Marilyn Monroe Had Curves, I'm Just Fat!

~*~

TLC premiered a new fashion series this week titled "Big Brooklyn Style". Because the show is produced by "What Not To Wear"'s Stacy London, I had high hopes that this would be a Fat Girl's Guide to What Not To Wear.

I was extremely disappointed.

What I got were two 30-minute infomercials for Lee Lee’s Valise Brooklyn Boutique (throwing a link there just in case she wants to send me one of those $168 dresses even though I thought the show sucked).

Each episode featured three woman who are full-figured, plus-sized, curvy, fat and as such, hate shopping for clothes. 

No big surprise there. Any woman who wears a size 16 or above knows that shopping for clothes is never fun. Although the average women's clothing size is a 14, only 18% of clothing retailers sell sizes 14 and above.

Want to enjoy shopping for clothes? Lose weight. It's that simple.

Anyway, if the premise of the show wasn't predictable enough, there were two additional issues that irritated me so much I was forced to eat an entire package of Oreo's to cope.

First? The use of the word "CURVY". 

I am so sick of people trying to find synonyms for fat that are politically correct. If I can say, without recourse, that a woman has curly hair, I should be able to say, without recourse, that a woman is fat ... especially since I am fat!

Here's a little primer for you.  See this? This is curvy.

Sure, she's carrying a few extra pounds, but she has a defined bust, waist and hips.

See this? This is fat.

She is carrying a few more extra pounds and her shape is more round than defined.

I am not implying that the fat girl is any less attractive than the curvy girl, just stating that these two bodies are very different. If we want to put people in boxes, let's make sure we put them in the correct box.

Me? I'm fat. My body looks much more like the bottom photo than the top photo.

The women in "Big Brooklyn Style" varied from curvy to fat, yet Lisa Dolan seemed to know only one adjective for her clientele - CURVY - and she repeated it again and again and again ...

Second? The Wrap Dress.

Lisa Dolan designs about eight different styles of dresses and they all look relatively the same. Most of them are v-neck (wrap/faux wrap) with an empire waist and a full skirt. Why? Because a dress in that style makes just about any woman look AMAZING.

She takes the guess work out of buying a dress ... and spends 30 minutes selling the viewers her $168 dress - a style of dress that I have picked up at Target, Avenue, Lane Bryant, and Torrid for about 1/4 the cost.

TLC could have done much better by offering a "What Not To Wear" type show for full-figured, plus-sized, curvy, fat girls that focused on dressing in a flattering, stylish way without spending $168/dress.

And Lisa Dolan? Please stop calling me curvy - I'm fat and am well aware that I am fat!

~*~

(19/25)

Plus-Sized Model?

I was over at Matty's Meaty Cupboard the other day reading his thoughts on MTV and America's Next Top Model (High Priced Hookers). Now, I've seen this show on occasion - my 13 year old step-daughter watches it incessantly - but it's not a show I seek out. When I ready Matty's piece, I thought I'd see what cheeseburger needing beautiful young girls were in the finals for cycle 10. Imagine my surprise at learning that the token "plus-size" (or as they like to call it in the industry, "full-figure") model was in the final three. Then, imagine my terror when I saw this photo of one of the final three contestants and discovered that she was the "plus-size" model!


What? You've got to be kidding me! This beautiful, healthy, 20 year old girl (Whitney Thompson) wears a size 8 - a 10 on a bloated PMS bad day - and we are going to call her a "plus-size" model? Since when did healthy become "plus-size"?

Much of what I've read on Whitney's win talks about how great this is for young girls - to see that even a "plus-size" girl can win America's Next Top Model. I say bullshit! What this does is distort the perception of "normal" even further.

Do you know what's even worse? For years, men (at the hands of women) have taken the brunt of the blame for encouraging the stereotype of super thin as attractive and sexy, and I don't believe it for a minute. It's not the men that encourage this stereotype, it's the women. I've read quite a bit on Whitney's win, and it's the women who say, "She sure put on a few pounds after they selected her," and "She looked better when she was thinner."

Looked better? She looks fabulous! Maybe as women we should stop being so critical of each other, and of ourselves, and recognize the beauty each one of us exudes.