Here’s some photos from the latest issue of Vogue Italia featuring Australian model Robyn Lawley, with two other plus-sized models, Tara Lynn and Candice Huffine.
The colloqial expression “Huzzah” was deployed recently to describe the inclusion of the size 14 Lawley on the cover and inside, as though this is some world-shaking victory.
The ‘plus size beauties’ lean over plates of spaghetti in their lingerie. Lawley sits with legs
spread. In other images two models loll around topless on a chair in a boudoir-like setting. Another lays back over a couch in corsetry. The expressions are of high-class glamourous seduction.
I am not contesting that they are beautiful women, and the images are visually rich. The question I ask is, why is stripping off and sexualising larger-sized women a great victory? How is depicting them as semi-naked sexual adornments like their skinnier sisters, a reason to celebrate?
And given that size 14 is an average size why is it being called a ‘plus size’ anyway?
I also wonder if these models didn’t have classic model facial features and large breasts, whether their ‘larger’ bodies would ever have made it on any magazine.
Simply using curvier bodies doesn’t change the primary aim of presenting women in magazines like Vogue, as sexually alluring. The baring of female flesh – even when the flesh comes packaged as something other than an eight or ten – is still what counts. But the flesh has to be of an ‘acceptable’ kind in the first place. Size 14 isn’t that radical.
Regarding Lawley’s positioning on the Vogue cover, according to her mother (as reported by Frockwriter) the photographer asked Lawley to sit how she would sit if she were a really powerful person.
I’m not sure it’s power that comes across in the image. Sure, if she were a man in a pinstriped suit perhaps. I just don’t see that many men sitting that way in corsets and suspenders. Or perhaps I don’t get invited to meetings of business men sitting around in their jocks with their legs apart.
Sitting spread legged in sexy lingerie directs our gaze and suggests sexual availability not ‘I’m planning a company takeover’.
Vogue Italia’s editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani recently told Women’s Wear Daily, “We help [plus-size women] dress fashionably.
Which is kind of funny given the three curvy models aren’t wearing all that much in some of the shots. Perhaps she should have said, “we tell ‘plus-size women how to take their clothes off to make them more acceptable”.
And while I appreciate that Sozzani has launched a petition against pro-anorexia websites, I share Patti Huntington’s view that this is also somewhat ironic.
Last year I ran a thoughtful guest post by Ethel Tungohan titled ‘Plus size models a tokenistic attempt at inclusion’. Ethel wrote:
A quick look at plus-size fashion shoots show that plus-size models are usually shown as naked. Though fashion editors can easily justify the nudity of plus-size models by asserting that women’s bodies should be shown in all their glory, it is bizarre that a large number of plus-size fashion spreads hardly seem to have any fashion content, preferring instead to depict plus-size models in one of two ways: either they are overly sexualized or they are revered for being ‘real’….
It’s too early for Huzzah.
10 Responses
As a plus size women these pictures don’t help. They are kinda even more painful because they make it painfully clear that not only can’t I measure up to the normal standard of beauty I can’t get anywhere near even the plus size standard. Some of us have the misfortune of curves in less sexy places (like around the tummy) and for various reasons have less than perfect skin. You don’t see that type of plus size in modeling shoots.
Not to mention that all the fashion shoots in the world don’t help the frustration and loathing induced by clothes shopping when plus sized due to limited ranges and often high prices.
I am SO SICK of seeing images of half-dressed women in ‘normal’ settings, like restaurants. A lingerie shoot in a bedroom setting at least makes sense, but a restaurant? It’s absurd, and it provides an instant sub-text of submissiveness and sexual availability in every situation.
I’d like to be able to say that I’d also hate it if it were an image on a man in his underwear in a restaurant… but as I’ve never seen such an image, I really have no idea what I might think…
Once again – it’s simply advertising using porn, advertising objectifying women! Empowerment is not allowing ourselves to be objectified, to be used as men’s playthings or entering into male dominated, degrading fantasies. I make a point of not buying any product that uses these methods of advertising.
Great post.. thanks for the info..
This part of the article I find particularly interesting: ‘the photographer asked Lawley to sit how she would sit if she were a really powerful person.’ and how the model chose to pose when given these instructions.. You bet it directs the gaze….
Soooo -to be powerful = to be sexually powerful??? It seems to me like this is the only type of power us woman are able to wield – It’s clayton’s power…( do people still use that expression?? no idea! 🙂 ) Anyway.. thoughtful as always, thanks for sharing Melinda..
Huzzah! Beautiful women of average size* are now as worthy of objectification and degradation as are stereotypically hot women!
*(‘Average-looking’ and ‘overweight’ women may still have to settle for continuing to be merely degraded)
Beautifully said, Melinda.
Putting aside the issue of sexualising women in these kinds of magazines for the moment, I fail to see that these women look much different to most models you see adorning the covers of said magazines. The only difference is that their bodies look healthier and normal sized, not bony and skeletal. They hardly rate as ‘plus size’. If that is ‘plus size’ what hope do the rest of us have?? (Ironically, see me automatically starting to compare myself there?)
The only positive out of this is that young women might see those bodies and aspire to have bodies like them, rather than the way too skinny, bony bodies (assuming we could ever get girls and women to stop comparing and competing with other women and trying to live up to a predetermined standard of what is perfection). It could lead to a lot of girls being a healthy size. This is, however, a very small positive when compared with the overall problems these magazines cause women.
Getting back to the issues of sexualising women, they all still, however, look like meat served up for men’s pleasure and/or for women to compare themselves to and feel bad if they don’t measure up.
They are very beautiful photos and beautiful women, but as your article points out, how does this empower women?
Should we fatties feel grateful that somebody dared to put a normal size person in a magazine? Should we dance around singing ‘huzzah’ and rejoicing that we can be sexualised too?
It still amazes me that if I comment to people I know about this sort of thing, they ask if I’m jealous, I assume, because I’m overweight and therefore I’m not allowed to be sexy. I don’t want to roll around naked, in suggestive poses, pouting and preening so men can get boners… not at any size. I want to be valued for my abilities, my intelligence, my contributions to my community. Why are none of these things rated as sexy… oh wait, I forgot, they don’t turn men on.
The only ‘power’ these women (and all those before them) have achieved is the ‘power’ to give men boners… is that really a power we want?
It appears that for women to show they have “come of age” “matured” are acceptable, powerful, modern, they have to get their clothes off! This photo shoot is just another attempt to sexualise and objectify women. We can’t just celebrate them buy dressing them up nicely on the front cover,noooooo we have to have them half naked and looking like they are working in a Victorian brothel!!
Why is it that the only way a woman seems to be able to “prove herself” is to get naked and look like a hooker. Men don’t have to do it. why do we? Well it’s because we are conned, duped, tricked into thinking it is all about us, freedom to be women, freedom to make choices, yet all we are doing is making the choices they have been making for us for years… women are just sexual fodder for men and advertising. However, now, we think because we are in charge of it it is different. It’s not. We need to wake up and smell the very subtle and elaborate con job!
I think you are all completely missing the point. This is not an editorial about looking like hookers and being ‘sexual fodder’. It is not about empowerment. Whether the viewer experiences empowerment is up to them, but it could hardly be called the intent of these images. It is simply about size inclusion and beauty. You know, like classical art, but in a fashion magazine.
There is much that is wrong with your post Melinda. For a start, the complete editorial is not shown. Go have a look here [http://runwayrevolution.com/2011/06/vogue-italia-june-2011-belle-vere/] then make a more informed comment.
And for another thing – watch the first video linked from the image with the girl in the mask. You will see the cover image being photographed. Then have another, closer look at the cover and marvel at the OTT retouching work. That is where your ire should be directed – the thing is completely fabricated.
I understand that you can’t please all the people all the time, and that some people need to find something to complain about in everything – but can we all agree that it is about time that larger body shapes were embraced by high fashion magazines, given more magazine covers (!!) and have a bit of a celebration of that instead of this wailing and gnashing of teeth??
Lastly: Reblogging a reblog without all appropriate credit (yes, I can spot the Mamamia title) is NOT good form. If you don’t like your sources enough to name them, find better ones. I recommend my site: I present all of the facts without the hype and hoopla.
Apologies, I see that you linked the Mamamia article. But still….it’s not a source. Just a reblog of the article you link further down.
@Pippa
“It is simply about size inclusion and beauty.”
Couldn’t agree more. But surely it is salient to ask, however, why ‘plus size’ women can only be included or celebrated if they conform to certain paradigms of beauty, womanhood and sexuality? Standards which are demonstrably destructive to the physical and mental health of women and girls?
I’m all for diversity in fashion and media. I just don’t think this is it.