German magazine Brigitte bans thin models

International fashion is more progressive: it looks up to real women

One of the Germany’s most popular women’s magazine Brigitte announced this week that it is banning professional models from its pages in favor of "real women", explaining that its readers have been complaining about the featured models with “protruding bones” and that they want to see healthy-weight women on the pages of their favorite magazine who represent the real women – just as the readers are themselves. This is not the first time fashion industry publishing players ban thin models.

First it was in Spain – skinny models were banned from the Madrid’s premium runaway during the Madrid Fashion Week in 2006 , and as a protest – a full-figured opened a runaway show, which caused uproar among the fashion industry who have been still refusing to prohibit skinny models from modeling cloths – they know it’s unhealthy, but no cloths looks as good as it does on a clothing “hanger.” Now, to walk on the Spanish catwalk, a model who is 5-feet-9-inches tall has to weigh at least 123 pounds, while before the models not only had to be thin, they had to be super-thin, weighing anything from 100 to 110 pounds at their sky-height of 5-feet-9-inches and taller.

Now – in Germany, a magazine bans thin models because it’s been receiving quite an overwhelming response from its readers that they are simply tired of looking at the models who do not represent the real women – the real audience and consumers. The editor-in-chief of Brigitte told reporters that, starting next year, the magazine will feature a mix of prominent women and regular readers in photo spreads for everything from beauty to fashion to fitness.

(Photo by photobypropagandaIDMI, Flickr)

We see more and more situations when fashion industry players realize that it is unhealthy to put out a super thin (many times over underweight) model in a magazine promoting the “beauty” that women of normal healthy average size of 6-10 cannot identify with – thus, they supposed to feel less “beautiful”? The size 0 has been dominating the fashion industry, and the industry tried to combat the size 0 that has been, according to experts, contributing to eating disorders and poor body image among girls and women of various age. As the recent documentary The September Issue, the film about the creation of Vogue’s largest and most important issue of a year – the September issue, shows – not all who work at Vogue absolutely must look underweight, although this is not what the Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour, would like to say.

In 2004, the Dove issued a few video commercials that deal with body images and false perceptions of “fashionable” beauty. This "Campaign for Real Beauty" included video, print and billboard ads showing "real women," of all shapes and sizes, posing in their underwear, as well as dispelling the actual truth about air-brushing and other tricks that go into making models look flawless in fashion, film and commercial industries.

Dove - True Colors

Dove – Curves

Dove – Evolution

Dove – Pro-Age

Real women do not mind as much the fact that most of the designers’ clothes come in smaller sizes, because not many of those women can afford it anyway, besides – more and more designers are now trying to produce “mainstream size” clothes to accommodate a larger market, since spending, as it is, has been shrinking anyway. But real women do mind looking from pages to pages of thin air-brushed models whose very appearance resemble little of what you and I see on metro, street, store – or any other place around us with some rare exceptions. We’ll be following the developments in the fashion industry for years to come, hoping that other magazines would pick up on this ‘healthy trend.’

Das ist ein phantastisch Fortschritt! That's all I'm gonna say.