Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling Read online

  FASHIONING FAT

  Fashioning Fat

  Inside Plus-Size Modeling

  Amanda M. Czerniawski

  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

  New York and London

  www.nyupress.org

  © 2015 by New York University

  All rights reserved

  References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.

  Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Czerniawski, Amanda M.

  Fashioning fat : inside plus-size modeling / Amanda M. Czerniawski.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8147-7039-9 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8147-8918-6 (pb : alk. paper)

  1. Plus-size women’s clothing industry. 2. Self-esteem in women. 3. Body image. I. Title.

  HD9940.A2C94 2015

  746.9’2082—dc23

  2014024588

  New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

  We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Also available as an ebook

  To John Gabriel and Eva

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  1. From Books to Looks: Journeying into Plus-Size Modeling

  2. How to Become a Plus-Size Model

  3. Models of All (Plus) Sizes?

  4. Disciplining Corpulence through Aesthetic Labor

  5. Agents as Gatekeepers of Fashion

  6. Selling the Fat Body

  7. Stepping Out of the Plus-Size Looking Glass

  Notes

  References

  Index

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was a labor of love that began as a flicker of an idea while on the treadmill and, amid sweat, tears, and giggles, grew into what is laid out here. It would not have been possible without the invaluable guidance and support from a number of individuals whom I must acknowledge and offer humble words of thanks.

  I thank the brave women who bare their bodies for fashion. These women are models of how to let go of our fears and insecurities and just live in the moment. Thank you for the work that you do to create beauty amid disdain.

  I am indebted to my former graduate studies advisor, Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, who supported this off-the-beaten-path research project. I admire her strength and style, two qualities I hope to emulate. From food, to flowers, to fashion, she knows beauty.

  Throughout my studies, I had the fortune to learn from a diverse array of scholars whose mastery of the craft inspired my own sociological imagination. They include Peter Bearman, Thomas DiPrete, Gil Eyal, Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Peter Levin, Ann Morning, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Diane Vaughan, and Viviana Zelizer. I appreciate the support and encouragement I received from my colleagues at Temple University during the final stages of this project. At Temple, I realized my love of teaching.

  My utmost appreciation and respect go to my undergraduate mentor, Paul DiMaggio, whose academic integrity and genuine kindness epitomize leadership in academia. Under his tutelage at Princeton University, I began my first investigation on idealized bodies. I looked forward to our weekly meetings, where I would share any new findings, air my frustrations, and seek his guidance. No matter how severe the constructive criticism I received—with his unassuming demeanor—I would leave his office instilled with a feeling of pride in my work-in-progress. Open-minded, curious, warmhearted, understanding, and, of course, brilliant, Professor DiMaggio taught me how to carve out my own niche in the field. I hope to inspire my students as he has inspired me.

  While working on this project, I benefited tremendously from the comments of a number of anonymous reviewers. Whoever you are, thank you for your questions and suggestions that shaped the direction of my work. Special thanks to my editor Ilene Kalish for believing in this project and seeing it through to its end. You pushed me to write with greater nuance and clarity.

  Parts of chapters 1 and 3 appear in the article “Disciplining Corpulence: The Case of Plus-Size Fashion Models,” which was originally published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41(2): 3–29. I am grateful to Sage Publications for permission to use this work.

  While an unexpected death ignited my determination to complete this book, new life moved me to spring into action. Without the unending support of my family and friends, I would not be where I am today. They were my strength when I was weak. When I was in doubt, they were my source of faith. They were my light in the darkness.

  I am grateful for the blessing of faithful friends who were my source of sanity during the research process, especially Br. Gabriel, Joelle, Paul, Alyssa, Matt, and my “sisters” from St. Joan’s and Lily’s Voice who give with the purest of hearts and were simply there when I needed them.

  To my beloved mother, father, and Babcia, thank you for instilling in me a thirst for knowledge and providing me with the support to venture off into the academic wild. As a family, we have been through so much in the last few years, but our bonds are forged from the purest connection—unconditional, boundless love. To my husband, Andrew, thank you for reading drafts and providing, at times, much needed distractions and home-cooked meals. You are my rock. To John Gabriel, my hope, and Eva, my precious jewel—Mommy loves you.

  1

  From Books to Looks

  Journeying into Plus-Size Modeling

  As the elevator doors opened, the onslaught of hip-hop music and refracted spotlights reminded me that I was far from my ivy-covered home in Morningside Heights. With a quick breath in and a slight adjustment of posture, I headed straight to the reception desk, where a young man tethered to the desk by a telephone headset greeted me. In between answering calls, he shoved a clipboard into my hands with a terse “Fill this out, and give me your photos,” and pointed toward the waiting area to my right.

  When confronted by a predator, wildlife experts recommend that you stand your ground and not allow the animal to sense your fear. Here, in one of New York City’s top modeling agencies, I felt like a helplessly naive sheep that wandered off into the wilderness. The fashion wolves were circling and I was in too deep to retreat.

  Needless to say, I was out of my element and unprepared for what was to come. I had spent the last two years in mental pursuits, crafting theoretical arguments, and arguing over solutions to society’s major ills as a graduate student. On this day, instead, I was in the gateway to a realm of aesthetics, where the physical reigns. In thirty minutes and two subway lines, I went from books to looks.

  This was my attempt to “go native,” as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz would say, into a world inhabited by beautiful people, but not just any beautiful people—beautiful fat people. Here I was, a sociology graduate student turned prospective model, waiting to meet with an agent who represented plus-size models. For professional reasons, I wanted to understand how this niche of plus-size modeling functioned within a larger fashion market that privileges the thin body. For personal reasons, I wanted validation from beauty professionals that I, too, was worthy to be among their ranks. After all, being a sociologist does not provide me with immunity against engendered cultural pressures on women to be attractive. We women, in western culture,
are always evaluated on our bodies; I was used to the feeling of being judged on my looks.

  Clutching the clipboard in my hands, I cautiously sauntered, in the highest heeled pumps that I owned, over to the plush charcoal leather couch. Look confident, like you are somebody. Already perched at one end of the couch was a plus-size woman dressed in head-to-toe black. She glared at me as I took a seat. By her side lay a black 9×12 portfolio. I was immediately struck by her porcelain skin and long, thick chestnut brown hair. Here, in this waiting room, I was already in the company of beauty. I flashed her one of my killer-because-it’s-so-saccharine smiles, but she ignored me. That brisk fall morning, we were the only two models for the agency’s open call.

  As MTV blared on the flat-screen televisions mounted on the mirrored walls of the waiting area, I filled out my contact information and measurements on the form affixed to the clipboard. Bust, waist, hips, dress size, shoe size, height, eye color, hair color—my body, as the bass bounced around me, quantified and categorized. I returned the completed form to reception, along with a couple of snapshots my roommate took of me in a faux photo shoot in our living room.

  I waited.

  I could not help but stare at the size ten, five feet eight inch, sea blue–eyed, and golden honey blonde reflection before me. Questions of self-doubt popped into my mind, which I quickly rationalized away. Do I have what it takes to be a plus-size model? How hard could it be to strike a pose and walk down a fashion runway? I was a trained dancer with greater than average body awareness. I often walked in heels down the crowded streets of Manhattan. Am I pretty, tall, or curvy enough? I knew I fulfilled the height requirement. I had a perfectly proportional hourglass frame. I was conventionally pretty and photogenic. What about my size? I never shopped in nor even entered a plus-size clothing store. Would my lack of familiarity with plus-size fashions and designers expose me as an imposter? While larger than a typical model who graces the glossy pages of fashion magazines, was I large enough to model as plus-size? Am I strong enough to confront my bodily insecurities? Am I prepared for what awaits me behind this wall? Sitting in that waiting room, I certainly thought I was. I believed my past experiences in the entertainment business would guide my current venture into fashion.

  At the awkward and impressionable age of twelve, I was “discovered” by an acting coach and soon signed with a manager who sent me out on auditions in the New York City film and television circuit. I quickly booked my first acting job in an educational video and spent the next four years juggling a hectic, nonstop schedule of acting lessons, auditions, meetings with agents, film and video shoots, and, of course, school.

  As a child actor, my coaches instructed me to enter the audition room with a blazing personality, to show wit and a high social aptitude. They taught me to analyze scripts for placement of the proper emotional inflection and to memorize lines. At castings, I answered questions directed to me with more than one-word responses, no matter how trivial the question. Through line delivery and conversational banter, I flaunted my purposefully peppy personality. Therefore, at this open call for a modeling agency, I fully intended to woo the agents with my dazzling personality and intelligence. According to my mental checklist, I was ready:

  Personality—check.

  Intelligence—check.

  Professionalism—check.

  Guts—check.

  Physique—maybe.

  Twenty minutes later, I heard my name. A young woman beckoned me into the recesses of the agency, or so I thought until she led me around the corner to a bench in the hallway. Without hesitation or the usual exchange of pleasantries, she asserted, “You are not what I need right now, but here is a list of three other agencies you can try,” and scribbled their names on the form on which I had earlier painstakingly bared the truths of my body. The agent made her decision based on the snapshots before she saw me in person, before she called me in, before she spoke to me. Struck by the depersonalized and sterile nature of the exchange, I could merely utter a question about the present status of the modeling market, to which I received another terse reply, “It’s slow.”

  Strike one.

  After a disappointing turn of events at the open call, I took the agent’s advice and preceded to blitzkrieg the recommended agencies from the list with my snapshots. Two days later, one agency returned my pictures as a sign of disinterest.

  Strike two.

  Another two days later, I received a call from the assistant to the director of an agency to schedule an appointment. “While I can’t promise anything,” explained the assistant, “we want to meet you. Bring more pictures—full length and headshots. No holding pets or hugging trees.”

  “Really? People do that?” I inquired.

  “You wouldn’t believe.”

  Ball one. At least I had not struck out.

  For the next few days, I watched what I ate in order to prevent bloating, kept to my exercise regimen, and scrubbed my face to foil possible eruptions before they surfaced, while maintaining my usual academic responsibilities. This newfound hypervigilance was all in the name of perfecting “my canvas.” I shifted my focus from mental pursuits within the ivy-covered walls of academia to physical ones.

  Initially combing advertisements for plus-size models on agency websites, I bravely positioned myself as a hopeful model, attended agency open calls and castings for print and runway work. I soon began working freelance with one agency and then signed a modeling contract with a second. That first open call was the start of my ethnographic account of becoming a plus-size fashion model. I encountered, firsthand, the struggle to rewrite the self, wherein a woman wittingly objectifies and to a necessary degree celebrates her body—a body of curves and solid flesh that is often an object of scorn in contemporary American society. With society regarding models as walking mannequins or passive hangers for clothes, I examined how it felt to be “just a body,” a body that was average in society but “plus size” in fashion.

  What Is Fat?

  As feminist philosopher Susan Bordo states in her seminal work on the impact of popular culture on the female body, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, “no body can escape either the imprint of culture or its gendered meanings.”1 The fat body is part of this evaluative cultural lens. But what qualifies as a “fat body”? Historians and anthropologists note that fat is constantly renegotiated in culture. Specifically, our contemporary social stigma of fat is an artifact of the work of nineteenth-century dietary reformers, such as William Banting and Sylvester Graham, who demonized excess flesh as an undesirable physical state that speaks to the individual’s personal failings.2 As historian Amy Erdman Farrell documents in Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture, a cultural anxiety over fatness developed in response to concerns over social status, not health. For nineteenth – and early twentieth-century thinkers, fatness was proof of one’s inferiority. Thus, the social stigma of fat served to control and civilize American bodies. Early in the twentieth century, life insurance mortality studies correlated fatness with increased mortality risk and spurred a public health debate whose legacy continues.3

  Given the concern over improving the health of communities through education and promotion of healthy lifestyles, healthcare professionals developed a preoccupation with the quantification of fatness. The development of height and weight tables produced a new way of classifying bodies into “underweight,” “overweight,” and “normal” weight categories. Today, the medical community takes precise body measurements through use of the body mass index (BMI), which relies on a calculation based on an individual’s height and weight, in order to define “overweight” and “obese” weight statuses. This classification scheme, however, is not entirely a by-product of unbiased scientific knowledge. The boundaries between “normal,” “overweight,” and “obese” are subject to revision. The move toward a system of classification based on body weight was driven by the life insurance industry during the first half of the twentieth ce
ntury with the creation and subsequent modifications of height and weight tables.4 These tables, based on the interaction between actuarial knowledge and historically specific cultural opinions, introduced the notion of “ideal” weight and became a means for practicing social regulation of weight. While the use of the BMI standard for weight classification is not arbitrary, the specified boundaries between one category and another are not absolute, nor are the measurements applicable to all bodies.5

  From dietary reforms to actuaries and physicians, fat earned a bad reputation within mainstream America. The word “fat,” itself, is a culturally loaded, derogatory term. Yet, as a cultural fact, fat is not universally scorned. A fat body is not always a maligned one. For example, Nigerian Arabs idealize the fat body, where, through a practice of forced food consumption beginning in childhood, women work to become fat in order to hasten their marriageability.6 They consider rolls of fat, stretch marks, and large behinds desirable and sexy. Within the hip-hop culture in the United Sates, a contingent of male artists celebrates fat as the physical embodiment of success.7 Rappers such as Big Pun, Fat Joe, and Biggie Smalls throw their weight around as a sign of their hypermasculine power. They wear loose, baggy clothes to visually expand their size and take up more space. With a switch of the letter “F” to “PH,” the hip-hop community reclaims the term “phat,” which references a full, rich body that is desirable and sexualized. Additional terms have emerged to describe this larger body, including “thick” and “curvy,” to reflect its more prized status within various ethnic and racial communities.

  The nature of size in America is muddled by both medical and cultural discourses. In popular discourse, the terms “fat,” “plus size,” and “overweight/obese” are often used interchangeably. This is problematic because of the historical and cultural specificity of these terms, which refer to three specific and debatable dimensions of weight. While medical professionals quantify overweight and obese status, fatness is harder to measure. Frankly, fat means different things to different people.