Controversy over a Ralph Lauren model raised its ugly head last week, when a blog site BoingBoing.net broke the news that a Ralph Lauren clothing ad had a model who had been photoshopped to ridiculous proportions. Millions of people all over the world checked out the photo, to see a model that one commenter said was so thin “her head was bigger than her pelvis”. In today’s news, the model in question, Filippa Hamilton, has come forward to say she was actually fired by Ralph Lauren for being “overweight”. How fat is she? She’s 5ft 10 in tall and weighs an enormous 120 lbs.
My question is, what’s wrong with Ralph Lauren? And why would they think a model who is so thin and doesn’t even represent 5% of the American female population is overweight? Plus, why would you photoshop her to such an extent she looks deformed? And then fire her for being fat? Ralph Lauren is so out of touch with modern American women, it’s obscene.
The fashion industry for decades has been known to use models that don’t represent what ‘real women’ look like. As women get larger, especially in the US, the fashion models now don’t even represent the small percentage of women they used to represent. While some people think it’s not important, for the millions of girls worldwide every year who suffer from anorexia nervosa because they see these stick-thin women and think that’s what they should look like, it’s enormously important. As fashion companies like Ralph Lauren continue to damage normal, healthy young women’s psyche by telling them they’re not ‘good enough’ and while ridiculous photoshopped photographs of models make the rest of us think we need to be on a constant diet, it’s likely more and more consumers will boycott companies like Ralph Lauren.
Before she was fired, 23-year-old Filippa Hamilton was used by Ralph Lauren for years. She’s beautiful. She always was. But, as she’s changed from the teenager she was when she first started working for Ralph Lauren, to the amazingly gorgeous woman she now is, her body has become more womanly and more voluptuous. For Ralph Lauren, that’s unacceptable.
So, I say to all the women out there who are normal size. If you, like me, think these fashion companies with weirdly sick images of what is ‘beautiful’ are wrong for firing models like Filippa Hamilton, then what are the rest of us doing buying from them? Because, if Ralph Lauren thinks a woman who looks like a stick insect with an over-sized head is attractive then the rest of us needn’t apply. And I for one don’t plan on spending my money at a company that thinks my 133 lb body is fat.
The photoshopped Ralph Lauren photo can be seen on this Shine article, along with past Ralph Lauren photos of Filippa Hamilton who is ‘fat’. Judge for yourself. But for me, if Filippa Hamilton is fat, can I have her body please?
SOURCES: Yahoo – Was the photoshopped Ralph Lauren model fired for being overweight?
