OKAY. I’m ANNOYED.
One of my biggest pet peeves with stores is when they boast about body positivity and unfiltered models *cough cough I’m looking at you Aerie* and then they don’t even go past a size XL. EXSQUEEZEEEEE ME. But what the FUCK is that about? It’s saying “we love all bodies! Except really fat ones! You can be chubby, that’s fine, but you can’t be like really fat, that’s not fine.”
I’ve had this issue with Aerie for a while. They go up to size 2xl, but anything above an XL is only sold online. That’s just bullshit to me. If you’re entire marketing strategy is going to be about real models and body positivity, those real models best be fucking fat. They’ve made huge leaps with their portrayal of models with down syndrome, or colostomy bags, or in wheel chairs, but no fat people! Nope! Not beautiful apparently.
I’ve been meaning to write a blog about this for a while, but I never got around to it. The catalyst was a post about the founder of Outdoor Voices that I saw on LinkedIn. The post has a quote from the founder, a woman named, Tyler Haney, “At Outdoor Voices, we never alter or adjust the bodies of the men and women in our imagery .. portraying real, beautiful bodies feels nothing but natural to us.”
You want to know what size Outdoor Voices goes up to? Extra large.
“Portraying real and beautiful bodies”
Okay but like sell to more of those bodies!!!!!
You know how people are always saying the average woman is a size 14? Well that’s not even true. IT’S GONE UP. The average size of the american woman is about a 16 or 18. A size fourteen, according to the top results on Google – I’m a master researcher – is a size large. A 16 or 18 is an XL and an XXL respectively. So the average woman is basically around a size large, or above. And 68% of American Women are above a size 14. Now a little disclaimer – It’s very, VERY, hard to figure out what the average size of an entire population is, especially when that population is women. Women’s clothing is not universally sized the same way men’s clothing is. You can’t walk around knowing for a fact that you’re a certain size and be able to always buy those sizes exclusively. IF you’re a woman, you know this, you hate this.
I’ve been plus size my entire life. Or at least the entire part of my life when I’ve been buying my own clothes, and I’ve NEVER understood why brands didn’t make larger sizes. “It’s not profitable” people told me. “It’s more expensive,” they said. Wanna know how much the plus size fashion industry is worth? $20 billion. That’s billion, with a b. The plus size market went up 17% from 2013 to 2016, while the fashion industry as a whole went up 7% during that time. Plus size women have a massive amount of buying power and it’s just being IGNORED. For those that didn’t go to business school, buying power basically just means we got money and we want to spend it. That, coupled with the limited number of options means any store with plus size clothing is almost guaranteed to do well BECAUSE WE HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO SHOP.
If you are going to sit here and tell me that you are inclusive and don’t want to put an emphasis on unrealistic beauty standards then you need to be showing everything and selling to everyone. Aerie’s brand is body positivity and they don’t sell to a HUGE chunk of bodies. That’s bullshit.
We talk a lot about inclusivity in this world. Fat people need to be included in that inclusivity. And including fat people in your dialogue is not promoting obesity. First off, that’s just ridiculous. People don’t always have control over their weight, and even if they do, it’s not yours to talk about. Yes, you can lose weight by working out and eating healthy, but not everyone can. I eat healthy and work out and haven’t gone gotten any less fat. STILL HEALTHY!!!!! And second of all, fat people exist, and it’s fucking dumb to shame them for their weight.
If you want more on this, I follow this BADASS woman named Katie Sturino and she will go to stores and try on the largest size they have to show which stores are not inclusive. She uses a #MakeMySize to show how much better clothing brands could be. What they should be.
KK that’s the end of my rant, have a great day. Ily.
Did you like this post? You can follow me on Twitter (@biracial_booty), I like to think I’m pretty funny and also I tweet links to my blogs the second they go live (the literal second, I have it done automatically because I’m a social media #superstar). OR you could follow me on Instagram (@biracialbooty), I post more content, including my favorite Podcasts, music, makeup, various body positive posts featuring my chunky self and some of my favorite fat babes, and so much more!
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