XXL: How BBW Became Fashion’s Latest Prey

Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.

“Life in the Fat Lane,” the third chapter of media studies professor Laura Kipnis’ 1996 book Bound and Gagged, juxtaposed the dilemma of fat fetish pornography and how popular culture confront the issue of fat and desire. On one hand, obese porn, a niche in the vast porn business, is an absolute revolt against the dictatorial and incessant aesthetic of thinness. On the other, the images of these chubby women–often 44-35-44–entice desires that contradict and challenge prevailing cultural norms.

Yet over the past decade, the fat porn market has grown tremendously as acceptance of full size women becomes the norm. At least in the porn industry. Once a province of cheap production titles, big studios have been producing lavish titles with more budgets. The advance of web technology has allowed better quality for those choosing to self-published. Even the nomenclature has changed–the category is now called BBW or Big Beautiful Women. Hardly anyone ever mentions “fat porn” in an age where the “deviant” bodies of April Flores, Karla Lane, Kelly Shibari and Bonnie de la Cruz–some of the industry’s stars–are becoming household names.

For a while in the late ‘90s, porn and fashion co-mingled. Top fashion photographers imitated porn shoots, while a few who specialized in porn movie stills–such as Jeff Burton–emerged as most sought after fashion lensmen. There was a Gucci campaign shot by Mario Testino using a video camera to produce an effect of a low tech quick peep–not a glossy high fashion shoot–with models in various state of undress around the fetish-inducing shiny black patent leather stiletto.

Yet fashion has done a superb job to hide fat. Rarely has someone who does not fit the size standard appeared in the propaganda fashion uses to propel itself: advertisements, commercials, and magazines. Anyone working in fashion can attest–the standard size goes in opposite direction of general population. In the ‘90s, size 4-6 was a common sample size, but around 2003 or so it dropped to a size 2. For as long as I can remember, for every fashion season, there’s a concurring season of new diet plans promising yet another scientific methodology to stymy and banish fat. Fashion fetishizes the skinny as BBW-lovers worship the obese.

That is, until now. Who can forget the spring 2006 >John Galliano show, perhaps his best show ever, in a train depot in Paris where the designer used women and a few men of all sizes, shapes and proportions–dwarfs, fat women, twins, old women, along with some of the season’s top models–to show a superb collection. Afterwards, some dismissed Mr. Galliano’s deliberate use of “freaks”–or anyone who did not pass the skinny test. But shows like this are beginning to alter perceptions, and perhaps seed changes, within the ultra-conservative fashion world.

What’s hard to fathom is that at the core of fashion is a business driven to create desires. As such fashion has lagged far behind pornography in espousing a diverse range of aesthetics of beauty and pleasure. The seasonal advertisement campaigns serve this ultimate goal in crafting and concocting fantastic scenarios using top models, actresses and the occasional pop stars as backdrops to elevate a handbag, a pair of sunglasses, a bottle of perfume, and a commercial garment to mythical level. There isn’t much diversity in these images–meaning it’s breaking news to see black or an Asian model among the cast.

Years before the extremely insular worlds of high fashion and plus sizes collided, I did a fashion story featuring two models, size 14, an equivalent of size zero in the plus size world for the December 2003 issue of Flaunt. That was more than six years before Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the band Gossip, landed on the cover of >LOVEmagazine and captured the Parisian fashion by storm in March 2009, literally plucked from Portland, Oregon to serve as a front row guest at Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Chanel shows. She even performed a concert sponsored by Fendi at the VIP Room in Paris for fashion’s glitterati.

I remember photographer Nicolas Wagner’s first question to me when I told him about the subject of the shoot back in 2003. “What clothes are they wearing?” Back then, and I am not certain if much has changed since, it was incredibly difficult to get any designer clothes in this size range.