We all realize that the fashion world has terribly skewed definitions of what's big, what's small, and perhaps most disturbingly, what's "normal." Hence why, despite the supposed fact that the average American woman is a size 14, style gurus can't help but refer to a size 10 model as "plus-size."
Yep. Sadly, a lot of brouhaha has been made recently about Myla Dalbesio, the new spokeswoman for the "Perfectly Fit" underwear campaign released a month ago by Calvin Klein. The company has reportedly never called Dalbesio plus-size. In fact, according to the model herself, they were treating her campaign just like any other. Not a peep about her size. But when an ELLE magazine article referred to the model as "what the fashion industry would — still, surprisingly — call 'plus-size,'" Twitter blew up.
The animosity was misdirected at Calvin Klein, which Dalbesio aimed to clear up when she went on TODAY this morning, explaining:
I think it's really unfortunate, because I think that Calvin Klein has done something that's really groundbreaking, which is they released this campaign with what some would say is a normal-sized model, a size 10. And size 10 girls, there's not a lot of spots for us to fit in in the fashion industry.
And therein lies the issue. There's not a lot of spots for someone who is a size 10? Who then is the fashion industry striving to appeal to? Not women outside of their world, obviously.
Based on this ridiculous series of events alone, we can argue that there's a disturbing amount of disagreement over the definition of plus-size. But the fact of the matter is that most of us don't live in the pages of a fashion magazine. Or work in an industry that shames women for being bigger than a 4.
Really, this is just a reminder that what we need to do is stop thinking about women's bodies as black and white, big and small, "normal" or "average" and "plus." Women are all different shapes and sizes. It's about time the fashion industry (and in this case, fashion journalists) start to reflect and respect that.
Would you consider this model plus-size? Do you think that term is misused too often?
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Images via Calvin Klein