Within the advertising industry's cult of thinness, there is a 'counter' movement in which brands position themselves by selecting female models whose bodies correspond to a more robust silhouette than those commonly seen in advertising campaigns.
Various clothing, shoe, or beauty product brands have joined the trend of using female models in their campaigns who, within the advertising world, are called plus size models. The goal is to feature a model with whom most women can identify.
However, behind this issue, there are controversies regarding the labeling of these types of bodies. When one looks at so-called plus size models, it is hard not to think that this body type is actually closer to the average female body size we commonly see in everyday life. The problem is that they are called plus size models, as if the 'normal' size only referred to a thinner silhouette. Not only is it highlighted that these models are more robust, but also that, like most women, they have rolls, imperfections, cellulite, or stretch marks (even thin women have them).
The positive aspect is that these bodies are increasingly represented in advertising. The negative aspect is the way they are labeled and categorized. They are pointed out in various articles as if they were something extraordinary, when in everyday life, these are everyday realities. Even so, the more robust models undergo a level of facial, hair, and clothing styling that is hardly attainable in daily life. They represent, then, a closer aspirational ideal, but still an ideal nonetheless.
Highlighting the large size to classify these types of bodies is like emphasizing that clothing size matters, in an industry where sizes have little to do with objective body measurements, but rather with increasingly reduced pattern sizes. There is evidence that clothing measurements have been shrinking, even if the size number remains the same (though not the objective measurement). A size 00 was recently added to size 0. One of the most common Google searches in the United States is to find out what size celebrities wear, as a way to compare one's own body, as if size defined an objective comparison. It has also been observed that many women aim to fit into a specific clothing size.
On the other hand, there are instances where these models are not called plus size, but rather 'real women.' This classification also poses problems, since among the diversity of body types, there are also women with petite builds in everyday life, and that does not make them any less 'real' than curvier women. The problem, in the end, is this temptation to classify everything. Even measures like BMI present difficulties, as although it is a relatively reliable indicator for epidemiological use, it is not effective as a sole parameter for individually 'classifying' a body as underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese. Even with all these classifications, there is controversy over how the threshold for such classification is determined, considering the morphological variations that exist among populations.
It is thus a human temptation to want to classify and label things in order to relate to the world, and the body generates a whole series of classifications and internalizations about what it is and what it should be. Let us reflect on the implications of what we read and on our omnipresent temptation to classify our own bodies and those of others.
Originally published in El Economista
— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.