Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Letter to the Sartorialist and his readers

(it's a short letter)

I am a curvy size 0-2.

I am very small. But I have some lovely curves. Really.

Thank you very much.

The Philosophotarian

3 comments:

omphaloskeptic said...

I haven't been over to that site in awhile, but whoa.

This irritates the shit out of me:
"I get emails all the time from self-professed curvy girls who want to see representations of their size on the site. What sucks is that when I try to put a photograph up to talk about these issues, the post is hijacked over the political correctness of the words."

What sucks is that the range of bodies he views as fashionable is so narrow that he can't post photographs of someone outside that range without it automatically creating a breach that must be commented on.

dr spinster said...

I think there are several issues going on. He's mainly taking pics of high-end mainstream fashion and the women who wear it just aren't usually that big. Those clothes are made for very slim bodies, right?

What bugged me most is that it seemed that a lot of the comments focused on his use of the word "curvy": she can't even be a size 6, she's not curvy; she's smaller than I am, she's not curvy.

The relentless slimness of his subjects aside (and sure, no doubt, they are), it is certainly possible for someone to be smaller than a size 6 and to be curvy. There is no better way to describe my body from my ribcage down: I am curvy. I am also very small.

omphaloskeptic said...

Yeah, I totally see your point about that, and I don't get the reaction to the use of that term (among the commenters). I think your response makes sense.

I just thought I'd use your post to go on my own tangent, ha. It irritated me because it just seems like he is trying to shirk responsibility for reinforcing narrow views of fashion and beauty by saying essentially: "See? I tried to have a conversation about it, but you wouldn't have it. And by the way, I have a wide range of body types represented on my site because I took five pictures of old people."