Authentic Inclusion, Please

So, as you may recall, I am not totally joyous about Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty," and one of my specific complaints is that in redefining the borders of what constitutes "real beauty" by mere inches, and then defining the women who fit into this tremendously incomplete range as the "real women," Dove has merely substituted one limited image of beauty for another—and, in the process, by virtue of excluding genuinely plus size women from the spectrum of "real women," is moving our ideas about what constitutes "plus size" in decidedly the wrong direction.

Case in point: This season of America's Next Top Model features "plus size" model Sarah Hartshorne.


Yeah. She's a size 8. She is indeed bigger than the usual size-0 models, but she is not plus-size. Actual plus-size models (like those former plus size model and designer Emme use in her runway shows) start at size 14. She uses size 14, 16, and 18 models.

This is what I'm talking about when I say such meager concessions toward acknowledging the continuum of female body types is trading a short-term positive for a long-term negative. Even as fat acceptance gains traction at long last, our ideas of thin and fat and "normal" and "plus size" women are nonetheless getting increasingly out of whack. No one, and I mean no one, is helped by our beginning to regard the woman pictured above (or the women in Dove's campaign) as "plus size."

Fuck. That.

[Hat tip to SweetMachine.]