{"id":26713,"date":"2010-08-27T10:36:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T15:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=26713"},"modified":"2013-12-05T04:00:55","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T09:00:55","slug":"catalogs-clothes-and-representation-plus-size-at-fredericks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/08\/27\/catalogs-clothes-and-representation-plus-size-at-fredericks\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalogs, Clothes, and Representation: Plus Size at Frederick’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miriam H. noticed that the “Plus Size” section of the Frederick’s of Hollywood website<\/a> uses very thin women to model the clothes, a phenomenon we’ve documented at Woman Within<\/a>, even as it boasts “SEXY AT EVERY SIZE” and “Styles in sizes up to 3X and 42F”:<\/p>\n

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I browsed through all of the front pages for the categories at the left and noticed only one photograph of a woman that could pass as a “plus size” model:<\/p>\n

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This got me to wondering where these photos come from… and I have absolutely no answer to this question.\u00a0 I don’t know if Frederick’s arranges for these photos to be taken, if they hire a company to take these photos, if the manufacturers have the photos taken and give or sell them to Frederick’s.\u00a0 That might explain the single image with a plus-sized woman.\u00a0 It also seems to me that the photos vary quite a bit stylistically, suggesting that they were coming from different places.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

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I suspect, as well, that the reason all of the products are modeled by thin models is because only one photo of each product is produced (one with a thin model on the assumption that plus-sized models could not be used to sell to non-plus-sized people).\u00a0 That is, it would be twice as expensive to show two differently sized women in the garment, so women searching for plus-sized clothes don’t get to see the garment in their size.<\/p>\n

Then again, as I continue to think out loud, almost no women buying any of these clothes has a body that approximates that of the models in these photos.\u00a0 So this is not a non-representation issue for larger women, it’s a non-representation issue for almost all women.<\/p>\n

So this seems to me to be an issue of representation, but also an issue of the institutional and financial constraints of the fashion industry.\u00a0 Thoughts?\u00a0 Insights?\u00a0 Answers?<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miriam H. noticed that the “Plus Size” section of the Frederick’s of Hollywood website uses very thin women to model the clothes, a phenomenon we’ve documented at Woman Within, even as it boasts “SEXY AT EVERY SIZE” and “Styles in sizes up to 3X and 42F”: I browsed through all of the front pages for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,244,225,36,55,2103,778],"class_list":["post-26713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-fat","tag-clothesfashion","tag-economics","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-intersectionality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26713"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26724,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26713\/revisions\/26724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}