Fashioning Fat

For two and a half years, Amanda Czerniawski was a

sociologist turned plus-size model. Journeying into a world where, as a size

10, she was not considered an average body type, but rather, for the fashion

industry, “plus-sized,” Czerniawski studied the standards of work and image

production in the plus-sized model industry.

Fashioning Fat takes us through a model’s day-to-day activities,

first at open calls at modeling agencies and then through the fashion shows and

photo shoots. Czerniawski also interviewed 35 plus-size models about their

lives in the world of fashion, bringing to life the strange contradictions of

being an object of non-idealized beauty.



Fashioning Fat shows

us that the mission of many of these models is to challenge our standards of

beauty that privilege the thin body; they show us that fat can be sexy. Many plus-size

models do often succeed in overcoming years of self-loathing and shame over

their bodies, yet, as Czerniawski shows, these women are not the ones in charge

of beauty’s construction or dissemination. At the corporate level, the fashion

industry perpetuates their objectification. Plus-size models must conform to an

image created by fashion’s tastemakers, as their bodies must fit within

narrowly defined parameters of size and shape—an experience not too different

from that of straight-sized models. Ultimately, plus-size models find that they

are still molding their bodies to fit an image instead of molding an image of

beauty to fit their bodies. A much-needed behind-the-scenes look at this

growing industry, Fashioning Fat is a

fascinating, unique, and important contribution to our understanding of beauty.