plus size my ass!
no, my ass isn't plus size. well, who knows. i haven't measured it in a while, but that's not what this post is about.

i've been browsing online wedding dress designer sites recently and noticed a growing "plus size" selection. that's great... a lot of bridal gowns were designed with the painfully thin models in mind. however, the somewhat recent move towards plus size advertising taking shape right now hasn't been as kind to the concept of "plus size" as people may have intended.

somehow, a bunch of photographers and clothing manufacturers and businesspeople and marketing wizzes sat down together in a room with those glass water dispensers and maybe one of those space-age-looking conference call phones in the middle of the table to discuss how to market this stuff. still thinking they were doing the world a favor by letting un-waify women embrace their bodies and also get clothes that look good, they started trying to get models. perhaps someone even said, "we can't have an ugly fat person in our ads." of course. not all fat people are ugly. not all skinny people aren't ugly. fact of life. instead, they just decided not to get fat people altogether. now, we have these size 8 (EIGHT!) women modelling plus-size clothing. any minimal arm flab they may have is quickly erased on the computer image. and another thing: they aren't just called "models." we don't hear about Emme the model, we hear about Emme the Plus Size Model.

i can't stand it. rather than empowering women of all sizes to feel great about their bodies, they're just broadening the self-esteem gap. now us once-happy little size 8-ers are feeling pressure to remove ourselves from this category. instead of changing the way the media thinks about size (oh yeah, that'll be easy), we feel fat. we believe what they tell us. now we're plus size, and the only way to change that is to obsess about our bodies and get skinnier.

this is appalling, disheartening, and unbelievable.