Guest Author - Kass McGann
Have you ever flipped through a fashion magazine and thought, "My word! Why are all these models so skinny?"
Many people make the mistake of thinking that fashion magazines are displaying an ideal -- what good looking women should look like. But the truth is that fashion photographers and editors have quite a different motivation in mind.
The Fashion Industry is a business. Fashion companies are in business to make money. They aren't there to make us feel good about our bodies. They exist to sell us something.
The Fashion Industry displays its clothing on models for the purpose of displaying their clothing. Runway models (models who walk the catwalk at seasonal shows) are the skinniest group of models because they are meant to be walking clothes hangers. Fashion Designers don't choose beautiful women to model their clothing (unless they are celebrities who can bring them more attention). They choose the model whose body interferes with the clothing least. This typically means they choose skinny girls. If buyers look at a model and say, "Wow! She's beautiful!" often times they don't really see the clothing. Their beauty gets in the way of the clothing. So designers don't choose the best looking women to be runway models. They choose the ones who stay out of the way of the clothes. And those women are typically too tall for their weight (which is always why so many young teens get modelling gigs).
Fashion magazines are a little better. But still, the focus is on displaying the clothes, not showing off the model. So skinny and too tall rules.
Catalogs are where you see the real people. For catalog shoots, models who look like real people are chosen. The models are chosen to represent the median size of the clothing in the catalog and they're supposed to look like someone who might live down the street. They aren't dressed glamourously or given weird, artistic hairstyles. They're meant to show you that you too could look good in the clothing in this catalog. So they are more normal sized women.
Lingerie catalogs are a different breed altogether. It used to be that chubby women were chosen for lingerie catalogs because they had more curves. Any rolls of fat or cellulite could be airbrushed out of the photos before publication. But now with the widespread acceptance of plastic surgery, skinny girls are getting breast augmentations to the extent that they look like cartoon characters. If you saw such women walking down the street, they would look very strange and unbalanced. But in the catalog, they look perfect because they were literally "made" for the catalog.
Try to remember these things the next time you look at a catalog or fashion magazine. The women in the photos were chosen not because they are the most beautiful, but because they will sell the garments in question. They are not role models for women's body image.
