Diverse Equals Unhealthy?: Talking to Girls About the 'Plus Size' Model Trend

A reader recently told me that her 13-year-old daughter is confused by all the talk of magazines using "plus size" models. She thinks that promoting diversity of female body shapes means that magazines are promoting being overweight.

It is sort of confusing, isn't it?

There's a lot of confusion surrounding the very definition of "plus size." After all, the models who are labeled "plus size" in magazines look an awful lot like the women we see around us everywhere -- at the mall, in the grocery store, at PTO meetings. Maybe it'd be a more accurate description if we referred to the typical runway model as an "under size" model.

But I digress...

I think a discussion of healthy bodies has to put labels aside and focus on one simple question: Are you the healthiest version of the body nature has given you through genetics? You could take 10 different physically fit women and line them up next to each other and they would still look very, very different.

That's diversity.

It's when we forget that and focus on one body type as the "ideal" that we run into body image trouble. When we present our daughters with magazines that show only one type of body or hair color or skin tone as beautiful, we teach them -- consciously or not -- to value what they see as the ideal. We teach them to ignore the diverse beauty around them in favor of one -- perhaps for them, unattainable -- beauty "goal."

By showing a range of models with different body types and calling them all beautiful, magazines can have a significant impact on our body image culture. I dream of a day when the ultimate question my daughter asks herself isn't "Do I look like her?" but rather "Do I look like the healthiest version of me?" If she's eating well, treating herself occasionally, getting regular exercise and speaking kindly about her body, she can look in any mirror with her head held high and answer "yes."

That's how we can begin to teach our daughters that beauty comes in many diverse shapes and sizes.

I interviewed a woman for You'd Be So Pretty If... who told me that when she was a teenager, she was the largest of her group of friends, though she was a healthy weight. She came to a realization that I'll never forget: "I wasn't overweight," she told me. "I was over their weight."

I can relate to that. Can you?

Comments

[Melissa Wardy]

I love that comment "I was over *their* weight." That shows a lot of insight for a girl her age.

I like your point about diversity being a range of beautiful women at their most healthiest state. I see some of these "plus size" models, and they aren't exactly "big", they just have slightly fuller frames than the Size 0 or 2's walking the cat walk. I think the industry is moving in the right direction, but still only timidly dipping their toes in the water.

[love2eatinpa]

so happy i found your blog!
i agree wholeheartedly. good health comes in all different shapes, sizes and colors. we really need to teach our girls the value in that so that they don't hold themselves up to society's cookie cutter image of what thin/pretty girl is.

[Roxanne @ Champion of My Heart]

It's so true. It's VERY easy to get caught in the relative nature of body ideas/ideals. The illusion cuts both ways, though. I may indeed be "smaller" than most people, but that doesn't mean I'm at a good/healthy weight.

[Dana]

I really like your post and the concept for your blog in general. There's one thing I'd like to add to what you said. The problem with what young girls see in various media sources isn't the only problem. It's that all the men in their lives see it too and then also sometimes expect women to live up to those fabricated ideals. I may ignore what I see on television and in magazines, but it's hard to ignore the expectations that friends, boyfriends, and husbands have for you because of what they see portrayed.

I also completely agree with you about the labeling for "plus" size models. Our perceptions of these girls changes because of how we label them. If they were just models and skinnier models were, like you said, "under-sized" models, I feel people would look at them in a different light.