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Life

17th Dec 2016

This woman took six photos to prove a point about body image

Megan Roantree

She makes an excellent point.

In society today, we are so obsessed about the number on the label of our clothes.

For many people, specifically many women, it goes like this: If you are a size ten, you will buy everything in a size ten and if that size doesn’t fit, you won’t buy it.

For me personally, even if I find the perfect pair of jeans, it would only buy them if the size I think I am fits me, if I have to go up another size, I won’t buy them.

But we never stop to consider that a size 10 in one shop is more like a size 6 in another.

And the cut and shape of clothes sometimes dictates what size fits well on your body, not the other way around.

One American woman has made this exact point using her wardrobe and a camera.

27-year-old Deena Shoemaker posted six photos of herself to Facebook, wearing six different pairs of trousers.

The sized varied from a US size 5 to a US size 12 and they all fit her well.

sizeclothes

Deena is a counsellor for teen and pre-teen girls and said that her job motivated her to upload the images.

”As I was going through my clothes tonight I started to notice how dramatically different the size of all my pants were. And I have a real problem with the fact that my size 5 pants fit me THE EXACT SAME WAY that my size 12 pants do.” She said.

”Let me explain why I’m not happy, America. You photoshop models and actresses and slap them on the front of beauty magazines. At this point it’s a pretty universally known truth that you’re lying to us and those aren’t accurate portrayals of the human body. I can prove it to girls pretty easily by simply showing them how photoshop works.”

‘But when you resize a girl’s pants from a 9 to a 16 and label it “plus size,” how am I supposed to fight that? Photo manipulation is one thing but how do you expect me to convince her that the number printed inside her clothes is a lie too? How do you expect me to convince her that she doesn’t need to skip dinner for the next month because her pant size didn’t *actually* go up by seven digits?”

”STOP telling my girls that a size 4 is the “ideal body size” and the “epitome of beauty” if you’re going to change a size 4 into an 8 or a 12 or whatever number you feel like on any given day.”

”And to you; my dear beautiful girls, my size 2 girls or my size 18 girls, your size doesn’t determine your beauty; your life does. The size printed inside your clothes is subjective to the fashion industry’s personal taste and it fluctuates rapidly. Stop believing the social normatives about who and what you should be.”

”You are lovely and you are loved.
Just exactly the way you are.”