anthropometaphors

Ruby

That’s Ruby, or what Barbie would look like if she were a size 12/14.  There’s an interesting story behind Ruby, who is now banned from appearing in advertisements.

I wonder what it would have been like to play with Ruby dolls as a child.  Instead I had hand-me-down Barbies.  One day I discovered I could use the cement curb as a form of sand paper; I ground Barbie’s chest down to nubs.  After making significant progress toward “correcting” the small collection of Barbies we had, the post-op dolls were discovered, and  I was reprimanded for mistreating my toys.

Interacting with Barbie was a perfect introduction to the concept of “supermodel”.  While I no longer have dolls, I see Barbie everywhere.  Mostly she is a walking, size zero androgynous waif who, like Barbie, has the sole purpose of modeling how clothing should look.

A size 12 model leads the final walk-out at the Mark Fast catwalk show at London Fashion Week. The designer used size 12 and 14 girls alongside more conventional-sized models to showcase his knitted dresses

I was intrigued when I saw a post in femail about knitwear designer Mark Fast and his decision to use curvy women to model his new line of dresses.  A deliberate move, Fast intended to challenge the obsession with size zero models by showing how “fuller” women may actually look better in his slinky creations.

It’s impossible to ever be a perfect women, it seems.  I certainly can’t walk around airbrushed and flawless from every angle.  I’m glad there are voices challenging the way women are represented in society, voices like AnyBody who are anchors to help ease into accepting the body we have:

Remind yourself that the images in magazines are all digitally touched up, stretched and lit in extraordinary ways and that they are there to make us buy products rather than being pictures of real women.

(Thanks for the links, Sadie and Kat!)