Okay, now I know I’ve said that I’m not really the sort to write a serious blog as I don’t think I’d know how to. Besides I try not to be serious too much, it makes the doctors nervous. They’re used to a more carefree me when they tell me my knees are worse than an eighty year olds.
BUT, and it’s a big one (hence the capitals), this thing Karl Lagerfeld said about Adele being too fat has got right up my nose. As I have a cold and am completely bunged up that should tell you how mad I am.....nothing else is getting up there at the moment, not even Vick.
I mean this man’s clothes aren’t even that good; there’s no real style to them anymore. I assume he’s got another collection out that no one, apart from his sycophants, are taking any notice of and so he’s decided to be a bit ‘outrageous’ to try and spark headlines; and of course, it’s worked.
He says that Adele is fat, and this from a man who looks like a reject from ‘The Walking Dead’ (especially when he takes his glasses off); wears necktie/collar contraptions that make it look like his head is being forced through a small opening, and who wears fingerless leather gloves at all times – and all this just so people won’t see the wrinkles on his throat and hands that even botox has given up trying to get rid of. Oh vanity thy name is......well, any fashionista actually; though Lagerfeld seems to be one of the most outspoken of them.
That all said, to me it’s a cheap swipe at a woman who’s been through the mill recently, yet come out the other side still smiling. And singing thank God, as I love her voice and her music – “set fire to the rain” is my favourite. But that aside, with his glass house barely standing (see comments above about his looks), why is he throwing stones at other people’s just to get his ridiculous designs noticed?
So, despite losing three stone in the past year (don’t ask how, you seriously do not want to know), I'm still a little overweight so I’m sure it could be that tubby side of me talking. But I don’t think it is; I mean when you read that a man called Andrej Pejic is the most sought after model for women’s clothes on the various runways, you know something’s very wrong in the fashion world.
I mean let’s face it, when even the skinniest of skinny female models aren’t skinny enough, because they still have some breast tissue and some hips/thigh tissue which still gives them the faintest of curves and so have to be replaced with a man who, with all due respect to him, even looks like he’s anorexic (and admits he hardly eats to keep his emaciated figure ‘trim’) then the fashion industry has finally, and officially, gone completely bonkers.
Women have curves; it’s a fact of life – most men like them. No, in fact, let’s be honest; most normal men love them. I say normal because men in the fashion industry, those that design female attire at least, are not normal, or even inhabiting the same universe as normal. They want no curves....at all.....ever. But why? I mean it’s a simple question; why design clothes for a curvaceous figure you obviously despise, or at the very least want to be straight up and down?
Oh and of course, if women can’t manage that ultimate emaciated androgyny you resolutely design and covet, then you’re not interested and so turn to (emaciated) androgynous men to parade them up and down the catwalks of the world.
Why not just design for men in the first place and let others, with an obviously better grasp of the female form, design for the women? And not necessarily female fashionistas either; they seem as obsessed with women looking like young boys as the male designers are.
A woman should have curves; luscious ones in the case of Adele, average ones for most of the rest of us. Our men like us like that; we, the mass of generalised women, are starting to (slowly) accept that all the starving, yo-yoing diets in the world are not going to get most of us to that elusive size zero (or minus 10 as it seems now) dress size that men like Lagerfeld insist we should be. Basically you can’t ‘airbrush’ or 'photoshop' here in the real world (though God I wish you could – I’d love to be able to be an inch or two taller).
We’re slowly starting to accept that most men, including our husbands, like us with a “bit of meat” on our bones (as mine likes to say). Emaciated women worry them because they think that a) the women are ill or b) they’ll break them. Most women who are naturally slim say to the rest of us about how they’d like curves, that being too slim is as bad as being overweight. So it’s not just us larger ladies that say curves are good.
Obviously I’m not pro obesity; a healthy weight is must and is attainable, but a size zero isn’t unless you’re under five. But I am pro women being a normal size in line with their age, height and build. Normal being a size they’ve not had to starve themselves into or have been on a diet for the last God knows how many years (oh, yeah I’ve been there).
We need to re-educate ourselves because, God help us all, it’s not just our teenage children that are developing eating disorders, it’s our small kids too. Children, boys as well as girls, as young as four are now developing eating disorders at worst, or are dieting at least because of what the media in general and the fashion industry in particular are blasting us with every day.
Seeing mummy (and possibly daddy) constantly bemoaning their weight, and dieting all the time isn’t going to help them realise that this fixation with food and weight isn’t healthy. I know this because I’ve been there, for a long time. My weight’s been up and down more times than a tart’s drawers; not just by pounds, but by stones too. Luckily my daughter has a more down to earth idea about weight, even at fourteen “when my clothes fit, high five. When they don’t I check the length; too short I’ve grown - if not, I stop the chocolate”. (God how I wish I could’ve been like that all my adult life).
Lagerfeld may have got his publicity, negative or otherwise, though they do say there’s no such thing as bad publicity; and it has been reported that he’s made a grovelling apology in the ‘Metro’ commuter mag, so much so that it’s embarrassing to read. But there’s many people, male and female that will listen to his words and worry even more about their weight and how it makes them look.
Adele, bless her, is very happy with the way she looks, and so I don’t suppose she’ll give a damn about what he’s said. But how many of us can say the same thing? I know I can’t. So I want to say to the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and his ilk that women have curves, they’re female it’s just how we’re built and all the wishing in the world won’t change that; so just build a bridge and get over it.
This is Simi, thanks for reading.....
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