Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling (4 page)

Western consumer culture, aided by the fashion, cosmetic, and medical industries, perpetuates a normalized discontentment toward women’s bodies by constructing an ideal that is far from the normal, natural body. In the domain of fashion, a white feminine aesthetic that values extreme thinness is the standard.
³¹
When non-white models do grace the fashion runway, often it is in the context of adding a little “flavor” or diversity to the show; the focus is on their exoticism. This also occurs in popular film, where filmmakers place greater emphasis on the breasts, hips, and buttocks of Latina and African American actresses.
³²
These bodies, signifying a racialized exotic sexuality, are meant to contrast with the normative, thin white bodies. In fashion, this image of beauty reproduces hegemonic ideas of gender, sexuality, race, and class.

As a cultural producer with global reach, fashion serves as a “cosmetic panopticon,” shaping norms and expectations of physical appearance across the spectrums of race, sexuality, and class.
³³
In this cosmetic panopticon, many women experience a pressure to achieve this ideal at the risk of cultural rejection. They become objects in their own projects of becoming. As evidenced by the escalation of techniques aimed at manipulating the physical body devised by the cosmetic, weight-loss, and medical industries, this cosmetic panopticon rewards compliance with a thin ideal and intensifies the horrors of a fleshy existence. Therefore, these women begin to hold themselves accountable for the proper display of their bodies before the fashion police chastise them for their personal failings. They toil over their bodies because they have internalized the sense that fashion watches and judges them for their ability to match the ideal aesthetic. With fashion billboards and magazine editorials as their (th)inspiration, these women often find themselves working toward
unattainable goals of perfection, for the icons they aspire to emulate are carefully constructed and manipulated by the brush strokes of master aestheticians and computer technicians. Still, many keep trying, like hamsters on a wheel, because failure comes at a price to one’s self-esteem and perceived social position.

Feeling pressured to “measure up” to this ideal, women may monitor their caloric consumption and partake in ritualized physical exertions in efforts to mold their bodies into a desired shape. If they do not possess a thin physique, they, at the very least, admit to undergoing a process of transformation into a thinner, more normative frame, for example, ordering a diet soda instead of a regular one as proof that they are watching their figure, or purchasing garments in a smaller size as motivation for their efforts to lose weight. Many women work full-time to become thin. Their efforts range from wearing control top pantyhose to rein in unsightly lumps to more extreme measures such as pursuing cosmetic procedures at all economic and emotional costs.

The body is integral to the process of producing and reproducing identity, but this obsession with the physical leads to a separation of the mind from the body. In this cosmetic panopticon where we are watched, sociologist Marcia Millman argues that
all
women are prone to disembodiment because “they are taught to regard their bodies as passive objects others should admire.”
³⁴
For example, how often do we hear, “My body hates me!” or, rather, at the final reveal after weeks of invasive cosmetic surgeries on television programs such as
The Swan
and
Extreme Make-over
, the phrase, “I am finally the person whom I felt I was on the inside.” In such cases, there appears to be a sharp disconnect between the self and the body, and, as a result, these individuals embark on grueling quests to forge an alliance between the two as they work to conform to cultural body ideals.

This disembodiment intensifies in the fat body, where the fat woman resorts to only “living from the neck up.” While the thin woman can admire and adore her “normative” body, the fat woman often views her body as an autonomous and uncooperative “thing” that she lives with,
distracts attention away from, or tries to change. Her body becomes an object of revulsion. Ultimately, the fat woman creates distance between her self and her failed body.

This form of disembodiment is also common among cosmetic surgery patients, as Virginia Blum writes in her book,
Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery
: “The ‘you’ who feels ugly is linked to the defective piece but is also imaginatively separable. Partly, this double effect of your body that is both ‘you’ and replaceable feels like a split right down the center of your identity. I am my body and yet I own my body.”
³⁵
Women who perceive their bodies to be flawed attempt to disconnect from their bodies in order to shield themselves from the pain associated with living in non-normative bodies that fail to match contemporary standards of beauty. This alienation from their physical bodies is a response to a hunger not based on biological needs but rather social pressures.

Disembodiment can also occur among women in communities and cultures that value the fat body, as their curvy bodies are hypersexualized and objectified for the pleasure of others. While treasured, they become disembodied, sexual objects. They are reduced to breasts, hips, and booties.

In response to this engendered objectification that alienates fat bodies, scholars in the field of fat studies call for a reclamation of one’s embodiment as a form of resistance against the cultural stigma of fat.
³⁶
This queering of fat bodies is aimed at challenging discursive constructions of fatness, allowing a fat person to “come out” as proud and authentically embodied. Fat activists and scholars desire to reinscribe fatness with more positive meanings and present a counter discourse.

As studies of burlesque and theater performers argue, fat women may achieve this liberation from stigma through the physical performance of fat.
³⁷
Performance, itself, reveals and redefines fatness. For example, a burlesque performer reclaims her sexual agency on the stage. Her
performance “functions to support a new, positive vision of fat sexual embodiment.”
³⁸

If it is to have a lasting effect, however, according to fat activist and communications scholar Kathleen LeBesco, a truly liberated performance sexualizes and beautifies the fat body without relying on thin aesthetics. This is problematic because, as cultural theorist Samantha Murray argues, fat women continue to live out, and thus reify, the dictates of dominant body ideologies that they have internalized. According to Murray, “fat politics still privileges the thin body and attempts to imitate it. As fat girls, we still want to know what it is to be thin, even if we do not want to alter our fat.”
³⁹
With fat pool parties and lingerie parties, “we simply reverse the kind of response that fat bodies elicit within a dominant heteronormative framework” and “reproduce the obsession with the visible and the power of aesthetic ideals.”
⁴⁰
We still judge women on the basis of looks, not content. We still sexualize and objectify women’s bodies, reducing them to breasts and other body parts.

The editorial spread in
V Magazine
’s January 2010 issue, featuring plus-size model Crystal Renn and straight-size model Jacquelyn Jablonski, illustrates this problematic in the theatricality of fatness. The two women modeled alongside each other in identical outfits and similar poses—virtual copies of one another except one is slighter larger than the other. There is no counter aesthetic—just imitation.

Plus-size models play an integral role in negotiating and manipulating cultural interpretations and expectations of women’s bodies. In the case of these models, the dominant culture assumes that these fat women are suffering from the “sin by omission,” failing to keep up with culturally ascribed, necessary bodily devotional practices.
⁴¹
Such regimented practices are crucial because, as sociologist Anthony Giddens explains, in the modern era, we are held responsible and accountable for the design of our own bodies. Following his logic, by all accounts, these women should be hiding in shame. However, they continue to flaunt their curves and strut down fashion runways with pride and gusto. They celebrate the same curves that many other women try to eliminate. Plus-size models provide us with a visual representation of solid flesh that the cultural discourse tries to make invisible.

This editorial spread from
V Magazine
, January 2010, featured plus-size model Crystal Renn and straight-size model Jacquelyn Jablonski in matching outfits and similar poses.

Plus-size models do liberate themselves from the stigma of fat and embrace their bodies; however, what happens when they are not on the runway but, rather, on an ordinary sidewalk on a city street? Do these fat women still experience this sense of liberation? Do they embody their model personas while living day-to-day in the “real” world? Does this celebration of fat achieve embodiment and create a new “fat aesthetic”?

Building on previous research that has only looked at the staged performance of fat, I focus, instead, on the “backstage” aesthetic labor process. This specific labor process involves all the different types of work a model does, e.g., a combination of affective, emotional, and physical labor, which contributes to her transformation from woman to model. This analysis expands our understanding of aesthetic labor as (1) an
ongoing production of the body that (2) depends on preexisting aesthetic ideals that (3) perpetuate women’s sense of disembodiment. Instead of presenting a counter aesthetic, I find that plus-size models rely on a labor process driven by thin aesthetics, whereby they emulate a work ethic of self-discipline, strength, and diligence in order to craft an image. They develop a repertoire of specialized techniques to increase their “model physical capital.” Technologies of control, such as a tape measure, legitimate and normalize this management of the body capital though corporal discipline. In cultivating themselves according to the demands of their profession, plus-size models engage in engendered body projects that not only control their fat but also reinforce their sense of disembodiment.

By tracing the extension of this labor process beyond the confines of modeling work and into the everyday lived experience of a model, I reveal that, within the theatricality of fatness in modeling, thin aesthetics drive the aesthetic labor process and call into question whether plus-size models can reclaim their embodiment through this craft. Using participant observation and interviews, I document an intensive aesthetic labor process, whereby these models continually develop their bodies according to the demands of their fashion employers. They change their bodies to fit a preexisting image of beauty rather than being empowered in a way that allows them to alter the image to fit their bodies.

Before I crossed the threshold of the agency that brisk autumn morning, I had virtually no experience in modeling. Sure, at sixteen, I modeled in a back-to-school fashion show at a department store sponsored by
Seventeen
magazine, but that was a one-time event and a quick jaunt down a makeshift runway in a suburban mall. I had also been a child actor, but I soon learned that, while acting and modeling are alike in terms of the need to transform yourself into a character for the camera, different skills are used to achieve this goal. In acting, I used my body
and
voice. In modeling, I was voiceless.

Years later, without much preparation or strategic planning, I began my journey into modeling the same way many of the plus-size models I would meet began their journeys—hurling oneself at the mercy of an agent at an open call. I did not have an advantage or an insider connection to guarantee my access. I never took modeling classes where they teach new models how to pose and walk down the runway. I was on my own, alone. It was a huge gamble that, ultimately, paid off, since there was no guarantee that I would be accepted into the modeling fold.

My plucky decision to enter the field as an active participant, rather than a traditional bystander who conducts interviews with those who are involved and watches as events unfold from a safe distance, occurred in a quasi-Archimedean fashion while running on a treadmill—the modern-day bathtub in our body-centric culture. During the fifth virtual lap, I had an idea.
Eureka, I will investigate modeling by being a model!

Admittedly, I was hesitant at first. Working under the assumption that plus-size models range in size based on plus-size clothing sizes, I did not consider myself as “plus-size”; yet, when I compared myself to pictures of straight- and plus-size models, my body was closer to those of the plus-size ones. It was not until I began looking up information on open calls at modeling agencies in New York City that I learned that my body, at a size ten, could possibly fit the plus-size model mold. I wrestled with the label associated with the possibility of becoming a “plus-size” model. I did not appreciate the cultural baggage that came with the term “plus size.” At my present size, I felt neither fat nor thin, but, rather, average. I realized that the fashion industry, as a cultural institution, has power to influence perceptions of bodies and define beauty. For example, after my agent told me that I looked smaller in photographs, I developed insecurity about my size. As a child actor, I was told that I was too big and tall. Now as a model, I was too small. The fashion industry pushes the boundaries of size, with “straight-size” models at a size zero and “plus-size” models beginning at smaller and smaller sizes. Also, I did not know if I had the self-confidence to parade my body with its imperfections in front of fashion’s tastemakers. Could I stop fixating on my perceived flaws and, instead, flaunt my body?