Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling Read online

  Feeling pressured to “measure up” to this ideal, women may monitor their caloric consumption and partake in ritualized physical exertions in efforts to mold their bodies into a desired shape. If they do not possess a thin physique, they, at the very least, admit to undergoing a process of transformation into a thinner, more normative frame, for example, ordering a diet soda instead of a regular one as proof that they are watching their figure, or purchasing garments in a smaller size as motivation for their efforts to lose weight. Many women work full-time to become thin. Their efforts range from wearing control top pantyhose to rein in unsightly lumps to more extreme measures such as pursuing cosmetic procedures at all economic and emotional costs.

  The body is integral to the process of producing and reproducing identity, but this obsession with the physical leads to a separation of the mind from the body. In this cosmetic panopticon where we are watched, sociologist Marcia Millman argues that all women are prone to disembodiment because “they are taught to regard their bodies as passive objects others should admire.”34 For example, how often do we hear, “My body hates me!” or, rather, at the final reveal after weeks of invasive cosmetic surgeries on television programs such as The Swan and Extreme Make-over, the phrase, “I am finally the person whom I felt I was on the inside.” In such cases, there appears to be a sharp disconnect between the self and the body, and, as a result, these individuals embark on grueling quests to forge an alliance between the two as they work to conform to cultural body ideals.

  This disembodiment intensifies in the fat body, where the fat woman resorts to only “living from the neck up.” While the thin woman can admire and adore her “normative” body, the fat woman often views her body as an autonomous and uncooperative “thing” that she lives with, distracts attention away from, or tries to change. Her body becomes an object of revulsion. Ultimately, the fat woman creates distance between her self and her failed body.

  This form of disembodiment is also common among cosmetic surgery patients, as Virginia Blum writes in her book, Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery: “The ‘you’ who feels ugly is linked to the defective piece but is also imaginatively separable. Partly, this double effect of your body that is both ‘you’ and replaceable feels like a split right down the center of your identity. I am my body and yet I own my body.”35 Women who perceive their bodies to be flawed attempt to disconnect from their bodies in order to shield themselves from the pain associated with living in non-normative bodies that fail to match contemporary standards of beauty. This alienation from their physical bodies is a response to a hunger not based on biological needs but rather social pressures.

  Disembodiment can also occur among women in communities and cultures that value the fat body, as their curvy bodies are hypersexualized and objectified for the pleasure of others. While treasured, they become disembodied, sexual objects. They are reduced to breasts, hips, and booties.

  A New Fat Aesthetic?

  In response to this engendered objectification that alienates fat bodies, scholars in the field of fat studies call for a reclamation of one’s embodiment as a form of resistance against the cultural stigma of fat.36 This queering of fat bodies is aimed at challenging discursive constructions of fatness, allowing a fat person to “come out” as proud and authentically embodied. Fat activists and scholars desire to reinscribe fatness with more positive meanings and present a counter discourse.

  As studies of burlesque and theater performers argue, fat women may achieve this liberation from stigma through the physical performance of fat.37 Performance, itself, reveals and redefines fatness. For example, a burlesque performer reclaims her sexual agency on the stage. Her performance “functions to support a new, positive vision of fat sexual embodiment.”38

  If it is to have a lasting effect, however, according to fat activist and communications scholar Kathleen LeBesco, a truly liberated performance sexualizes and beautifies the fat body without relying on thin aesthetics. This is problematic because, as cultural theorist Samantha Murray argues, fat women continue to live out, and thus reify, the dictates of dominant body ideologies that they have internalized. According to Murray, “fat politics still privileges the thin body and attempts to imitate it. As fat girls, we still want to know what it is to be thin, even if we do not want to alter our fat.”39 With fat pool parties and lingerie parties, “we simply reverse the kind of response that fat bodies elicit within a dominant heteronormative framework” and “reproduce the obsession with the visible and the power of aesthetic ideals.”40 We still judge women on the basis of looks, not content. We still sexualize and objectify women’s bodies, reducing them to breasts and other body parts.

  The editorial spread in V Magazine’s January 2010 issue, featuring plus-size model Crystal Renn and straight-size model Jacquelyn Jablonski, illustrates this problematic in the theatricality of fatness. The two women modeled alongside each other in identical outfits and similar poses—virtual copies of one another except one is slighter larger than the other. There is no counter aesthetic—just imitation.

  Plus-size models play an integral role in negotiating and manipulating cultural interpretations and expectations of women’s bodies. In the case of these models, the dominant culture assumes that these fat women are suffering from the “sin by omission,” failing to keep up with culturally ascribed, necessary bodily devotional practices.41 Such regimented practices are crucial because, as sociologist Anthony Giddens explains, in the modern era, we are held responsible and accountable for the design of our own bodies. Following his logic, by all accounts, these women should be hiding in shame. However, they continue to flaunt their curves and strut down fashion runways with pride and gusto. They celebrate the same curves that many other women try to eliminate. Plus-size models provide us with a visual representation of solid flesh that the cultural discourse tries to make invisible.

  This editorial spread from V Magazine, January 2010, featured plus-size model Crystal Renn and straight-size model Jacquelyn Jablonski in matching outfits and similar poses.

  Plus-size models do liberate themselves from the stigma of fat and embrace their bodies; however, what happens when they are not on the runway but, rather, on an ordinary sidewalk on a city street? Do these fat women still experience this sense of liberation? Do they embody their model personas while living day-to-day in the “real” world? Does this celebration of fat achieve embodiment and create a new “fat aesthetic”?

  Building on previous research that has only looked at the staged performance of fat, I focus, instead, on the “backstage” aesthetic labor process. This specific labor process involves all the different types of work a model does, e.g., a combination of affective, emotional, and physical labor, which contributes to her transformation from woman to model. This analysis expands our understanding of aesthetic labor as (1) an ongoing production of the body that (2) depends on preexisting aesthetic ideals that (3) perpetuate women’s sense of disembodiment. Instead of presenting a counter aesthetic, I find that plus-size models rely on a labor process driven by thin aesthetics, whereby they emulate a work ethic of self-discipline, strength, and diligence in order to craft an image. They develop a repertoire of specialized techniques to increase their “model physical capital.” Technologies of control, such as a tape measure, legitimate and normalize this management of the body capital though corporal discipline. In cultivating themselves according to the demands of their profession, plus-size models engage in engendered body projects that not only control their fat but also reinforce their sense of disembodiment.

  By tracing the extension of this labor process beyond the confines of modeling work and into the everyday lived experience of a model, I reveal that, within the theatricality of fatness in modeling, thin aesthetics drive the aesthetic labor process and call into question whether plus-size models can reclaim their embodiment through this craft. Using participant observation and interviews, I document an intensive aesthetic labor process, whereby these models cont
inually develop their bodies according to the demands of their fashion employers. They change their bodies to fit a preexisting image of beauty rather than being empowered in a way that allows them to alter the image to fit their bodies.

  A Personal Investigation

  Before I crossed the threshold of the agency that brisk autumn morning, I had virtually no experience in modeling. Sure, at sixteen, I modeled in a back-to-school fashion show at a department store sponsored by Seventeen magazine, but that was a one-time event and a quick jaunt down a makeshift runway in a suburban mall. I had also been a child actor, but I soon learned that, while acting and modeling are alike in terms of the need to transform yourself into a character for the camera, different skills are used to achieve this goal. In acting, I used my body and voice. In modeling, I was voiceless.

  Years later, without much preparation or strategic planning, I began my journey into modeling the same way many of the plus-size models I would meet began their journeys—hurling oneself at the mercy of an agent at an open call. I did not have an advantage or an insider connection to guarantee my access. I never took modeling classes where they teach new models how to pose and walk down the runway. I was on my own, alone. It was a huge gamble that, ultimately, paid off, since there was no guarantee that I would be accepted into the modeling fold.

  My plucky decision to enter the field as an active participant, rather than a traditional bystander who conducts interviews with those who are involved and watches as events unfold from a safe distance, occurred in a quasi-Archimedean fashion while running on a treadmill—the modern-day bathtub in our body-centric culture. During the fifth virtual lap, I had an idea. Eureka, I will investigate modeling by being a model!

  Admittedly, I was hesitant at first. Working under the assumption that plus-size models range in size based on plus-size clothing sizes, I did not consider myself as “plus-size”; yet, when I compared myself to pictures of straight- and plus-size models, my body was closer to those of the plus-size ones. It was not until I began looking up information on open calls at modeling agencies in New York City that I learned that my body, at a size ten, could possibly fit the plus-size model mold. I wrestled with the label associated with the possibility of becoming a “plus-size” model. I did not appreciate the cultural baggage that came with the term “plus size.” At my present size, I felt neither fat nor thin, but, rather, average. I realized that the fashion industry, as a cultural institution, has power to influence perceptions of bodies and define beauty. For example, after my agent told me that I looked smaller in photographs, I developed insecurity about my size. As a child actor, I was told that I was too big and tall. Now as a model, I was too small. The fashion industry pushes the boundaries of size, with “straight-size” models at a size zero and “plus-size” models beginning at smaller and smaller sizes. Also, I did not know if I had the self-confidence to parade my body with its imperfections in front of fashion’s tastemakers. Could I stop fixating on my perceived flaws and, instead, flaunt my body?

  All these concerns aside, I knew that I needed to be a part of the action in order to understand both the subtle and blatant demands placed on these women. In this field where flesh is sold, the body is my primary form of evidence and starting point for this ethnographic investigation concerning identity and discipline. This fieldwork involved embracing the embodied skills of my subject.

  As such, this personal account of the lived body “under construction” offers new direction in the developing field of carnal sociology, as developed by sociologist Loïc Wacquant. To illustrate, both Wacquant and feminist scholar and sociologist Kandi Stinson offer personal narratives to highlight the embodied experience of disciplining the body under the guidance of organizations centered on the body, whether undergoing strenuous physical training to fight in the boxing ring or containing the visceral shame of stepping on the scale at a weight-loss meeting.

  In Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, Wacquant makes the leap in methodological theorization and trains as a boxer at an urban gym on Chicago’s South Side to capture a form of discipline practiced within an African American community. Wacquant details how a boxer’s work extends past the confines of a gym. His level of sacrifice and bodily surveillance involves private matters, such as monitoring food intake, sleep, and sexual activity, and requires a collective teamwork from fellow boxers, coaches, and family members. The boxer becomes “inhabited by the game he inhabits.”42

  In Women and Dieting Culture: Inside a Commercial Weight Loss Group, Stinson, by participating in an international, commercial weight-loss organization for two years as a paying member, examines how women continually construct meaning and experiences of weight loss amidst a backdrop of cultural prejudice against fatness. Essentially, Stinson attempts to understand what it means to try to lose weight by actively and publicly participating in a program that emphasizes lifestyle modification and individual willpower.

  As ethnographic studies such as these demonstrate, the fluidity of idealized constructions of embodiment that emerges in ethnographic investigations requires acknowledgment of a body that we no longer view as an object but as an event. In Kathy Davis’s argument on embodied subjectivity, bodies are not simply objects determined by culture but rather are situated in culture as part of the process of negotiating and re-negotiating self-identity. As individuals, we, our bodies, are vehicles of meaning.

  Similarly, I took the perspective of the insider, going beyond the traditional ethnographic approach of observation to step into the role of my subject. I walked in a model’s shoes, from castings to photo shoots to the runway. In this approach, my body became a “tool for inquiry” and a “primary vector of knowledge” as I learned how to walk and pose and transformed from a woman into a fashion model. As this study of modeling shows, fashion places emphasis on what the body can do and what it looks like while doing it. Thus, a plus-size model engages in an aesthetic labor process that involves a high degree of self-surveillance and corporal discipline. It is this reflexive process of “becoming” that only an ethnographic method can capture.

  I drew on the physical experience of the plus-size model as fashion professionals measured, clothed, styled, posed, and photographed me. I experienced the rejection and omnipresent gaze. For many of the women I would meet, they depended on this work to craft their own identities and bolster their self-esteem that had been beaten down by the social stigma of fat. I could relate to their surmounting pressures because I, too, had something important at stake—the completion of a successful research project. This common drive to succeed, irrespective of its roots, propelled me through the insecurity and objectification we experienced as models. I anchored my investigation in the concrete everyday life of a model in order to understand how they conceive of and operate within a system that, unfortunately, seeks to serve the interests of a client over that of a model. As a result, this is a visceral insider account that engages both the physical and mental nature of modeling.43

  Pounding the Pavement in Stilettos

  Armed with my “book” and stack of “comp cards,” I actively pursued modeling work in New York City, recognized as one of the world’s leading fashion capitals and home to many leading designers and modeling agencies. Given its overall prominence in fashion, New York City is also home to many top plus-size modeling agencies. To capture the voices of plus-size models, I entered their unpredictable schedule of “go-sees,” castings, open calls, fittings, photo shots, and runway rehearsals.

  For those unfamiliar with modeling jargon, at a go-see, a client, such as a fashion designer, magazine editor, or art director, requests to see a variety of models for an upcoming job opportunity. In contrast, at a casting, the client requests to meet a particular model. Agents and/or bookers arrange both go-sees and castings. In large agencies, agents are responsible for directing the overall career trajectory of the models, while bookers handle the day-to-day scheduling of models and billings details with clients. In small agencies, often
there are no bookers—agents fulfill the responsibilities of a booker. At open calls, on the other hand, a client will see whomever shows up at the advertised time and place.

  At these meetings, the model typically shows her “book,” or portfolio of pictures and tear sheets showing the work she has done, to the client. Depending on the nature of the modeling job (i.e., whether it is for print, runway, or trying on sample sizes for designers), the model may be measured and asked to pose for a few shots or demonstrate her runway walk. Before leaving, the model leaves the client her “comp card,” or 5×7-inch composite card with her headshot on the front and a series of body display shots on the back, which also lists her personal statistics (i.e., height, dress size, bust, waist, and hip measurements, shoe size, hair color, and eye color) and contact information of the agency representing the model.

  Combining participant observation and interviews, I met working plus-size models while waiting at castings and jobs (also referred to as “bookings”) and kept detailed field notes. Due to the physical nature of modeling work, I was unable to record observations as they occurred in real time. I carried an inconspicuous, black leather journal with me to all my appointments, but I soon learned that modeling and writing are mutually exclusive activities. I found it a challenge to take notes while having makeup applied to my face or my hair curled, teased, and sprayed. At the end of a casting session, fitting, or shoot, I retreated to a nearby coffee shop and wrote extensive field notes, relying upon my memory to reconstruct events and conversations.