out part of your cheek to make you look like a filtered version of yourself,” Lechner says Cosmetic surgery because they got used to face filters on social networks like Tiktok.
“The “Bold Glamor” filter distorts the facial features in a fraction of a second and makes the user look as if she was made up. It’s the first filter that doesn’t blur even when you put your hand in front of your face – that’s why others don’t even notice that you’re using a filter,” explains the researcher.
“Practical” reasons for regression?
In the fashion industry, meanwhile, people talk their way out of going backwards into the lean times for purely practical reasons. Several designers and labels told “Vogue Business” that it was simply too cumbersome to adjust the clothes to larger sizes. This is the main reason why you hardly ever book plus-size models for fashion shows.
“I can’t accept that,” counters Lechner. “Real diversity has a price, it’s about structural changes like different cuts. That costs money and takes time. Instead, you show a fatter woman once and take the applause with you. “
But Lechner is not hopeless – on the contrary. She herself was a teenager in the 2000s, when there was no way to see other bodies, either on magazine titles or in series. “Today, however, people are uniting against the beauty pressure on social networks. That’s powerful.” More and more women are using the hashtag #midsize (medium size), for example, to show how fashion looks on them compared to thin models. The videos were viewed 4.7 billion times on Tiktok alone by mid-April. (dpa )