A few months ago a debate started on the Guestbook about 'size zero' (UK size 4).  There has been a lot in the media about body image issues, eating disorders, even the tragic deaths of young fashion models starving themselves to be thin.  What all the debates elsewhere ignore is that this is a serious question about the role of fashion in causing harm to some young women's mental health, and to all women's sense of what is 'normal' or acceptable; but it is not a debate about dress sizes.

 

Most women are not especially large or small, and we tend to be in proportion to our height and skeletal frame size.  The fashion industry has defended the use of 6' tall size 8 models as a matter of the genetic make up of these girls (they are usually teenagers).  They are often right.  Especially when young, women and girls are often very lean.  Some women are also very tall and slender.

 

What we don't hear about so much is that some women are also short and slender!  It is just as possible to have a narrow skeletal frame and a slim physique at 5' as it is at 6'!  It is also normal and healthy for those women who naturally have that sort of shape.

 

Hysteria over size zero forgets the question of height, condemning the dress size, rather than the pressures to be unnaturally thin that come from right across popular culture and the fashion industry.  The result is deeply unpleasant for many petite women who wear small sizes.  Lots of our readers wrote in to describe their own experiences.  The fact that there are few clothes available in small sizes was a minor issue compared to the rudeness that many people think they can direct at any woman shopping for small sizes.  Tales of offensive sales assistants, even complete strangers, making deeply personal comments about healthy women who had done nothing to provoke their spite came in from women of all ages.

 

The fact is that size 10 is very slender indeed for most 6' tall Northern European women.  The fact, equally, is that size 4 (size 0) is not especially slender for some 5' tall women, especially those from the Mediterranean or Asia.  Many Chinese and Japanese women are a US 00 (double zero) or UK size 2!

 

One of our readers was brave enough to send a photograph of her size zero figure.  Jamie-Lee of Nottingham is pictured above looking nothing like a cadaverous Nicole Ritchie, or self-destructing Amy Winehouse.  Jamie-Lee, quite simply, looks fabulous!  That is what size zero can look like!

 

So why isn't the challenge to the fashion industry not to put bigger tall models in the magazines, but to feature gorgeous looking shorter women?

 

This is a serious question.  I've just attended a petite catwalk show organised by one of the petite labels.  Most petite labels don't photograph the petite clothes on models at all - we just get 'product shots', as they are known in the industry.  Some petite labels use models, but they are tall models dressed in samples, rather than the clothes that you and I can buy.  At the fashion event I've just seen, I was told that they'd had great difficulty in finding petite catwalk models.  One model was 5'2" I was told, the others around 5'4".  Most of the models looked like strapping girls to me!  They towered over me, almost the only genuinely petite woman in the room!

 

Modelling agencies would take beautiful and photogenic petites like Jamie-Lee if more fashion labels were willing to use them.  I can say for a fact that the best catwalk model I saw last week was the shortest one, as she was genuinely slender and therefore an elegant figure to show off the clothes to best advantage.

 

Editor

 

September 2007