The heated debates about the Vogue Empower ad have spun off many other interesting conversations including the place of fashion magazines in cultural debates and feminism. Here is the third in a series of responses. Read the first two here and here.
As part of my previous job with a women’s magazine, I once worked with a designer to organise an event in Bangalore. She is known for her down-to-earth Indian textile-oriented clothes for women of all sizes. But as we watched models parade her collection on the runway, she turned to me and sighed, “Doesn’t it give you a complex to see all these skinny girls?”
Actually, it didn’t occur to me to feel bad about this till she pointed it out. Besides, she herself is slim and I, not so much, so it seemed strange for her to attempt fat-sister bonding with me. But this has happened before. I get co-opted into these wistful/bitchy sessions directed at a ‘skinny cow’, and I am always a little embarrassed. Do they not see the elephant in the room? It’s like when you complain about having no shoes and you meet a man with no feet and you continue to moan about your shoes and it’s making things really awkward for the footless man.
The thing is, thin women – whether they’re models, actors, dancers, athletes or that colleague who is always eating my fries – don’t make me feel bad about my body. Bollywood doesn’t make me feel bad about my body. Rap videos don’t make me feel bad about my body. And fashion magazines don’t make me feel bad about my body.
I wrote a piece for Elle.in reacting to the opinion that fashion magazines have no business making a feminist statement. Someone on Twitter shared a link to the piece saying that a fashion magazine talking about women’s empowerment is like arms manufacturers advocating pacifism. To this person and many others, the link between fashion and the destruction of women’s self-esteem is as obvious as the link between guns and wars. I don’t think my fragile sense of self-worth can handle all this protection, yougaiz.
(It’s particularly annoying to have men leaping to provide protection. Has anyone spared a thought for the self-esteem of the average Indian guy who picks up a lad mag and realises he’s not a horny, pretentious, heterosexual 16-year-old? Gadgets! Girls! Cars! Sports! Girls! Suits! Girls! Ties! Videogames, Possibly, I Don’t Know! Because it takes a bit of a leap to make the connection between 7 Ways To Perfect Smoky Eyes and bruised womanhood, but there’s a straight line connecting Send Your Nag Of A Girl To Space* to a lifetime of manly solitude. *Actual coverline from an Indian men’s magazine, on stands now.)
Because if you’re telling me that images of pretty, thin women wearing clothes I cannot afford ought to make me feel bad about myself, then I’d like you to explain why without pointing out that I am somewhat less than them. Till you brought it up, all I was thinking as I flipped through this magazine was: Why don’t models smile? Will I ever have enough ikat in my life? Can the revival of fur be halted by introducing Karl Lagerfeld to Cuteoverload.com?
I didn’t learn to have body issues from a magazine, I learned it from having a body that is different from the one that society as a whole has accepted as the ideal. Today, specifics of the ideal female body are blared at me from different quarters, film, TV, rap videos. But long before I clapped eyes on Kate Moss, before the newsstand was crammed with yummy mummies and flat tummies, even before Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe, I knew mine was the wrong kind of body to have. I learned it on the playground where I could not find a partner my own age to get on the see-saw with me. When I walked back from school and a guy yelled ‘Moti!’ from his bike, I learned it then. Every year I travelled to Kerala to meet relatives who never bothered to travel to meet us, I was greeted at the doorstep with, Deeba nalla vannam vechitinde. My Malayalam was shaky enough then that the first few times I thought they were commenting on how much height I had put on.
I grew up in Hyderabad in the ’80s and ’90s; Sridevi of Thunder Thighs fame could sell out a movie hall for weeks. Back in Kerala, most movies starred women and men of generous proportions. So I don’t blame movies/TV/magazines for villainising fat. Besides, it wasn’t just us fatties getting picked on. It was everyone who was different from the norm. Skinny friends were told to eat more ghee, dark ones were asked not go out in the sun so much, boys who weren’t into sports were called pansies. Ah, the good old days.
Strangely, I found refuge in the very forms of media that were supposed to make me feel bad about myself. I adore Bollywood music, despite all the patli kamar this and the gore gaal that. TV was my gateway drug to the wonderful world of comedy, which teaches you to mine your own personal tragedy for comic relief. Women’s publications, even the fashion-centric ones, have always seemed like safe spaces, filled with friendly voices, pretty things and cool people. Contrary to popular belief, their editorial strategy is not to convince the reader that she is ugly – because that strategy wouldn’t sell a lot of copies. What they do is open up a world of possibilities. I, for one, would rather be told what kind of skirt would suit my body type than go through life thinking skirts are not for me at all.
(Some detractors say the pursuit of physical beauty is a brainless preoccupation, that it fosters an inferiority complex in gullible women. The contempt in their voice lets you know that fashion at least allows some people to feel quite superior.)
But if fashion magazines do make you feel bad about your body, I have a suggestion that worked for me: give yourself permission to wear beautiful things even if you’re not size zero. The body issues we carry around can trap us in a rut. Sometimes clothes can offer a way out. There is acceptance and grace in the tactful embrace of an anarkali. There’s genius in the way a peplum top cinches cunningly at the waist and flares saucily over the hips. Lycra leggings freed us from the tyranny of bulky salwars and those infernal naadas.
The world will always insist on reducing you to some arbitrary detail, but the real problem is when you start doing it to yourself. When that designer in Bangalore asked me if the skinny girls gave me a complex, I said, no actually they don’t. And she assumed I’m either confident or defensive. I’m neither. Those skinny girls work hard to stay in shape. Models take pride in being able to manipulate their bodies to fit a vision, whether it’s the designer’s, the photographer’s or the fashion editor’s. They eat fewer carbs than me and do more crunches. They are not very different from athletes, except that modeling is the rare profession that’s tilted in favour of women. Why did we decide then that little girls should be inspired by Saina Nehwal, but filled with shame for their bodies at the sight of Lisa Haydon?
I realise now that I’m likely to find acceptance from the world of fashion before I find it in the world outside. Oh there is still a ways to go (why don’t you want my money, Zara?), but the industry is beginning to see the sense in talking to a larger (hah) audience. Plus-sized models, stretch jeans and swing dresses are all signs that they’re listening too. But change is much slower to happen out on the streets, where I will still encounter mean boys on bikes and cruel Mallu aunties. And when I do, I channel the spirit of the incomparable Gabourey Sidibe:
If I hadn’t been told I was garbage, I wouldn’t have learned how to show people I’m talented. And if everyone had always laughed at my jokes, I wouldn’t have figured out how to be so funny. If they hadn’t told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn’t tried to break me down, I wouldn’t know that I’m unbreakable. So when you ask me how I’m so confident, I know what you’re really asking me: how could someone like me be confident? Go ask Rihanna, asshole!
Deepa Menon is a freelance writer, consultant editor at Femina and a regular contributor to Elle India magazine and Elle.in.
(Image credit: Gabifresh.com)
April 6, 2015 at 5:28 am
ELLEINDIA deepamenon_ dis is beautiful..
April 6, 2015 at 6:56 am
lavsmohan woway!
April 6, 2015 at 6:57 am
lavsmohan Super!
April 6, 2015 at 7:26 am
FlirtingKaapi ….hi sneha
April 6, 2015 at 8:22 am
Your argument has a problem. Since you base the entire argument on your own feelings I am no one to suggest that it’s not true. At the same time, your article also doesn’t suggest that the connection between fashion mags and a certain body image isn’t widely felt.
So in the vein of sharing personal experience/opinion: I don’t often give much thought to fashion mag models precisely because I can’t afford what they wear. However there is a range of fashion bloggers, girls who look more like my friends and colleagues. I wonder- why are all these fashion bloggers thin? Next, a budding bunch of amateur photographers use these bloggers as models. Almost no (non) model girl is even “plump”. They all sport thigh gaps and they none have cellulite or hair. They make my belief that fashion mag aesthetics do trickle down, stronger. So, yes, there may not be a facile and obvious relationship but fashion models are idealized, international and distanced. They manifest in other forms much closer home and reinforce body types.
April 6, 2015 at 8:34 am
theladiesfinger interesting series this. Thanks! 🙂
April 6, 2015 at 9:57 am
mayameme theladiesfinger I just realised all three reactions are by Malayali women. 🙂
April 6, 2015 at 11:06 am
tetisheri tetisheri Hi! Oh yes, this is all completely personal, the headline should have been your first clue. I agree that most images in the fashion industry reflect a certain body type for women and men. When they do one small thing like use a model who is size 12 or a model with leukoderma or have someone with Downs Syndrome walk the ramp, it becomes a huge talking point exactly because the landscape is otherwise so homogenous. But like all industries, the fashion biz is attached to its mores too and so every step counts. The image used here is from the very popular fashion blog, Gabifresh, by someone who describes herself as a ‘body positive feminist’. She’s completely rejected the mainstream idea that fashion is only for a certain body type, and her popularity makes me believe that whenever the bloggers and stylists in India are ready to expand their mind beyond sample size, there will be a huge market waiting to give them its business. In the meanwhile, if cellulite-free and thigh-gapped is who they are, then that is exactly who they should represent. I’d let them enjoy their moment in the sun before us big ‘uns wreck the stage 🙂
April 6, 2015 at 11:30 am
I am a man who, since I was a teenager, has always found the narrow standard of beauty espoused by fashion magazines to be utterly bizarre. Why limit your models to tall skinny and fair when there are so many different kinds of beautiful women in the world — plump women, fat women, dusky-skinned women, dark-skinned women, kinky-haired women, stocky women, bodybuilder women, scarfaced women, old women, women with weathered faces. You practically never see such women in advertising; they hardly ever get glamorous or romantic roles in movies; they hardly ever get to dance in music videos; they’re hardly ever presented as sexy. In the west you have the rare exception like Gabourey Sidibe or Serena Williams or Helen Mirren. In India we really have just about no one.
Interestingly, there are plenty of “different-looking” women in pornography, and many of them are wildly popular — so I know I’m not alone in appreciating them. While I’ll admit to enjoying some of that pornography, I wish there were more family-friendly venues for such women to flaunt their beauty.
April 6, 2015 at 11:50 am
chasingiamb theladiesfinger Wonderful! I have a chapter on fashion mags in my book on women in India’s glamour industry (out this year)…
April 6, 2015 at 11:53 am
manzibarr chasingiamb oh how cool. Who’s your publisher? Will keep an eye out.
April 6, 2015 at 12:21 pm
chasingiamb Rupa/Raintree. Please do!
April 6, 2015 at 12:48 pm
manzibarr deal.
April 7, 2015 at 3:08 am
devnidhib hah! I did! Thank you, Devnidhi
December 9, 2015 at 12:06 am
Oh god I would love to be wrapped and cocooned within those gorgeous glossy fashion magazines with their sweet scented pages and wonderful publication aroma
which I am totally addicted.