Celebrities Who Don’t Fit the Size Mold Are Finally Speaking Out Against the Fashion Industry
(Photo: Zoey Grossman/Harpers Bazaar)
The fashion industry has been under fire for promoting unhealthy body types of for, well, many years now. However, with gorgeous plus-sized models like Ashley Graham showing the world that all shapes and sizes are beautiful, the body-positive movement has become more popular than ever, encouraging others to accept their own body types.
This movement has become so powerful that even celebrities have decided to take part and speak out about the pressures to be thin in a society — and particularly the fashion industry — that celebrates only one, specific physique. Most recently, Khloé Kardashian gave her two cents on the matter in a new cover story with Harper’s Bazaar.
“I definitely think the fashion industry, and people in general, look at me more now that I’ve lost weight,” she said when explaining her struggle to conform to Hollywood’s stereotypical body type. “Even on shoots, I would never have options for clothing. There would always be this attention on Kourtney and Kim, but I was too much work for [stylists], or they had nothing in my size. I wasn’t even that crazy big,” she added.
And, although she’s remade her look – and started the “Revenge Body” trend - as the stunning photos from her Harper’s interview show, she also claims that “other people actually said, ‘I just can’t work with you’ — because I was too big,” she said.
(Photo: Zoey Grossman/Harpers Bazaar)
Khloé is certainly not the only celebrity to speak out about the pressure to be stick-thin. Beyoncé’s speech at the recent Council of Fashion Designers of America awards slammed the fashion industry when she revealed that when Destiny’s Child was starting out, “high-end labels didn’t really want to dress four black, country, curvy girls.”
Some famous fashion faces, most prominently Diane von Furstenberg, have fiercely supported the fact that there need to be healthier standards in the industry, but many designers have remained silent.
In a letter to the CFDA in 2015, von Furstenberg begged designers to adhere to proper health imitative guidelines when booking models, writing, “As we approach New York Fashion Week, let’s remember that beauty is health and health is beauty. It is also important to remember that beauty is diversity and as an industry, we stand by these two principles. It is essential to remind ourselves of this as we spread the message to the world.”
Diane von Furstenberg’s words came at the perfect time. In an editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health, authors and eating disorder health experts affiliated with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Katherine L. Record, and S. Bryn Austin, claim that fashion models are at a high risk of eating disorders and deserve protection from the government, like employees in any other occupation.
“The U.S. government regulates the extent to which any other industry can expose employees to harm,” say Record and Austin. “Professional fashion models are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders resulting from occupational demands to maintain extreme thinness.”
As frivolous as it may seem, the words of prominent figures like these make a major difference when it comes to creating change in the fashion industry. With people like Beyoncé and Diane von Furstenberg speaking out about unhealthy standards in Hollywood and on the runways, people begin to hear the message that not only one body type is valued, and instead, every shape should be celebrated.
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