For two and a half years, Amanda Czerniawski was a
sociologist turned plus-size model. Journeying into a world where, as a size
10, she was not considered an average body type, but rather, for the fashion
industry, “plus-sized,” Czerniawski studied the standards of work and image
production in the plus-sized model industry.
Fashioning Fat takes us through a model’s day-to-day activities,
first at open calls at modeling agencies and then through the fashion shows and
photo shoots. Czerniawski also interviewed 35 plus-size models about their
lives in the world of fashion, bringing to life the strange contradictions of
being an object of non-idealized beauty.
Fashioning Fat shows
us that the mission of many of these models is to challenge our standards of
beauty that privilege the thin body; they show us that fat can be sexy. Many plus-size
models do often succeed in overcoming years of self-loathing and shame over
their bodies, yet, as Czerniawski shows, these women are not the ones in charge
of beauty’s construction or dissemination. At the corporate level, the fashion
industry perpetuates their objectification. Plus-size models must conform to an
image created by fashion’s tastemakers, as their bodies must fit within
narrowly defined parameters of size and shape—an experience not too different
from that of straight-sized models. Ultimately, plus-size models find that they
are still molding their bodies to fit an image instead of molding an image of
beauty to fit their bodies. A much-needed behind-the-scenes look at this
growing industry, Fashioning Fat is a
fascinating, unique, and important contribution to our understanding of beauty.
