What do high fashion couturiers think is the ideal female
figure? That’s obvious. They prefer a very tall, very
thin woman, whose breasts are almost flat and whose hips are
as narrow and angled as that of a beautiful adolescent boy.
I spelled it all out in 1976, in a book titled Women,
Money, and Power which I published together with Judge
Emily Jane Goodman. We divided the chapters up, and I titled
one of mine: “I’d Rather Be Dead Than Ugly: The
Psycho-economics of Female Beauty.”
Short, round, large breasted pregnant women are not viewed
as fashionable. I meditated on this in my 1978 book titled
About Men. In a chapter about male womb-envy, I noted
that women are hanging everywhere in museums in oil paintings,
but “how few of them are pregnant.” Since most
women have been pregnant all the time during their child-bearing
years, one wonders why our great painters pre-dated high fashion
models? (Well, Rubens painted rosy-hued and fleshy women,
but none of them were pregnant).
High
fashion models who are not a size 0-2 are not welcome on the
runways. A “strikingly beautiful” 5’8”
model, Jill Korleve, half Dutch, half Surinamese, who wears
a size 8-10 is considered a “plus size” model.
For years, she tortured her flesh and her soul:
I
was dieting constantly 24/7, trying so hard to conform to
the industry standard…I was antisocial, miserable, and
never ‘thin’ enough to get booked, so I felt I
was starving myself for nothing.
Take
a good look at most movie stars. Big eyes, big, swollen lips,
big enhanced breasts, but shrunken, almost mini-women, from
the waist down. Child-like. I see women who look like this
all over the Upper East Side. Tom Wolfe called them “social
X-rays.” I will not denigrate or further reduce them
in any way. I only wish that they loved themselves for reasons
other than how they look—and perhaps, would like them
to enjoy a full meal of whatever they most enjoy, even if
it’s fattening, yes, every single day.
Where
does this ‘thin’ reality leave the rest of us,
the average-sized women? Ethnic women? Women of colour? Women
whose ancestry is not Northern European? Women who do not
have a single thin gene in their bodies? Poor women, whose
lives are stressed and who tend to eat cheap, comfort foods,
all dangerously high in addictive sugars?
These
are the denizens of a certain kind of Hell, condemned to perpetual
dieting, weight loss medication (if they can afford it), cycles
of weight loss and weight gain, self-blame, self-hate, and
self-deprivation coupled with permanent shame and frustration
while shopping in stores that do not carry clothing larger
than a size 12. Larger sizes are in their own, much smaller
specialty areas and have fewer selections to offer.
Where
can average and average-size women see themselves as simply
acceptable?
I
know: Fat-shaming is out. Large size and fabulous singers
and writers are in (Lizzo and her backup crew, Roxanne Gay,
Aretha, always).
I
know: Men are judged as well—but mainly by what’s
in their wallets, not so much on whether they can maintain
teenage-era good looks and good bodies into their senior years.
Even if they are so judged, the average Joe does not care
as much about this as does our average Jane.
Once,
I had a 20” waist. Once, I wore bikinis. Once, I cut
a fashionable, even a glamorous figure about town, at least
for an intellectual. Yes. Other women told me so. This is
all that counts.
And
then—time passed as it always does. Dangerous illnesses
came and lingered forevermore in my immune system. Multiple
surgeries led to a more sedentary life style—et Voila!
I am now in my 80s, and I’m a large-size woman, a plus-size
woman. Most stores do not carry my sizes. The one genuine
plus-size store in Manhattan that catered to women of a certain
age and size and who had glamorous, sparkly, kinda outfits
closed long ago.
Once
I became walking-disabled—ah, it became too hard to
shop. What to do, what to do. Here’s what.
Over
the years, I’ve had simple, silk dusters made for me
by tailors in India. A representative would come to my home
in New York and measure almost every inch of me.
Lately,
sometimes, I have my clothing made by a very talented Russian
emigre who works in the tiniest shop imaginable, and like
the fairy that she is, spins costumes for her clientele made
of burned velvet, silk, chiffon, all really meant for the
stage. This luxury is a necessity for me, but it really costs
no more than ready-to-wear clothing costs in most Fifth Avenue
stores.
There
she is, up above. Does anyone even remember our Paleolithic
ancestress, aka the Venus of Willendorf? Our droop-breasted,
pregnant, or postpartum fertility or Venus-Goddess figure?
Where is she now that she’s so desperately needed? Who
will fashion clothes for this venerable woman?
