The State of the Nation’s gut

Not long ago we learned about a few prisons starting to refuse certain inmates because they were overcrowded and ill-equipped to deal with the morbidly obese (sic)k. Not long ago, such an inmate was able to smuggle a weapon inside the prison by hiding it inside his flabs.

It is a known feature of our era that just as we become fatter, we want to see thinner models. Kate Moss would’ve never been famous in times of lower average weight. Likewise, if corn wasn’t used in everything… actually, forget that, it’s a different topic altogether.

George Vera, 25, who had been charged with selling illegal copies of compact discs, was found to have been hiding a 9 mm gun in his 500-lbs flabs of fat. At that point, he had been transferred through several jails and searched multiple times, but nobody found his gun until he himself bragged about it.

Perhaps the biggest uproar was caused by Lizzie Miller, whose photo by Walter Chin appeared in US Glamour Photograph. Apparently, she’s considered too fat to model even for plus sizes..

Luckily, Lizzie has started receiving more work after the photo was published, and her agency told her that she does not need to lose any more weight.

Yet there are signs that things are changing in the fashion industry. Back in 2007, not long after a couple of models died from not eating enough, photos of a 27-year-old French model Isabelle Caro were blown up and shown to passers-by in a campaign by Nolita and having the blessing of the Italian ministry of health. As one could expect, the man behind the campaign is none other than our main man (as Ali G. would say), Oliver Toscani, the Benetton master.

The ad is shocking, but a necessary wake-up call in an industry where public opinion seems focused at the far end of the spectrum:

Designer Giorgio Armani queried the link between fashion and anorexia, commenting that "even people who take no notice of fashion get anorexic", while designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana described anorexia as a psychiatric problem with "nothing to do with fashion".

Luckily, there are models who are happy modelling plus sizes, though to you and me they still are thinner than most people. Crystal Renn’s career took off only after put some of the lost weight back and started modeling “plus” sizes.

Here’s what some designers think, as quoted by the Guardian:

Renn's agent, Gary Dakin, of New York's Ford Models, which represents models who are UK size 12 to 22, says that their novelty use is coming to an end. Instead they will be photographed for one simple reason: because they are beautiful.

"I have been in this business for 11 years and I have seen this debate ripple through the fashion world a number of times," he said. "This time, though, the momentum of the debate feels different." Style arbiter Stephen Bayley agrees. Bayley's book, Women as Design, is published this week and looks at how definitions of female beauty have changed over the centuries. "In periods when we are impoverished, as now, there is a vogue for voluptuous women," he said. "

But designers are, slowly, beginning to agree that larger models have a role. Antonio Berardi has talked of the trouble he has finding girls with a womanly shape. "We have to spend days altering things," he complained. "We add padding and pieces that work inside the clothes to exaggerate their bodies into a more female form. I don't want all those girls with pale skin who look the same. My family is Italian – I am inspired by a womanly aesthetic."

Roland Mouret agrees: "I see advertising going back to that powerful 1980s mentality, when girls like Linda [Evangelista] were ideal. Back in the 80s, when supermodels were several sizes larger than top models today, the clothes worked on bigger bodies," he added. "They were bright, bold, curve-enhancing."

Kate Smith, a size 16 and the highest earner at Hughes Models, said: "The number of plus-size models in the industry has quadrupled in the past few years, but we're still a tiny percentage of the whole modelling business.

"What does my head in is that I'm a model but I can't buy designer clothes that fit me. Everything is crawl-walk-run. We'll get to the point where every shape and size will be represented on the runway, but maybe not in my lifetime."

Sources / More info: glamour-lizzie, guardian-big-beautiful, guardian-the-pic, huff-vera, msnbc-vera, drivesunuts-vera,

Verba Volant,obese, overweight, fat, fat of the land, crime, weight, weight-problem