AnyBody's Official Petition to bring Body Diversity to the Catwalk
Our petition is back on the front page because the next fashion week is upon us in September 2007, and we still need your support because unbelievably nothing definite has been achieved by the 'Model Health Enquiry' that was set up in March by the British Fashion Council, so let's see if we can make a difference, and apply some pressure!
Click here and sign our petition to see more body diversity on the catwalk. Speak back to the fashion industry, which is forever forcing us to listen to it. It is time to release women from all-consuming thoughts of body hatred - so sign our petition, and once we have your support we will be taking the petition to London Fashion Week and the Mayor's Office - Have your say!
OVER 1400 PEOPLE HAVE SIGNED OUR PETITION SO FAR!!!!
Reader Comments (23)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/31/news/rparis1.php
Sorry i rambled on for a bit, i just feel very strongly about this issue and wanted to express my opinions, but ran away with myself for a bit :P
Down With Fashism
1) It is super dry; posing the usual feminist anti arguments.
2)There are hardly any visuals on the website....eeek!
3) I think the problem, as usual is one of identity. What are you exactly campaigning about...anorexia? Fashion? The right to be obese? The right just to live a normal life in normal clothes?
4) You're not reaching enough people mainly because of your anti stance.
Here in Berlin there are some women who are doing very interesting music, interesting fashion,(check out chicks on speed records, peaches, Planning to rock...) and people, most importantly are having fun doing their thing...making clothes, making music, making art....being themselves...which is what is most important....be YOURSELF, dont become a victim. This is I feel, what your website is trying to encourage, but you are going about it in a very old fashioned old reactionist feminist way. Your stance is still one of a VICTIM......why dont you make fashion shows with the women you want to see, the clothes you want to see....why dont you make your OWN magazine, with your own messages? It's all too dry....the time is for activism and not complaining. If you make something juicy and big and exciting and raunchy enough, everyone will come running!! I came to Berlin for all these reasons....because I was sick of people complaining. You hear it in the music, see it in the newspapers, everywhere is complaint. Do it yourself....make it yourself.....BE YOURSELF....Stop complaining & Create the alternatives!! And have FUN in the process!! There must be lots of good fashion designers & bigger models out there who could help you put on a fashion show....So why arent they writing to your website??
It's a fascist world in the music industry also, but people here have started to really change things.....by acting positive, starting their own record companies....whatever....that is the way forward.
I am an artist....if you want something visual I can do it....I had severe anorexia for 15 years.....but I moved on.....
Thanks for your response and ideas! I am sorry that you found our website so ‘anti’ though – I would like to think we are relatively progressive – we have members that are doing fantastic things in the fashion and media industries, one of our members, Ben has owned his own modeling agency since he was 14, and now has a portfolio of all different sized, aged and race models and supplied all the wonderfully diverse models for the Dove campaign – something other modeling agencies would find hard to do.
AnyBody member Althea runs the Women's library at Goldsmiths and is a fabulously active member. Another AnyBody member is Susie Orbach (author of Fat is a Feminist Issue), who consulted on the Dove campaign, and who goes on radio and is a really positive female voice that women around the world respect and can relate to. We also have fashion designers, including a lady who owns a label for pregnant women, and myself, I am a fashion designer and have worked in sustainable and body emcompassing clothing. AnyBody includes all sorts of wonderful women doing positive things...And anybody rallied together last weekend outside London fashion week saying that while we love fashion we also love body diversity and want to see more on the catwalk – and that event definitely wasn’t ‘anti’ – it was a wonderful experience for all involved – we had the media there, and suddenly all these girls who are only ever spoken down to by the media had their chance to speak back and to tell them what they want to see.
So there are people out there doing amazing things but you are right - we could do much more! we would be happy to promote designers and others promoting positive body image to women – and we should contact these people and get them to contribute to our site.
And we would LOVE more visuals on the site – sometimes the idea of picturing women in all her diversity becomes a tricky equation – but we should get artists involved, and if you would like to submit works anneliese that would be fantastic, just email it to AnyBody and we will put it up – together with any articles you like. And tell your friends and artists to get involved, we'd really like to grow our members..
AnyBody is gaining momentum, so hopefully the website will become more dynamic with more contributors. And I saw Planning to Rock live in London – and she is amazing – I wish young girls were exposed to more artists like her instead of MTV clones!
Thanks anneliese,
make sure you keep in contact!
xxx elise
Change fashion
not your body!!!
E.
Beauty should be allowed in all shapes and sizes.
There shouldn't be ONE single stereotype template for how women and girls should look, and we have to react against and question this underweight ideal.
It's not just about anorexia or bulimia, it's about the heath and well being of the next generation.
The size zero models debate is not going to go away. The latest participant is Susie Orbach, the author of the book, Fat Is A Feminist Issue. Scotland's Sunday Herald website has an article about her and what she has been saying about skinny model's.
Professor Susie Orbach, author of the seminal 1970s book Fat Is A Feminist Issue, is calling on designers to acknowledge that the continued use of "dangerously underweight" models is having a "devastating" effect, resulting in body hatred among women and girls.
Orbach, who treated the late Princess Diana for eating disorders,told the Sunday Herald that the idea was to challenge the fashion industry to improve the situation.
"It is not really a question of attacking the fashion industry per se, it is more about what they can do that will add more spark and do it in a really interesting way to fashion," she said. "There is this kind of crazy economics - most people aren't size zero, so what on earth are we doing promoting clothes and selling them in sizes that people don't exist in?"
Susi has created an online petition aimed at the British Fashion Council and the London Development Agency...
AnyBody is setting up this petition to send to the British Fashion Council and the London Development Agency. We want body diversity on the catwalk. We want the BFC and LDA to acknowledge that the ultra-thin beauty stereotype perpetuated by the British fashion industry through the continued use of dangerously under-weight models has a devastating effect on women, girls and increasingly men and boys, resulting in body hatred. We call on the British Fashion Council to take responsibility and initiate a program of actions to promote body diversity in fashion starting with the immediate ban on the use of models under 16 years of age or with a BMI under 18 in London Fashion Week. We call on the British Fashion Council and the London Development Agency to promote a world class fashion industry by actively welcoming the radical changes in international fashion that sees the industry responding to the social reality of women's lives.
Harold Wood : 21 February 2007
http://www.sizenet.com/showdoc.asp?id=984
that said;
we are not addressing the major cause of eating disorders: sexual abuse.
we need to get the public dealing openly and earnestly with this eternal suffering of young helpless females at the hands of male perpetrators and the women who look the other way.
this is not a feminist issue, this is a human issue that has distorted us and held us under water...
what truly amazing things we could do in this world if we weren't mentally and physically raped in extraordinary numbers (the going number is that two-thirds of females are sexually assaulted...and that's just the women who have come forward)!
i am tired of our gender being broken,
blaming other women,
and waging war against our sisters...
for what?...male approval?...money?
women come forward...protect your daughters...teach them to be fierce
...raise good sons...
help each other up...
let us reclaim our power!
let's show the world what we can do together, for each other and humanity...
I guess this is one of the replies you were speaking of! Thanks for your comment - well said - amongst our numerous issues sexual abuse is yet to be looked at... but if you would like to write an article or find an article suitable for our site about sexual abuse and eating disorders/body dismorphia we would definately put it up - and i am sure there wil be many women out there grateful for it!
Thanks for your words of encouragement, they keep us going!!!
xxx