to think that size 14 models are NOT plus size they are just NORMAL!

[mamazon]

Most models are around 6ft. for their height being a size 14/16 is perfect for their body.

they aren't "plus size" they just aren't underweight.

I dont think it is a great thing that a magazine has dedicated an issue to plus size models. I find it depressing thaht society has such a scewed vision of beauty that a girl that is in total perfect proportion for her body is considered only beautiful enough for a special fat issue rather than the usual mainstream version.

im actaully getting a bit annoyed at the constant use of the term plus size for normal women. they aren't! I am 6'1 and a size 24/26. I am a plus size person. as in i am outside the normal range for clothing and sizing.
someone with not an inch of excess fat on them isn't.

Now do not get me wrong, i do not want to see more Beth Ditto front covers.
What i want is for the media and fashion industry to stop making normal healthy women feel that they are anything but that. why does it have to be a special healdine grabbing edition of the magazine just because they use women who do not have their ribs poking out of their skin?

I get more annoyed about the size zero thing, tbh - we have effectively "lost" size 4 in the UK thanks to adopting the US size 0 (obviously has more shock value to the meeja). Not that I have any use at all for size 4 and never have had - even when I was a skinny teen I was a size 10 (it was a lot smaller 25years ago than it is now).

OP - YANBU - fashion designers should be designing clothes that fit women as they naturally are; but let's face it, it's hardly a new phenomenon! The Victorians (and other eras) caused so many health problems with their tight lacing to give wasp waists, no wonder so many women died in childbirth, their organs were all squashed up! I once saw the wedding dress of Ekaterina the Great of Russia - it had an 18" waist (or was that 16?) - at the time I had a 24" waist and it made me feel fat. Ludicrous. (Oh for a 24" waist now...)

sizes have changed

i had a ballgown in my 20's size 10 laura ashley
i am now in 40s and i reckon i would be about a 12
the dress still fits but tighter yet in shops i am more likely 8-10 than 12

thats pretty much two sizes biger over 20 years

thus isn't it just a 'title' size 14 is in effect size 18?

Not read whole thread, but just to second Notanotter, I found a size 10 Laura Ashley skirt from 1992 yesterday; it was tiny, at most a six by modern standards.

Can't see any point in aspiring to look like a stick insect either - that's beyond nuts, imo. I'd prefer to see models that are my shape, because then I could see what clothes might actually look good on me!

It is perfectly normal to not be a bean pole

thesecondcoming thanks for that i was getting

point taken - I can't see any point in aspiring to look like a size 4 (0) model if that is not your natural shape. And I stand by the rest of my post.

So if a size 0 is equivalent to a UK 4, and a UK 4 now is equivalent to a UK8 20 years ago, then there is nothing controversial about size 0 at all.

only if that's your natural size, Milly. I'm not sure it's quite that simple though - the size "0" models don't all look great, do they.

I read an intersting feature, I think it was in cosmo, about spotting models and how they weren't actuay looking for normally pretty people, they wanted girls who in RL looked a bit odd because they photographed better due to slightly more pronounced features or whatever. Models in the flesh do tend to look a little odd (apologies to models on here!).

If we moved away from models as clothes hangers it would firstly detract from the clothes and secondly you'd require about 5 models for each piece of clothing because what a top looks like on thumbwitch isn't what it will look like on tispity or milly or expat or me. If it's on a model I can look at it and think v-neck good, sleeve length not so good, placement of print on front likely to be dire but if it's modelled by someone with a different body shape to me the whole package might look greaton them and I'll forget I'm an hourglass but they're a pear and buy a top that looks crap.

The function of a model is to make the clothes look good, not show how they'll look on you.

On a side note - corsets for people with tits angry? Where do I join the queue?

I find it very irritating that when I want to see how clothes look on I can only see images of tall skinny teenagers wearing them, which is pretty useless for me because I don't look like that. This is why I find tv shows where real people wear the clothes more useful. I also like to see shop assistants my age and shape wearing the clothes in shops, again they are mostly young and skinny although not normally ultra tall.

Models in fashion pics don't sell the clothes to me at all. Since selling the clothes is the point, and since I spend much more on clothes than in my teens and twenties, the industry is an ass.

I cannot believe no-one has pointed out that Olive Oyl is a cartoon charachter who is married to a man whose muscles burst out his clothes when he eats soinach......Oh no, we are discussing why clothes do not look good on her

Ladyem, we have those bigger mannequins too but they have been put back in their boxes as the students thought they looked too fat

Well as a tall person who used to be described as the grim reaper when a size 8/10 pre kids and is now plus sized model size at a 14/16 but still well within my bmi I am destined to a life of being made to feel shite about myself.
And dont get me started on tall clothes

Angry - no way!! I just thought they were an odd shape!!

I have to agree that sizing has changed in the last 15 years. I have skirts that are a size 10 from when I was in 6th form and they are tiny! I also have my Mum's wedding dress from the early 70's which was a size 14 and I cannot get the underskirt on it is so small and I wear a uk 8-10! When Louise Redknapp did that programme about becoming a size 0 the measurements she gave were what would have been an old size 8. So size 0 isn't a new phenomenon, it's just been re-named!!

Can we please stop with all the words like scrawny, skinny, bean pole... they are insulting. Thin people have feelings, too.

Thank you please!

Bronze - I know what you mean about tall clothes!! Have you seen the tall ladies thread?

Ladyem I'm on at least one of them

I'm 5ft10 and weigh 8.5 stone. I don't diet, don't have an ED, and have no idea whether I eat more or less than other people. I lost all the baby weight everytime before I came out of hospital. I would like to have bigger boobs.

I find being told I'm too skinny all the time rather boring, but not really insulting. I don't think "beanpole" has the same insult level as "lard blob" for the social/cultural reasons behind this thread's existence.

I think the biggest issue is lazy designers, designing clothes that only look good on skinny teenagers.

Obviously people with different body shapes need people to design clothes to suit them, but I get really annoyed when I see a magazine spread of expensive clothes in styles clearly designed for women aged 30 plus (who are, after all, most likely to have the money to buy them) being worn by very thin 18 year olds.

It's like designing clothes for giraffes when they're being mostly bought by elephants (sorry that analogy is a little unflattering).

I want to know what the clothes are going to look like on someone like me. After all, I may go into the shop and try it on after seeing the advert, but when I look nothing like the model, I'm not going to buy it. I once bought a pair of jeans from a catalogue thinking they were quite a loose fit because they looked loose on the model - when I tried them on in my size they were really tight; not what I was looking for so obviously I didn't buy them. Do they really think advertising like this sells more clothes?

And having read the thread now, YANBU at all.

The stuff about the economics of it is all very well (and goes some way to explaining why things are as they are,) but, something is really quite warped if it's become a really great big deal to pay a gorgeous looking woman, of 'normal' size, to wear a dress so the rest of us can see what it looks like.

I absolutely cannot stand the whole 'plus size' phenomenon. What a joke. You frequently hear people on America's Next Top Model or similar shows being told, 'you're too big for a regular model, and you're too small for a plus size'. I'm a size ten, so that includes me, and I'm a perfectly healthy weight. So 'plus size' is as much an ideal construction as 'size zero'. It does absolutely nothing to suggest that women can be beautiful whatever their (healthy) size, or to combat the obsession with arbitrary sizes as an indicator of happiness and glamour, and it's just a cop-out for the fashion industry.

Having said that, I think we're all much more influenced by actresses and singers and other celebrities when it comes to normative notions of how we should look, than models. Who wants to look like a catwalk model anyway? I'm never going to grow six inches taller, I'll never have cheekbones angular enough to cut bread with, and no-one will ever look at me and think 'I'd like to hang some clothes on her'. Who cares?!

I can't find what Bonsoir said - sorry...

But a previous poster wrote: 'I wear size 10/12 trousers (when I'm not preggers!), but to accomodate my boobs I often find myself squeezing into size 16/18 tops that are still on the small size, because curves just aren't in fashion anymore.'

I have to agree - I have a similar problem, that I know to be common, with trousers and jeans. Jeans that have the correct waist measurement I can barely get over my kneew, and jeans actually fit my thighs and bum have room for an extra person in the waist department. Don't these people know that women tend to curve out at the hips, whatever their size?

Bonsoir said move to france and eat tissues, it works wonders