A perfect 12?
Rachel Johnson takes the size-zero debate up a notch Just when the size-zero debate was threatening for the first time in ages to stop picture editors from filling pages with six-foot stick-insects, all of whom claimed to have horse-sized appetites, and who all wolfed chips and bread-and-butter pudding in front of hacks at interviews to prove it (hah! that old trick), the size-zero debate went up several dress sizes.
Women all over England sobbed with relief and celebrated the pictures of new, curvy, healthy-looking ‘real women’ in swimsuits and on the Milan catwalk by canning their horrid meat-based diets and baking scones.
Or did they? I have to say that the new, bigger, more bosomy size-12 debate was the cue for a moment of total scepticism in the Johnson household, where I have been, er, ‘watching what I eat’, i.e., regarding the buttered toast travel towards my open mouth with a sort of detached sense of wonder and gratitude, for as long as I can remember, which in my case is all of about two years.
So let’s look at what’s really happened.
The John Lewis Partnership has taken the decision to enlarge its mannequins to a whomping size 10, and also to use a totally drop-dead, dangerously curved hottie to launch its new range of turquoise swimsuits with matching Hiawatha-fringed muu-muus. Lauren Moller in one of these clinging cerulean numbers was so bad-ass sexy that I almost rushed to Oxford Street to buy one, but somehow managed to prevent myself.
Meanwhile, size 14 and 16 models were on the catwalk at the Elena Miro fashion show, and gave every appearance of having busts, hips and bottoms, though of course I was not there to check whether new, trendy, plus-size flesh-coloured prostheses were being used to trick us.
However — and there always is a however — as a spokesman confirmed, the big girls at the Elena Miro show have opened Milan for three years running, and it was a fortunate but accidental piece of timing that the plus-size fashion label was the first to show its designs in Milan, ahead of a week that was as ever dominated by Gucci, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana. ‘We’ve always designed for the rounded woman,’ said Giuseppe Miroglio, head of the clothing division (I can just see the hourglass being described by his sensitive, lightly hairy Italian hands at this point, can’t you?). ‘A woman shouldn’t be skinny or fat. She should be the size that is natural to her. Women are all different but all women can be beautiful.’ And as for the brave, responsible John Lewis Partnership, far from taking a stand in the hope that fewer South American models will die from a surfeit of apples and tomatoes and a deficit of everything else, they want to sell — surprise, surprise more swimsuits.
‘This is about being honest by showing the garments worn on the shape and size of a woman who is more typical of our customers,’ said the JLP’s Mark Forsyth.
Now, if John Lewis’s typical customers really did look like the South African model Lauren Moller, that would be news indeed. But I think we all know what he’s trying to say, which is that British women are big. Our waist size has gone up from a hand-girdling, waspy, Audrey Hepburn-esque to a straight up and down, 28 inches or so. Our breasts have got bigger still, with sales of large bra sizes tripling over the last three years.
So, what do we conclude from this? First, that women who are a so-called size 0 are not actually size 0, i.e., 12 sizes smaller than a US size 12: American size 10 is roughly designed around three measurements, which are bust 35 inches, waist 28 inches, hips 38 inches. As you drop a size, you should remove one inch from each of the measurements, which makes a size-zero bust 25 inches, the waist a Victorian, corseted 18 inches and hips a schoolboyish 28 inches. Victoria Beckham, for example, wears size zero, but is actually a US size 4. If you are a size zero, you are either seven years old or a dead model.
And second, that size zero is just another label, saying ‘I’m thin and I never eat’, just as buying a size 12 or 14 or 16 doesn’t announce to the world that you’re plus-size and need a yurt instead of a new turquoise onepiece — it just confirms that you’re reassuringly normal and probably greedy.
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