http://losangeles.broowaha.com/article.php?id=228

Anyway, I do feel that smaller women are discriminated against. Not only do I hear “ewwwwww….you’re a size 0?? That’s just sick” all the time, but sometimes, the smallest sizes are too big, and I don’t mean length. I literally swim in some of the clothes I’ve tried on. Catalog sizing charts tell me I’m a 2 or 4, but they’re definitely too big. Heck, size 0 is too big!

Fat in Lefty circles seems to equal Queer in Righty circles.

I’ll say this really slowly for Katrina. Being fat doesn’t mean you are unhealthy. It *should* be about health. But its not. Its always about fat. Contrary to your assumpsions, there is a difference.

A barnacle is a ship, and a splinter is a “bandwagon.” Or did I miss the memo wherein Hollywood and Anna Wintour fired all those “size 6’s” and replaced them with the Dove models. :p

Learn to read, Katrina.

but the whole “controversy” is really fairly hysterical, i think — i mean, “progress”? regardless of what sizes we’re talkin’ about here, the Dove ads are still just a bunch of women standing around in their undies. hardly a radical step forward.

but the sad part?

the hook WORKS. myself, my eyes pretty much popped out of my head the first time these six ladies sidled up next to me on a bus ad. why? because they’re beautiful. seems like there’s a lot of defensive talk from the uber-thin folk that they’re “normal”, too — yes, you are. although hardly the “norm”. and judging from the mainstream media advertisers, we’re supposed to believe that you are. for once, it’s really, really nice even seeing a petite size 4 (like Sigrid, the smallest of the Dove women) as opposed to the emaciated sticks we’re supposed to think are the height of beauty.

i agree that dove is barely scratching the surface. i agree that it’s laughable that such a small, almost inadequate gesture STILL creates such a furor. but it’s still a tiny breath of fresh air. hopefully a step in the right direction. here’s to more of ‘em, i say…

(okay, i’m off my soapbox now.)

I swear, judging by some of these mags I’ve got, everyone expected pregnant women to wear those damn “foundation” devices under their clothes, as well. Blecch. (Don’t forget that “nice” magazines didn’t use the word “pregnant” back then, either.)

Considering that my favorite used clothing store bills itself as a large women’s store and features the whole gamut of sizes starting with “10″ and up– yeah, I’d say it’s pretty comical what’s regarded as “large” in this culture. I haven’t been able to wear a Size 10 since I was in my very early 20s. I’m now an 18 or “2x,” whatever the difference is. So if 10 is “large,” 18 must be– well, nevermind. I still buy clothes in the Men’s Department at regular stores whenever I can get away with it.

I presume that even if a “Size 18″ made it into a Dove Beauty ad, she’d be well over my 5′5″ in height, all the better to spread out that icky fat more uniformly. Yawn. Plus la change, etc etc…

Although the Monroe thing did get me a bit peeved, because I am tired of people implying or otherwise lending credence to the theory that those who mention her dress size was larger than most actresses today are a load of sad tubbies engaged in wishful thinking. She *was* larger than would be acceptable today, and it’s pretty much beyond doubt that she only fit into the sizes she did because (like most women of that time) she was wearing confining undergarments. I’m sorry if my post came off as attacking you, personally, though.

(On a related note, Butterfield 8 was on TV last night, and I noticed that Elizabeth Taylor was also much fleshier than would be permitted in a leading lady intended to be seen as sexy and/or beautiful nowadays.)

Alsis: hey, proof great minds do think alike! (post #16) ;) I just bought a couple of those Taschen books on 50s ads, and they freak me right out. I literally found it impossible to believe the “girdle-under-shorts” one the first time I saw it–hell, it still boggles my mind now. And the bras must have been pretty horrifying to wear as well.

Also: so in the US, a size 14 is now the average? But isn’t that size still considered either the top end of “normal” sizes or actually included in “larger” sizes?

Well, yeah, combined.

As with our political system, it doesn’t cheer me much to believe that these two choices –which are no choice at all– is the best that can be expected of this culture.

Crys, I’m fully aware that people come in different frames and proportions. It’s amazing the way mass-produced clothing companies assume that anyone over a size 4 must be at least 5′6″ or taller. I have a really hard time finding pants that aren’t at least 5 inches too long.

Not once in my previous comment did I either say or intone that size 14 = fat and/or that fat=unattractive. I said that when the “MM was a size 14″ comment is trotted out, it is usually in response to the assumption that a woman who wears a size 14 is overweight and therefore unattractive. MM was regarded as the most attractive celebrity of her day and an international sex symbol, so stating the point that she was a size 14 might cause some who believe size 14 automatically equals unattractive to rethink their views. The comment is misleading, though, because the average size 14 is a lot larger today than it was at MM’s peak of popularity. The comment makes the suggestion that MM was the same size as today’s average American woman (if current popular statistics are to be believed), which is just plainly untrue.

Being a woman, I’m quite familiar with how much clothing size numbers can vary between brands, stores and even styles in the same brand.

“And, btw, whatever the fuck size Monroe would’ve been had she been alive today, comparing her to what is currently considered attractive by the media, she would clearly be labelled somewhat chubby, except maybe when she was at her thinnest.”

No fucking shit.

Actually, this whole sizing discussion just shows how pervasive male privilege is even in the off-the-rack clothing industry. I only have to know about 4 numbers to go shopping for my husband - he doesn’t even have to be along most of the time - and almost everything I buy for him fits. He can’t do that for me, unless he buys me a caftan or something. Talk about totally unfair!

I see the points that Kiki is making, but I’d like to point out something else in addition: when I was a size 14, I was so skinny my hip bones jutted out and my friends told me I looked like death. The only way to get me in anything below a 14 would be to saw chunks of bone off my body.

There’s also Mythago’s excellent point that there is nothing even that standard about clothing sizes (hell, I’ve bought garments in ostensibly the same size from the same damn label that were nowhere near the same fit!) anyway.

So even if you were going to use relative fatness as a measure of “attractiveness” or “fitness” (which, btw, I am not at all condoning), using clothing sizes is a piss-poor, unreliable way of doing it. Some people are just physically larger without necessarily being “fatter”, and the supposed standardness of sizing leaves a lot to be desired.

And, btw, whatever the fuck size Monroe would’ve been had she been alive today, comparing her to what is currently considered attractive by the media, she would clearly be labelled somewhat chubby, except maybe when she was at her thinnest.

There’s probably also some perspective and posing going into these shots that’s meant to confound how we read their size- how much in the perception of which model is the “largest” based on the way they’ve posed them? Only two are faced into the camera, one of whom (Sigrid, I think) having proportions that I coded as “petite.” And is the group shot a composite of some sort? I’d love to know if some of the models are shorter and have been scaled up, or taller and have been scaled down.

Girdle or no girdle, when people use the “Marilyn Monroe was a size 14″ quote to illustrate their point that size 14 is not unattractive, it is misleading. Is size 14 unattractive? I certainly don’t think so. I’ve known plenty of gorgeous women who were size 14 and I’ve been a gorgeous size 14 woman myself at points in my life. But looking at photographs of Monroe, even at her heaviest, it’s plainly obvious that she is nowhere near a size 14 by today’s sizing standards.

Just a personal anecdote related to this. Two years ago, I was a groomsmaid in my friend’s wedding and the bride wanted all the women in the wedding party to wear navy blue dresses made from natural fibers (ie cotton). I had to have mine specially made, because it was a fall wedding and there was absolutely nothing available in the stores to buy. I wear a size 7/8 or 9/10 off the rack, but when I got the pattern for the dress, my measurements put me at size 14 according to the pattern. Although vanity sizing in retail clothing has caused the sizing numbers to stay the same while the actual size of the clothing gets larger, my friend’s mom who made the dress for me explained that the same is not true for sewing patterns, whose sizing has pretty much stayed consistent since the 50s.

Related to the Dove ad, which I have already posted at length about on my own blog (mostly to air my disgust at Roeper), no, it’s not perfect. But what I think is important about the Dove ad is that it has generated so much discussion and public awareness and public disemmination of many points of view regarding the issues of female body image in the media, size acceptance and beauty standards. The ad campaign has been a catalyst for discussion among women and men alike about how the media has affected everyone’s perception of female beauty and female worth. Do I think this was Dove’s primary intent? Of course not. Their primary intent is for their products and their brand to generate a profit for their shareholders. But for the first time in pretty much as long as I’ve been alive, the subject is up for open, wide-spread debate, instead of being pushed to the fringes as the gripe of “jealous fat chicks” and “militant feminazis.” The Dove ads brought to the forefront of public attention that this issue affects everyone.

Concerning the Dove campaign, I think it occupies the interesting place of being a step forward while not being progress. Frankly, I’m fine with companies going after fat consumers for purely economic gain. I think that’s what will need to happen to counteract the billions of dollars spent to ensure that no one questions the fat=evil position put foward by Big Diet. Now, ads for the properly termed snake oil that is Firming Lotion isn’t really going to change the world. But if it was Dove soap, it might be progress. What is going to need to happen is for someone to mainstream this marketing approach.

Concerning average dress size, the number I’ve seen quoted most often is size 14, not size 12. However, I’ve seen that number quoted for a good 10 years at least. With 10 more years of yo-yo dieting pushing weights up, it wouldn’t surprise me if the number is closer to 16 now. Unfortunetly, I can’t seem to locate any hard evidence of where these numbers come from.