What story do you want your media outlets to tell you today?
Is it that we should all aspire to be the same?
We live in an era where the dissonance related to media can have a pervasive reign over our social biases.
Images and the language of visual media tell a story which can create a generalised view. A view that can be skewed, even warped, towards cliches that alienate so many.
I say this as someone who became too drawn into these biases without realising. This included falling prey to susceptible traps of what athletic bodies “should” look like in the sportswear industry.
For a moment let’s use what could be perceived as our generalised rationale for these adjectives.
- Fit
- Strong
- Able
- Healthy
- In-shape
What are some of the images that come to mind with these words? Most of the ideas have been handed to us through a branded story and the underlying text within media.
When I express the idea of media text I’m talking about the context behind images, video and marketing. What messages, both relatable and pervasive, underlie the bold attention-grabbing campaign.
Body positivity means challenging the social comparison bias and seeing the contrast bias between media, marketing and a genuine reflection of the human experience.
A reality check on how body types, athletic performance and how social diversity connects to wider history is crucial. Acknowledging this creates a deeper conversation beyond finite and pigeonholed notions of athletic performance.
The media bias with bodies and the context of images
It’s important to remember when the stimulus of marketing hijacks our brains that those images have the intent to sell us something. The idea of marketing being aspirational is a generalised viewpoint constructed on our minds.
The reason for this is because storytelling is the most human catalyst that mobilises people to take action.
In a world with so many choices, and offsetting the right decision in the most economic way, marketing hopefully unveils a truth that allows us to choose. But there is always a chasm between life as we know it and billboards telling us ‘this is the best choice for you’.
There are countless instances where the incumbrance between a marketing campaign and consumer perspective clashes and the brand is too late to recover, or edit, its message.
When we talk about fashion, the goal is to generate exhibition around clothing. But the subtext with showcasing those garments is implying many things about physique, beauty and attractiveness. The logical part of our brain which evaluates this as a model being paid to sell a product, one packaged around a larger brand ethos, doesn’t comply.
Instead, in a mind fuelled with dopamine, the biggest, loudest and boldest ideas get the most attention.
In our culture we often mistake attention and impact in marketing as being the same thing. The difference is always that where impact creates meaningful behaviours attention generates noise and stimulates our sense in a superficial way.
But big, bold and loud are not the only pervasive advertising. Fashion, like many other industries, markets itself around the net value of being just different enough from other competitors.
This is a close approximation to giving a similar buying experience regardless of the brand.
What happens is the consensus from industry marketers, businesses and designers about how people should look wearing certain clothing. This bias isn’t easily recognizable from within an organisation until the consumers own journey provides something objective to their oversights.
In sportswear, marketing athletic performance is often about exhibiting the competitive elements of an athletes’ lifestyle.
Taking that construct to sell aspiration can be polarising for consumers. Especially when their daily endeavours involve working towards lifestyles with meaningful well being.
When we move away from the generalised construct of athleticism to one based around wellness, we’re only left with looking deeper into how everyday consumers should feel about their bodies. Not how brands associate physique with their products.
Its very easy for us to forget the intimate associations one has with their body, especially in a world where showing physicality and the connotations around skin being on show are everywhere.
Irrational body type conflation: Going too far with being slim.
There was never a society where being above a dress size twelve (I say size twelve because in fashion anything beyond this would be deemed a plus size) didn’t exist.
The only real difference is we’re aware of the conflations around slimness more than ever in today’s world.
Two interdependent systems allow this to happen.
The first is knowing we’re being marketed too. Our visual acuity around promotions is more refined than ever with media surrounding us. We have a quicker instinct of when the advertising just doesn’t add up.
The second is we are all marketers.
The smartphone revolution means everyone can share a story and so the ideas and constraints of media being something businesses control diminishes. They may have a bigger budget, but sometimes this gets in the way of telling a truth consumers can believe in.
The result is a media perspective generated by an everyday person which talks back more quickly than ever to the credibility of how businesses talk about themselves. Different types of people, regardless of their demographic or body shape, are able to provide their own social commentary which starts a conversation brands can’t ignore.
The talk isn’t just coming from fashion businesses, its coming from everyday people buying the fashion too.
And the public are getting more sophisticated at reading between the lines with messages that are meant to enthral them. Conflations around slimness can very easily be dismissed or opinionated from a social media feed more than ever before.
The fashion industry mediates around the fear that showcasing body positivity, around plus size women for example, will saturate consensus around what beauty ‘should’ look like on the catwalk.
The insecurity stems from an industry wide validation to follow social norms that are being mistaken for rules.
The mentality with any category of fashion, be it sportswear or otherwise, is to market the notion that people want to aspire to be like ‘this’. But the lid of social bias has been well and truly uncovered in today’s world.
Nowadays people want to know that brands are socially aware and are creating a marketing platform which allows customers to be seen with more realism and truth.
A world where so many can literally hold a lens to fashion brands (the lens being their smartphone) through social media means selling a romanticised, and ultimately ephemeral idea, about fashion that doesn’t work.
Fashion wants so many to fit into the narrow extreme around appearing beautiful; a conflation which only creates homogeneity.
The evolution lies with brands stepping out of their comfort zone and expressing themselves differently on a more consistent basis.
The idea of a model being too big is just as relative in argument as a model being too thin. What’s actually happened is the industry creating a rubric for attractiveness that makes us comfortable. The irrationality has bred an idea that warp the most human experiences in fashion.
Celebrating the body positive superstar models
It’s vitally important to shine a light of recognition on our social champions. Being constantly aware and socially progressive gives us a future to believe in.
This is not solely because of the deference we should give them, and recognition that’s rightly received for their courage, but because we humans forget very quickly.
We forget the struggles, endeavours and cumulative success of those who were alienated, and perhaps made outcasts, from their industry because their voices were unique and different.
In a world proliferated with content, those of us who aren’t professional models hold a pocketed media centre wherever we go. The distraction of our smartphones often deludes us into simplifying what professional modelling actually is.
Ultimately, it’s a business endeavour based solely on the way you look and has a lot more to do with just having your photo taken.
The model in question is actually getting paid based on these variables:
- Amplified and irrational scrutiny from the press.
- Studios and businesses associating self-worth solely on how the person looks.
- Pressures to give the best shots, images and takes in finite time periods.
- A crew of professionals who are waiting just for you. They also know what you do, and how you do it, can amplify or disrupt their careers.
- Working with a group of people who perhaps project their own biases about what beauty is. Maybe you don’t fit into that notion for them. But the shoot still needs to be completed.
Now imagine having to contend with those variables when you’re a woman who is plus size twelve and has been hand picked as the face of a high end brand’s marketing campaign.
We’ve basically taken our generalisation of what a model is and added twenty or thirty times the social and media pressure.
There are many of us out there who believe we can deal with that pressure until we’re put into that situation and capitulate under its parameters.
This is why it’s essential to today’s culture that we consistently recognise those models and remember their names as beacons of hope in times of increasing apathy around bodies and beauty.
Paloma Elsesser, Ashley Graham, Precious Lee, Jill Kortleve, Tess McMillan, Celina Ralph, Candice Huffine, Yumi Nu, Devyn Garcia, Holly Rose Emery, Alva Claire, Lauren Chan, Ava Hariri-Kia, Georgia Pratt Holiber, Ajok Daing, Jocelyn Corona, Leslie Sidora and Denise Bidot.
Celebrate and always remember them.
Beauty and social judgement
Beauty is an approximation constructed in our minds. Sometimes we believe we know what it is. When actually we’re expressing through our rhetoric and behaviour a causal environmental outcome.
That outcome becomes our version of reality.
Sometimes this is a good thing and allows us to develop social consensus about a culture that has beauty and meaning.
But very often we can get too excited about the zero sum game of relating formulaic notions of beauty. This devolves and devalues a society that is always in a state of flux and has unique and different opinions.
The analogy I would use is taking the supermodel concepts and motifs of the eighties and nineties as the formula for depicting beauty in the present day.
Many times the social judgement of our present society comes with idealism of golden ages from the past. We’re comfortable with that fixed notion and suffocate our cultural growth from seeing how fresh perspectives can evolve.
This doesn’t mean we can’t make a definition for beauty. But surely the context can be wider, ever-evolving and further reaching when we discuss body positivity.
A quick glance through our anthropological history and how ideologies around fashion, both extreme or otherwise, have changed will remind us of the latent potential the industry is yet to fulfil.
A brief history of the not so slim model and ever-shifting conventions
The social story of what we define as beautiful with our bodies is always changing. Sometimes present changes have similarities to the past which provide timely reminders that confront us with a greater truth.
That the perceived norms are always changing and we live with status seeking and marketing systems which define generalised rules for what we should believe.
The nineteen-fifties to sixties was also an era where social conventions around women looking like manufactured dolls were easily contentious. Even the hourglass silhouettes of Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe didn’t always fit the ‘social rule’ of a beautiful body at the time.
Nowadays, that convention of movie stars selling aspirational glamour and beauty is pricked by the pin of society.
The bubble has burst as we’re much more aware of the magic trick that gives rise to brand/global star associations.
Fast forward to days world and the Savage X Fenty lingerie collection by Rhianna for example cannot exist without traditional conventions around fashion marketing being challenged.
Through the seventies and eighties Pat Cleveland changed the idea of what a model can look like not least through body perception. But also race, ethnicity and class.
The nineties to early two thousands gave us Sophie Dahl, whose body shape constantly changed, Emme Aronson who became a significant face for body positivity and Crystal Renn who was a major advocate for portraying diverse bodies.
This is especially pertinent as she embraced her own personal change from being the “modelling status quo” and held the torch for the plus-size movement.
Noteworthy wins in sportswear for body positivity
In closing, here are some stories from the sportswear world that resonated with me. I hope they resonate with you too.
- In 2023 Nike partners with the skincare brand Dove to launch Body Confident Sport. An initiative which helps eleven to seventeen year old girls build confidence in their body changes and know sports is always a place where they can grow and thrive.
- In 2014, Aerie – a sub brand of American Eagle and social movement around body positivity was launched. Aerie was created with a commitment to highlighting women of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and abilities as well as showcasing unretouched images of their models. Their campaign also encourages confidence with activewear, swimwear, leggings and bras.
- In 2024 Adidas launched the ‘Empowered in motion’ initiative led by Southeast Asia and encouraged women to enjoy their fitness journey whilst not feeling the need to compromise their cultural values. This campaign also highlights the importance of women having a place to exercise without feeling self-conscious or daunted by exercise equipment and having appropriate workout attire.
- And lastly sportswear and athleisure brand Fabletics is well known for inspiring the social media community to influence change with plus size women championing their products on various platforms. This includes Sophia Tassew’s Instagram post wearing a lime-green Fabletics ensemble. Various other bloggers (like ‘Natalie In The City’) and TikTok content creators celebrate the brands ethos for inclusivity whilst showcasing their own personal and socially relevant stories.
As you can see the stories are out there and not as hidden as we once thought. But what’s more important is we chose to remember them, build upon the shoulders of great themes and ideas and dare to be different through social progress.
