Thursday, October 12, 2006

Fatty on the Catwalk

Jordana Willner

Raise the security color and call the reserves, they let a fat chick strut the catwalk.

In a week of other disturbing news anomalies---think congressional sex and schoolhouse slaughter---fashion fat was the feel-good Paris surprise from designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. The image of the super-sized black lingerie and its pouty-faced, ratty-haired conveyor made broadcast and internet rounds, with reports that onlookers cheered as the hefty model tossed her awesome hips with enough force to send airborne any nearby runway regulars who strutted too close.



Who knew an obese woman could enter a realm typically dominated by the thin and perform with such compelling, sensual flair? Surely not Queen Latifah. Or Roseanne. Or Rosie. Or Oprah. Or Star Jones, Camryn Manheim, or Mo’Nique of the plus-sized beauty pageants.

Nothing like celebrating a breakthrough that’s already busted. But even if civilization was setting eyes on its first corpulent cutie, the fatty in the black lingerie wasn’t about breaking barriers. Like her emaciated sisters in extremity, her size makes her a mere novelty, registering shock value on a par with the usual runway snores of lampshade headdresses and trash bag shawls.

Consider that Gaultier selected a woman with a dangerously extreme body size that represents only a small fraction of the populace, teased her hair into a cloud of steel wool, hardened her face into the typically hostile runway mask, and strapped her into a juxtaposed little negligee for a spruce of in-your-face Parisian irony. Such courageous experimentation in a cutthroat European fashion show hasn’t been seen since… the last European fashion show.

But, the fatties aren’t the problem. Their progress may plod, but they clearly have their pioneers. Worry instead about those poor unrepresented women of average size and shape, the size 12 and 14 middle-American misses and moms of the spare-tire middle and wiggly thigh, the forgotten middle children in fashion’s ugly game of polar favoritism.

For those regular American Joannes excluded from the alluring fashion game, a size -2 model is no less relevant than an unabashed size 24 double wide. Despite a love for pretty clothes and designer labels, this neglected fashion demographic might sooner shop a Sears catalog than a Paris fashion show for the relevance to its own average size and needs. If the typically transparent runway model or sitcom actress makes them feel like swollen elephants, the new inflated counter-culture variety paints them as puny and insubstantial in contrast.

Caught between enlarged castoffs of clothes designed for single-digit-sizes, and desperate searches on the small end of plus-sized specialty shops, the indignities suffered by middle-sized women are unspeakable. But where is the visionary leadership to guide this forgotten sect out of the fashion wilderness?

Many saw the future this week in Gaultier’s willingness to risk the unthinkable and allow flesh to come between a model and her bones. But whether she was his caricature or charter case, the real test is for designers to ease away from the extremes and into the body popular. Sashay the thick-waisted, short-limbed but cheerfully sexy ingénue down the runway. Decorate the rotund hourglass with the endearing jiggle and friction thighs. Let loose the full-bellied, wide-hipped, twig-legged babe who can glide and swivel. Or at least do as Spain attempted last month and ban models who subsist on ice chips and sugarless gum.

That would be fashion news worth celebrating. But as long as the industry equates its allure with the extremities of inaccessibility, average-sized women have no choice but to continue honing their coping mechanisms.

You’ll find them shopping off-the-rack at Target.

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How the Divine Forgive

Jordana Willner

The ABC News reporter hurried to shock his viewers. Amish families shattered by bullets on Monday had forgiven the shooter. Their daughters were executed by his hands, and the community responded with faith-based forgiveness.

A female relative of a deceased child said her people see the tragedy as God’s predestined call on the girls’ earthly time. A victim’s grown male cousin said Jesus had died forgiving humanity’s sins, so how could he not forgive the killer.

A family spokesperson further surprised the anchor by welcoming the gunman’s wife to victims’ funerals. CNN.com meanwhile reported that one slain girl’s grandfather urged forgiveness for the killer: “We must not think evil of this man.” One after another, family and friends intoned the same message of total forgiveness, all stemming from their steadfast Christian faith.

Leave it to pastoral Lancaster County and its rejection of modernity to show a real-time model of what Jesus would do. And leave it to to mainstream American incredulity to reveal its distance from the majority faith the nation claims to uphold.

What did we expect? Knowing the Pennsylvania Dutch peoples’ ardent faith in the biblical gospels, did we foresee a call to arms? A lust for blood? Could we imagine anything from this godly sect but a model of true Jesus-like forgiveness?

Judging by the teasers and lead-ins, ABC News expected viewer astonishment at this Herculean forgiveness. For a dominantly Christian nation, led through tragic national times by a self-described devotee to the savior whose biblical testaments guide the forgiving Amish, you’d think we’d be a little more familiar with forgiveness.

Not so. Public forgiveness is typically photo-op damage control of scandals and rants. Casual pardons provide political payback so ranking apologizers can keep doing business.

But when it comes to tragedy, the familiar script from our Christian-in-Chief is different. When unthinkable aggression led to the mass murder on his watch, our devout Christian leader didn’t lead us to forgive but to avenge.

Why hasn’t his faith-based life perspective led him to walk Jesus’ walk? Why instead has he paired so-called faith with the stride of revenge, man-hunting, preemptive warring, and chronic aggression? How can he invoke the same savior as the Amish---who instantly knew the biblical response to the most unthinkable of atrocities---and claim that his violent leadership is a product of faith?

Maybe a book swap with the Amish community would reveal theirs as a different bible. So often quoted, our thumped, worn, and waved copy has failed to provide the model of healing peace and absolution that this tiny shattered community demonstrated with such nobility in the face of such evil.

Fashion birthed the question in recent years, “What would Jesus do.” Into an allegedly new age of Christians and Christianity, a baby boomer president was to blend faith and leadership for the fresh moral compass to guide a nation. Instead, we have the gall to be shocked that the Americans who shun modern ways have shown the newest age of all for bible-based faith.

The faith told them to forgive, and so at their darkest moment, when arguably most justified in bloodlust, the Amish instantly forgave. Whereas the nation, five years after brutal attack, is still making war and making corpses, not just of allegedly manufactured foes but of our own children.

The real surprise is not their forgiveness but that between the electric lights of modern Washington, D.C., and the pastoral 19th century simplicity of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, only one culture emerges as truly backward. The question is what else we can learn from Amish faith---the faith our leader claims as his own---that may save our sons, communities, and the souls good Christians pray for.

1 Comments:

Blogger candye kane said...

Thank you for your blog. You are so right that tokenism does nothing to further the cause of average to laeg sized women and our invisibility in mainstream culture. However, the "fatty" you refer to, does have a name., Velvet D' Amour. She is a creative visual artiste and a large size model and activist par excellence. Please dont be part of the problem by reducing her to just another nameless BBW.
Candye Kane

8:58 AM  

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