High Fashion: Hating Our Mothers and Daughters
What is beauty? Beautiful women seldom get the credit they deserve. This is because the ideal of beauty is far from anything natural or human. To be sure, what passes for beauty in these opening decades of the 21st Century is something frighteningly skeletal and horrific. The full curve of a lovely lady has been destroyed by the pointed hipbones of Madison Avenue.
It’s a tired argument, ok. I can accept that most people rationally know a full-figured woman is an ideal of health and beauty. I can accept that most people suspend their belief when they watch movies and videos and flip through magazines. What I cannot accept is how the two rationales seldom fuse and are seldom reconciled.
We tend to accept, on the one hand, how the concentration camp chic of modern fashion destroys the lives of impressionable girls. But, we seldom do anything to promote a counter image. Indeed, the counter image of a well rounded women untouched by cosmetic surgery is never championed. We tell our daughters to be themselves and then flip through magazines that doom them to a lifetime of self-loathing.
The market for plus sized women’s clothing has increased 30% over the past decade. It accounts for nearly $6 billion a year in revenues. That’s a phenomenal statistic! But, where is the bandwagon? In any other industry, that kind of growth would be met with a slew of competitors and high-profile advertising. Not so in the fashion industry.
The first step towards making a woman a life-long customer is undercutting her confidence. When she can no longer judge what is beautiful for herself — and more importantly, see herself as beautiful — she becomes prey for any and all forms of beauty care snake oil remedies and fashion cures. Self-acceptance is only something mentioned or espoused when a poor girl has starved herself to death or pushed herself to the brink of utter spiritual and mental collapse.
The market for plus size women’s clothing is booming. Claim your self-worth, and your beauty, and wear what you like, not what others would like you to wear.
