From the brand-new Barbie to Ashely Graham striking a pose on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover, body diversity is getting its day in the sun, or that’s what they say anyway. Of course, when looking closer at these accomplishments, there are still actual changes that need to be made in order to really celebrate body diversity in the media and change social thought.
Anyway, curvy retailer navabi’s new campaign, #Moreplusplease , encourages fashion industry professionals and fashion followers, to demand more size diversity from print to the runways.
According to femalefirst.co.uk, navabi chef merchant Miriam Lahage said, “There is no one version of beauty and it’s time the industry reflected this. And we’re not talking just one model in a show or publishing a shoot just once a season in a magazine. There is a mindset among designers which results in media collateral that totally excludes plus size women – from catwalk images to samples.”
Maybe it’s too much to ask to see the number of curvy women represented on the catwalk in a way that reflects the amount of curvy women seen walking down the street.
Lahage believes that “with designers moving to show and buy concept, which will remove the sample tyranny, there has never been a greater opportunity for stylists to embrace size diversity.”
navabi surveyed 12 of the most popular women’s magazines in the UK, all purchased in the same week. (They counted up the number of ‘model size’ women and ‘curvy’ women.) For the sake of the survey, they expanded the definition of ‘plus size’, which usually means size 16+, to include curvy women like Kim Kardashian. Similar, to the report we conducted last year, magazines are obviously lacking in the body diversity department. (As far as advertisements, weekly women’s magazines’ advertisements represented a whopping 0% of curvy women where as monthly women magazines fared a little better with 8%.)
One thing’s for certain. It’s about time that body diversity is appreciated for more than publicity and possibly celebrated for the fact that no one actually looks the same.
Check out navabi’s #Moreplusplease campaign video here:
What do you think?