I’m a Fat Mummy. You?

Da sitzen dicke Muttis mit der Chipstüte vorm Fernseher und sagen, dünne Models sind hässlich”, so Lagerfeld. Die Welt der schönen Kleider habe schließlich „mit Träumen und Illusionen zu tun.” Runde Frauen wolle da niemand sehen.

- Karl Lagerfeld

Focus

Rough translation: only fat mummies with potato chips want to see curvy models.

Karl Lagerfeld is a twat. I’m sorry. He is an outdated, out of touch, out of his mind twat. Fashion genius, sure. Design God, whatever. Still a twat.

You might not want to see women with a greater girth than a cigarette, Karl, but that’s no reason to project your twisted concepts, potentially borne of genuine psychological issues with weight and food, onto generations of consumers of and participants in the fashion/modeling industry.

The thing is, you’ve got it all wrong, Lagerfeld. People are sick of seeing the same aphid physique trotted out down the runway time and time again. Editors are sick of airbrushing weight onto models. Just ask the Editor of Germany’s leading glossy for women – I almost wept with happiness last week when I read Brigitte will no longer feature models from 2010. People have had it up to here with being told this is the only way to look if you want to be considered feminine, attractive and fashionable. And it’s not just fat mums with chips, Karl sweetie; it’s women and men of all different shapes and sizes who are over the sick brainwashing people of your ilk perpetrate, the rise and rise of eating disorders in the West and the hypocrisy of the three pronged devil’s tridents – the media, the modeling industry and the fashion industry. Oh my God I am just so sick of influential people saying stupid things.

Being female and growing up in a culture consumed by body image and dictated by narrow, unrealistic ideals, I’m bloody sick of harping on about it. I’m not going to reiterate the statistics, the facts, the arguments. But I am going to reiterate that I’m tired of all these voices yelling for the same thing; for diversity, for realism, and I’m tired of influential dickheads like Karl Lagerfeld resolutely ignoring them. And going one step further, saying ‘no one wants to see curvy women.’ Are you serious? I can only deduce one thing from such an unbelievably stupid and inaccurate comment – Karl Lagerfeld is on drugs. Or suffers from delusions. Or doesn’t know what day it is. Or has two friends. Or hasn’t spoken to another human being for ten years. Or thinks everyone should develop the same issues with body image that he suffers from. Or all of the above. It’s really time old Karl was put out to pasture.

Women are clamouring to be recognized. The global reaction (Yes! More!) to the above photograph says it all. They are desperate to see themselves in projections of femaleness on television, in magazines, at the movies. I know for a fact, because unlike Karl I communicate with the world in general, that people want to see body types other than skinny. I am not calling for the glorification of the unhealthily overweight, just as I am fighting the glorification of the dangerously underweight – I am asking for diversity and realism in the portrayal of women. I am asking for a celebration of the female form in its many manifestations.  Constant privileging of one over the other is clearly dangerous.

What’s that you say, Karl? The world of fashion is all about dreams and illusions? Ah. Of course. My bad. Women over 45kg are not allowed to be the subjects of dreams and illusions. That domain reserved purely for the thin, yes? How could I have been so stupid.

Twat.

Some thoughts …

Here at Trespass we encourage diversity, including of opinion. So here’s some food (chips) for thought …

Not so much an opinion as three things about KL himself:
1) As you’d know, he used to be obese and then starved himself so he could fit into skinny jeans when they first came into fashion. As always, his statement reveals so much more about the man himself than about his subject(s).
2) There is a striking aesthetic resemblance between Mr L and Kryten from Red Dwarf
3) As word on the streets of Paris would have it, a gold-embossed sign sits next to the toilet in Mr Lagerfeld’s house which reads “Pissing everywhere isn’t very Chanel”.

- Andy Geeves

Does modelling exist as some sort of under-nourished art form, or is it a reflection of our society? I’d like to think that fashion designers are designing for people to wear their stuff, but to be honest, there’s a lot of stuff on catwalks that you’d never set foot out of the house in. The problem is not that the industry isn’t reflecting the people who wear high fashion, it’s that it has always played such an active role in creating aesthetic stereotypes, that its portrayal of women is dangerous. “Fat mums” are not the only ones who believe there should be curvy models. Anybody who has had a friend suffer through anorexia, or has physically denied themselves natural nourishment for the sake of a perpetuated ideal would agree. It begs the question, do we just pay too much attention to popular culture, but if we agree that we cannot change its impact, then we must begin to alter it. That said, we must draw a line between ‘curvy’ and ‘obese.’ After hearing people claim the importance of Fat Rights, I began to think that the other extreme hurts to. From someone who lost almost 30kg last year, and knows the health impacts being overweight has, it is not okay to correlate ‘big is beautiful’ with ‘obese is natural’.

- Sam Webster

Karl Lagerfeld is often called “the Chanel Supremo” and his eccentricities have definitely not gone by unnoticed. Once again the man himself has sparked a fire in the world of fashion, or should I say, in the world of “what-size-are-you”. The comment made by him would have been considered outrageously disrespectful in the past, but today it’s just like any other body-shape attack. When Coco Chanel said, “Fashion has become a joke”, she probably forecasted the future. Just last week, Ralph Lauren had to publically apologize for air-brushing an already-skinny model, into a scarecrow lookalike. This stirring debate of skinny models vs. real models is never going to end. Unless someone takes all the “thin” models for a real meal.

Magazines embracing curvy body types is about celebrating the diversity of women. Yes, we are ready for a “different” body type, but not for the “real” women… yet! Let’s face it, we haven’t reached the stage where larger and plainer looking girls are accepted in the fashion industry. Sadly, fashion is still about glamour, poise, unrealistic beauty and sensationalism. And I’m sure the minute you see your “real looking” neighbour on the next Vogue cover, you will NOT buy that issue.

- Shitika Anand