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The Fashion Industry Has a Plus-Size Problem. These Women Want to Fix It


“I’ve been going to Fashion Week for years, and street photographers are still a big problem. They literally won’t take a picture [of plus women]. I know I look cute, but it makes you feel like you don’t belong there, or it was a mistake that you were invited to this place. Up until three or four seasons ago when brands began focusing solely on inclusive galleries, I was starting to feel like I didn’t want to go to Fashion Week anymore. People walk past you, or act like you don’t belong there. It wasn’t until designers started including one or two plus models in their shows—or really trying to make sure people know they’re inclusive—that I started getting moved me closer to the front row. It’s nice to feel included, but it’s also like, I know I’m just here as a token or a pawn. It’s somewhat more inclusive, but it almost feels like tokenism. It’s a double edged sword.” —Kelly Augustine, Owner of August Raye Boutique

Model and author

Courtesy of Leah Vernon

 
“One time I was in London during Fashion Week. I wasn’t invited to an actual show, but I was to an after party you had to RSVP for. I was there with another huge plus-size influencer in Europe, and another plus-size gal who works behind-the-scenes in the fashion industry. But when we got to the after party and pulled out our phones to show our RSVP confirmations, the woman didn’t even look. She just said, ‘Sorry, we’re not letting anyone else in. We’re at full capacity.’ People were literally walking out the door as she said it. We pushed back and asked to talk to her manager, where we had to wait five minutes for them to finally let us in. Of course, once we got into the party, it wasn’t close to capacity, and we were the only visibly plus-sized women there. Stuff like this happens too often when you’re plus size.”

“At Fashion Week, the seats are one long bench, and each ‘seat’ is a piece of 8-by-11 paper with your name on it. And one bum is supposed to go in each of those seats. I used to just move to the back row—and if you’re in fashion, you understand that sitting in the front row is a status symbol. It’s important for your publication, and it’s also important for you as a person. If you want a promotion, if you want to get poached and go work somewhere else, if you want to show that you are as important as the straight-size editor beside you, your potential new editor-in-chief needs to walk in to that show and see you beside your competition, not in the back hiding. I got to a certain point where I wouldn’t move. I remember one show where I had a quarter of my left butt cheek on the end of the bench, and I did a wall sit without a wall for the entire show. Fashion shows are only five to 10 minutes long, but still, that’s a long fucking squat. I was sweating and shaking, and in my head thinking, I’m not moving.” —Lauren Chan, founder of Henning and former fashion editor

The Fashion Industry Has a PlusSize Problem. These Women Want to Fix It

We’re sick of brands pretending they include us—when they don’t

Writer

Shammara Lawrence
Heather Hazzan

 
“Sometimes I’m invited to events, like the launch of a new collection, and there’s nothing in the line that could fit me or any other plus-size person. My fashion writing revolves around plus sizes, so why would I cover that? Even worse is when a publicist tells me how size-inclusive a brand is only to find out their clothes just go up to a size 18. Newsflash publicists and brands: it’s not! And to suggest otherwise is incredibly offensive—plus size typically starts at a 14/16, so you’re barely even dipping your toes in the plus-size market.”

Fashionista editor-in-chief

Tyler McCall
Getty Images

 
“I realize that this comes from a huge place of privilege, but gifting [is a real issue]. I’ve always been somewhere between a size 12 and a 14, so anytime brands are gifting and I’m asked for a size, I respond with a range. Some of my favorite responses are, ‘It goes up to a 10, but it’s a roomy 10,” which, cool, thank you. A ‘roomy 10’ is still not my size, and also, what a weird thing to say. I think people mean well—they’re taught that to point out any kind of difference in size is rude. I get it. I often call mediums the ‘polite large,’ because if I get random mailers from people who haven’t emailed me for my size and they send me a medium, I know they went and looked at my social. They know I’m not a small, but they were scared to send me a large. If they asked, I would’ve said I need a large, and that’s fine.”

Writer and founder of Rascal Honey

Sarah Conley
Courtesy of Sarah Conley

 
“As a size 28, I am consistently pushing the plus-size industry to include larger sizes, which feels extra ridiculous. On a weekly basis, I’m approached by brands who want to work with me and even though I am very open about my size (it’s even in my Instagram bio), I often receive confused and callous replies from brand representatives when I tell them that I’m outside of their size range.”



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Male Bosses Are Ignoring Women Colleagues After #MeToo. This Is a Problem.


One of my first jobs out of college had me assisting a publisher who frequently shared sensitive company information with me as I drafted memos and reports, which meant we often had to close the door to his office. He’d dictate what he needed to, and we’d move on with our day. Occasionally we’d do it over lunch. I never once felt uncomfortable and I’m pretty sure he didn’t either. Because I was good at my job, the publisher eventually promoted me.

This was almost two decades ago and much has changed for women—and men—at work. The most pervasive shift, of course, has been spurred by the #MeToo movement, which not only has managed to hold power-abusing men accountable for their actions but has also changed the norms so many women have silently faced in workplaces that range from farming to fashion.

But with any movement—especially one that exists to empower women—there has been a backlash and one particular facet is the idea that #MeToo has scared some men away from interacting with junior-level female colleagues.

According to new research released today by LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey, 60 percent of male managers say they’re uncomfortable participating in common workplace activities with a woman—a 32 percent increase from research done last year on the topic. The data found that senior-level men are 12 times more likely to hesitate before having one-on-one meetings, nine times more likely to hesitate to travel with a junior woman for business, and six times more likely to hesitate to go to a work dinner with a junior woman. Thirty-six percent of men also say they’ve avoided mentoring or socializing with a female co-worker because they were nervous about how it might look.

The problem: Most managers are male and their fear is prohibiting women from proving themselves and moving up at work.

“I don’t know of anyone who’s been promoted who hasn’t had one-on-one conversations [with a superior]” LeanIn.org founder and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg told me by phone. “Women need that one-on-one time to get the mentorship and sponsorship they need to succeed.”

Sandberg knows this well. “[Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and I spend an enormous amount of time together and we spend an enormous amount of time one-on-one,” she said. “That one-on-one time has been where he’s given me the feedback that helps me do my job, [has] told me what I need to do better, [and] I’ve been able to give him feedback. That is not happening in a group setting.”

Sandberg also said her first meeting of the week Monday morning and the last meeting of the week [on] Friday afternoon is with Zuckerberg and nobody else. “That is our partnership and without that, I don’t know where we’d be.”

As far as a solution goes, LeanIn.Org is encouraging men to do more to actively support women at work, from increasing amounts of informal one-on-one time to participating in more official initiatives like sponsorships and mentoring—something Sandberg thinks will benefit men just as much as women.
“[It isn’t] just the right thing to do to mentor and sponsor women It’s actually a good thing to do for your career [as a man] because if you’re the most senior CEO or most junior person, if you can work better with half the population, you are going to outperform.”

Being more or less invisible to a male superior is better than being uncomfortable, right? In theory, sure, but considering the vast majority of managers and leaders are men across most fields, the fact that women aren’t getting the attention they need to succeed because men are afraid isn’t doing anyone any favors, “Ultimately, this is about closing the gender gap at work, from the entry-level all the way to the top,” said Rachel Thomas, president of LeanIn.Org, in a statement. “When companies employ more women, sexual harassment is less prevalent. And when women hold more leadership roles, company profits are higher and workplace policies are more generous. Supporting women makes companies stronger and safer. To get there, we need men to be part of the solution.”



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The Big Problem With the New WHO Screen Time Guidelines


A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend of mine about a new wrinkle in her work schedule. Normally, she worked from home on Tuesdays and was able to crank through most of her emails while her two young children took their afternoon naps. Recently, though, the older child had dropped her nap altogether, and my friend found herself—a woman who hadn’t even owned a TV most of her adult life—turning on Peppa Pig for her daughter every afternoon for an hour and a half. (For the uninitiated, Peppa Pig is a British cartoon about a pig and her animal friends.) “It’s not ideal,” she said. “But what else can I do?”

As it turns out, my friend is violating a recommendation from the venerable World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations focused on public health. According to a recent report from the WHO, children between the ages of one and four should spend no more than 60 minutes per day on screens. (“Less is better,” the report cautions.) For children under 12 months, “screen time is not recommended.” A New York Times article about the WHO report acknowledges that “there is limited data on the short- and long-term effects” that exposure to screens even has on children, but cites David Hill, M.D., a pediatrician and the author of a 2018 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics that urges no screen time other than video chatting for kids under 18 months. Hill tells the Times that the WHO appears to be “applying the precautionary principle, and saying: ‘If we don’t know that it’s good, and there’s any reason to believe it’s bad, why do it?’”

Well, I’ll tell you why: To get dinner ready without screaming kids hanging on to your legs. To work, like my friend is doing, so that she can be present with her family for the rest of the day. To tend to a sick relative who lives with you. To take a shower, make coffee, schedule a doctor’s appointment, take a work call, text your best friend, or do absolutely anything that can give you a break from the omnipresent need fulfillment that is parenting young children.

There are hundreds of reasons that can explain why a parent may give their child more than 60 minutes of screen time on a given day, but the bogeyman of the prematurely obese, TV-addicted toddler, who also has the attention span of a small rodent, has developed so fast that few have paused to consider what the people who peddle it are really afraid of. Like the fear of the trumped-up “welfare queen” before it, this new “abundance of caution” has its roots in classism and racism rather than facts.

Of course no reasonable person believes that all constraints on screen time are bad, especially for children. It’s good for kids to get exercise! It’s good for kids to learn to play with others, use their imaginations, and even get bored. When I was a kid, we were limited to an hour per day of daily screen use—and this was back when modems took, like, 10 minutes to connect to the Internet! I’m glad I had to make up activities to fill my time, or I’d have spent it all reading Hanson fan fiction and talking to my crushes on AIM. But now, as a parent myself, I can see why the WHO’s recommendations seem draconian and out of touch with reality. My son is only one, but already his attention is easily captured by screens, which we rarely have on in our home. According to the WHO, he shouldn’t even know what a screen is at his tender young age. Should I be questioning all the episodes of Parenthood I watched while nursing? Or the Golden State Warriors games we occasionally have on in the background?



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Selena Gomez Just Called Out Another Big Problem With 'Pretty' Filters


Selena Gomez has plenty of experience with social media, but there’s one aspect of the more visually driven platforms that she doesn’t love: namely, filters. Flicking through the options on Snapchat, she’d noticed that there was a pattern to all of the “pretty” filters (think the ones that make you look like a flower-crowned queen of summer). Gomez proceeded to call out how they generally lighten the user’s eye color in a way that other filters don’t—which led the brown-eyed pop star to wonder exactly why that was.

“Literally every single Snapchat filter has blue eyes,” Gomez said. “But…what if you have brown eyes? Am I supposed to have these eyes to look good?”

She ran through a few other filters to continue testing her hypothesis.

“They use my brown eyes for this one,” she said about a filter that morphs lips into an oversized, distorted version of their actual selves. “I don’t understand; they have all the blue eyes for the [filters] that are really pretty.”

The story’s since expired, but some fans made sure it lived on on Twitter:

She has a point: If massive social media giants are correlating lighter eyes with a certain standard of beauty, that’s a message that could subliminally make an impact on users—especially younger, impressionable ones. After all, it’s not uncommon for little kids to play around with their parents’ Snapchat filters. (Not to mention all the issues that Snapchat-like apps—and Snapchat itself—have had with racist filters.) We’re already seeing the impact of filters on how women perceive themselves, to the point where they’re reportedly getting cosmetic surgery to look more like the filtered versions of themselves they see on apps like Snapchat. There’s even a name for the phenomenon: “Snapchat dysmorphia.”

Gomez, it seems, might not be the biggest fan of the “pretty” filters now—she signed off implying she might stay away from them—but she certainly gives users (and, one hopes, the higher-ups at companies that use filtering features in their apps) something to think about next time they pull up a filter.



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Review: These American Eagle Jeans Solve An Annoying Denim Problem For Good


My worst fitting-room experiences have always involved denim. It’s not because of a lack of options: I wear a size that’s abundantly stocked in most stores and online. (Normally, it’s a size 10.) Rather, it’s because of my body shape.

Not to fall into the old-school trope of comparing myself to a fruit, but I have what some would considered a “pear-shaped” body: small waist, big hips—but not in a proportional way. That means that, usually, jeans that fit my thighs and butt are too roomy at the waist; if I size down, though, they won’t make it past my knees. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to settling for jeans that are too big at the waist, just so my legs don’t feel trapped, and I’ll tuck in my shirt to fill in the gap that forms around the back. But I’ve never been able to walk up to the register with a pair I knew would fit just right. Instead, I’d take the waist gap as a given.

Last month, American Eagle launched a new style in its Ne(X)t Level 360 collection, which is made from a stretch fabric that’s meant to hug and conform to the body, with a tailored waistband that wouldn’t sag or gap. Available in sizes 00 through 20 online, these so-called “curvy jeggings” came in a range of washes, fits, and finishes. And they had started to generate some positive feedback on Twitter. I was intrigued.

American Eagle Ne(X)t Level Curvy High-Waisted Jegging, $44.95 $37.46, American Eagle

American Eagle Outfitters

American Eagle sent me its Curvy High-Waisted Jegging, which retails for just under $38. My immediate first impression: Though they’re called “jeggings,” this pair looked and felt a lot like skinny jeans—the fabric was just stretchier.

The main difference between these and all the other jeans I’d tried (and been disappointed by) in the past was how they sat on my waist after I had zipped and buttoned them up. The high-rise lands just above my belly button, without space leftover in the back; my thighs and butt, meanwhile, are hugged by the fabric, not choked. The waist gap I’ve come to expect? Nowhere to be found.

Halie LeSavage wears American Eagle curve denim
Courtesy of Halie LeSavage

I wore the jeans for a few days, and even after multiple #OOTDs, the waistband held its shape. (I’d always feel frustrated when I thought I’d found denim that fit in the store, but would be totally stretched out by the second wear.) It’s a relief to find jeans suited to curvy-on-the-bottom bodies that don’t require tailoring or other compromises—and at a store that I’ve shopped since middle school.

Halie LeSavage wearing American Eagle denim
Courtesy of Halie LeSavage

Skinny jeans are, admittedly, not my favorite cut, so I’m hoping that American Eagle will expand this line into other silhouettes, like straight-leg jeans or kick flares. For now, though, I’m feeling pretty satisfied with this fit-to-my-shape pair.

Buy it now: American Eagle Ne(X)t Level Curvy High-Waisted Jegging, $44.95 $37.46, American Eagle

All products featured on Glamour are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.





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The Problem With Everyone Thirsting Over Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper


If you didn’t watch the Oscars last night and only tuned into the top headlines, you’d think Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper made out on top of a piano while his girlfriend and the mother of his child, Irina Shayk, looked on—and then everyone went home and called it a night.

Literally as I write this, the Today show is breathlessly declaring “Gaga & Bradley steal the show” as tweets about their, let’s say, intimate “Shallow” performance scroll across the screen. That’s tame compared with what’s happening in my news feed, where the language becomes increasingly sexual. “Everyone was horny” for Gaga and Cooper’s performance, according to one overly excited headline, while another says people are “shipping” the costars. Several writers described feeling “pregnant” after watching their duet. Over on Twitter the speculation and (admittedly hilarious) memes are loud and persistent:

The (unproven) narrative circling the Internet right now is essentially this: Lady Gaga split from her fiancé because she and Bradley Cooper are maybe-definitely in love, and everyone’s extremely into it. They “seem like a couple” at Oscars parties. Their chemistry is “undeniable.” Fans on Twitter are actively rooting for them to get together.

It gets even weirder once you add Shayk to the picture. I saw the same outlet describe Cooper and Shayk’s Oscars red-carpet PDA as “picture perfect” while simultaneously going off the deep end (pun intended) into Gaga and Cooper’s supposed affair. A “jealous” Shayk sat between the two all night, never mind that’s just how the Oscars seating chart works. And after Shayk gave her boyfriend and Gaga a standing ovation following their performance, people praised her—as if Shayk, at best, proved she’s above the rumors and, at worse, is completely clueless.

With all the noise, it’s hard to determine what the truth is. Did Gaga and Cooper’s performance feel incredibly intimate? Yes, I have eyes. Do they clearly have a close connection? Of course, though I think it’s important to remember that these two had to build a believable chemistry to sell A Star Is Born tickets. On the flip side, did Cooper and Shayk look happy together on the Oscars red carpet? Yup, and she was by his—and Gaga’s—side all night, looking ostensibly happy and not at all uncomfortable, annoyed, or awkward.

Kevin Winter

We don’t know what’s really going on with these three—but what I do find interesting is the wide-spread support for Gaga and Cooper to be together. It’s striking to me because society normally loves to hate on the other woman, especially if she is viewed as “taking” the man away from the mother of his child. People are still not over Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s affair. When they divorced in 2016, tabloids circled like hawks to shout that Jolie was discovering what goes around comes around. The New York Post‘s front page that week was a picture of Aniston laughing, a full-circle moment for Team Jen.

And look what’s been happening recently to Jordyn Woods: Her removal from the Kardashian’s inner circle after reportedly hooking up with Tristan Thompson, father to Khloé Kardashian’s daughter and a brother-in-law of sorts to Woods’ best friend Kylie Jenner, has been treated as a joke. Something she completely deserved because of her actions. Khloé, meanwhile, has become the new Jen Aniston—even The Bachelorette was hoping to cast her as the next lead. People cheer that Woods’ life and career are over, but root for Cooper to end his relationship and be with Gaga? Because what, they look hot cuddling next to each other at a piano?



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