September 15, 2010 Curves make their mark in the first ever Plus Sized Show to be held during New York Fashion Week. Real woman dominated the runway as they wowed the audience with their ability to rock the Spring 2011 clothing lines! Women from sizes 12 - 44 made lasting impressions that hopefully will outshine the taboo of the word "plus-sized". A plus-sized fashion icon Emme, shared with CBS, that there are over 62 million woman that are a size 12 and above and expressed her curiosity as to why plus-sized models are jsut now being brought into fashion week.
This is truly the beginning of a revolution in my eyes. It is not that curves had never played a role on the runway and that we never glamorized bodies like Marylin Monroe, but we have never done it in such a way. The impact of media on society has increased liek never before and the obsession with being "model perfect" is in the mind of the majority of teenage girls across the nations. Most, but not all, models have taken thin to an entirely new level. They are thinner than thin as many are aware of, but i do not believe they should be blamed. I feel that although they are the ones displaying the image of a naturally unobtainable size, they are on the same boat as the rest of us who aspire to be them. They too have the pressure to be a size that for most is almost impossible and maybe if that pressure was lifted they would not feel such a forceful desire to be an artificial size.
"Plus-sized" has developed some sort of taboo along the years, but why? The connotation being that when people hear or think of the word "plus-sized" they automatically think overweight and overweight by a signifigant amount. The disturbing part of it is that most "plus-sized' models are at a healthy weight and an ideal wieght for thier bonestructure and height. These woman are beautiful and even more so they a realistic. The runway as been said to be a place of imagination and dreams in defense of having un-realistic size standards for models, but the problem is that society forgets the part that it is a dream and it becomes their reality and as far as the models go, it is their relaity. The fact of the matter is that the models are not imaginery and trying to force there bodies to against human nature in order to become a size is terrifying for their health.
The idea of having a Plus-Sized Show during fashion week is, as I stated before, revolutionary. Today, it is not just a change in taste that is moving us in the direction of plus-sized models, it is a discovery in the definition of beauty. It is people understanding that stick thin and pertruding bones does not make someone beautiful. It is the realization that men and woman around the globe are developing eating disorders and slowly killing themselves for a number on a scale, measuring tape, or pants size. Their entire worth as a human being is put into that number. Fashion is a beautiful, inspring, creative, breath-taking, un-ruled, form of art and in my opinion fashion does not have to obide by any size standard becuase the power that Fashion has, is beyond any restriction or rule. This at times can be bad as we have seen Fashion create it's own rules by having models that depict an unhealthy image. However, I feel that with the start plus-sized had at NYFW Fashion's power can be a good thing, it can drive society to see real woman as beautiful and create a new dream world stricly through the fashions of clothing, while using realistic bodies to display these dreams on the runway where models talents are based upon their ability to "own and work" an outift, as opposed to who can weigh less.
The world is changing right before our eyes and Fashion just may begin to sculpt our future in a way we have never witnessed before.
articles about NYFW's Plus size show:
http://www.styleite.com/runway/nyfw-to-host-first-ever-plus-size-only-fashion-show/
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