Meet Robyn Lawley, the Australian-born beauty who is the first plus-size model for Ralph Lauren, and proof that the fashion industry has totally lost its mind if it considers Ms. Lawley to be plus-size……
To most women, Ms. Lawley, who is a size 10 and measures 36D-32-43 according to Wikipedia,looks like a normal woman. She has boobs, her skin is soft, her hair is beautiful and silky. She is *not* a frightfully thin stick figure with bones protruding from her back and ribcage. So what is it that makes her “plus size” other than the size 10? Could it be that she’s 6 ft 2 inches tall?!?!
Essentially, Ralph Lauren is telling us that, to qualify as plus size, a woman must be as tall as a man and have boobs. I bet if we shrunk her down to the height of the average runway model, her weight would drop as well and she wouldn’t be any different than the average runway model.
No wonder so many women have a difficult time fitting into styles by certain designers. If a size 10 is predicated on a woman being over 6 ft tall, then that leaves a whole lot of us wearing dresses down to our ankles and sleeves flopping over our hands (no wonder I can never get anything from Ralph Lauren to fit my dimensions!)
Honestly, what in god’s name is wrong with fashion? Does it really and truly despise real women, or is it some sort of strange, narcissistic world designed by men who want to see most women re-made in their image? When a plus-size model is so beyond the height of the average woman, and a cross-dresser is considered “beautiful” enough to model for a line of women’s bras, we got some serious trouble with an industry that makes billions of dollars per year off women’s purchases.
That’s the part that galls me the most: women are perhaps the primary purchasers of fashion, yet we are, apparently, the most disrespected by the industry. We are left off runways, left out of ads, dismissed by the big brands and are generally treated like doormats.
Sometimes I think of the fashion industry as if it were a bad boyfriend–and, seriously, ladies, do we really need to continue to take this kind of crap?
I’m not so sure…..
What do you think of Robyn Lawley’s plus size status?
