Ragen Chastain wrote a post on her blog about a study which shows that plus size women prefer to see slender models in advertising for plus size clothing. Plus size clothiers such as Lane Bryant argue that this is why they use slender models in their ads. Both Ragen and I are in agreement that this "logic" is flawed at best and, in fact, hateful.
Here is my response.
I think the results of this study reflect what large women have been conditioned to believe. It is like the study done years ago which showed that black children preferred white baby dolls. This is, of course, because the black children had been conditioned to believe that white skin was more attractive than black skin.
To say that because plus size women prefer to look at slender models in advertising and therefore slender models are better would be akin to saying that black children preferred white baby dolls because white skin is better. In this decade there are very few people who would accept the validity of this argument. Yet many accept wholesale the validity of the argument that slender models are superior. Very sad.
