Hyejin Yun undergoes
eyelid surgery in the
Hyundai Aesthetics
clinic in Seoul. The
procedure makes eyes
look bigger. South
Korea has one of the
highest rates of plastic
surgery in the world;
one in three women
ages 19 to 29 has had
cosmetic surgery.the language of aesthetics. A whole new cate-
gory of power brokers has emerged: influencers.
They are young and independent and obsessed
with the glamour of fashion. And fashion influ-
encers don’t accept excuses, condescension, or
patronizing pleas to be patient, because really,
change is forthcoming.
The modern beauty standard in the West has
always been rooted in thinness. And when the
obesity rates were lower, thin models were only
slight exaggerations in the eyes of the general
population. But as obesity rates rose, the dis-
tance between the reality and the fantasy grew.
People were impatient with a fantasy that no
longer seemed even remotely accessible.
Fat bloggers warned critics to stop telling
them to lose weight and stop suggesting ways
for them to camouflage their body. They were
perfectly content with their body, thank you
very much. They just wanted better clothes.
They wanted fashion that came in their size—
not with the skirts made longer or the sheath
dresses reworked with sleeves.
They weren’t really demanding to be labeled
beautiful. They were demanding access to style
because they believed they deserved it. In
this way, beauty and self-worth were inextri-
cably bound.
Giving full-figured women greater access
made economic sense. By adhering to traditional
beauty standards, the fashion industry had been
leaving money on the table. Designers such as
Christian Siriano made a public point of cater-
ing to larger customers and, in doing so, were
hailed as smart and as capitalist heroes. Now
it’s fairly common for even the most rarefied
fashion brands to include large models in their
runway shows.
But this new way of thinking isn’t just about
selling more dresses. If it were only about
economics, designers would have long ago
expanded their size offerings, because there
have always been larger women able and willing
to embrace fashion. Big simply wasn’t consid-
ered beautiful. Indeed, even Oprah Winfrey
went on a diet before she posed for the cover of
Vogue in 1998. As recently as 2012, the designer
Karl Lagerfeld, who died last year and who him-
self was 92 pounds overweight at one point, was
called to task for saying that pop star Adele was
“a little too fat.”
Attitudes are shifting. But the fashion world
remains uneasy with large women—no matterthe traditions of the power brokers who’d come
before, happily using black and brown people as
props in photo shoots that starred white models
who had parachuted in for the job.
But an increasingly diverse class of moneyed
consumers, a more expansive retail network,
and a new media landscape have forced the
fashion industry into greater accountability on
how it depicts beauty. Clothing and cosmetic
brands now take care to reflect the growing
numbers of luxury consumers in countries such
as India and China by using more Asian models.
SOCIAL MEDIA HAS AMPLIFIED the voices of
minority communities—from Harlem to South
Central Los Angeles—so that their calls for rep-
resentation can’t be so easily ignored. And the
growth of digital publications and blogs means
that every market has become more fluent in
REDEFINING BEAUTY 105