More is More
Images by Juan Fernando Ayora - Text by Alberto Ferreras
The standard of beauty is the subject of a silent debate that is being argued every second of our lives. Every image that we see in a magazine, or in television or in film contributes to this discussion. Everybeauty pageant, every fashion-show, and every pictorial in a magazine points in one direction: a direction that narrows our taste, or broadens our horizons.
There's little need to acknowledge the obvious: the media does not consider that an overweight woman--not even an average-size woman-- is worth contemplating on a runway. Karl Lagerfeld had the guts--the stapled guts if I'm not mistaken--to claim that the catwalk belongs to "size-zeros"and that fat women had nothing to look for in the fashion industry. He is entitled to his opinion, but we are also entitled to make up ours, without the pressure of images generated by those who sell beauty....
For a second I feel tempted to talk about the Polynesian tribes who worship the curves of opulent female bodies, or the glorious models of the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens. But I don't think that we need historical or anthropological arguments to defend the beauty of an ample body. We just need pictures. We just need to look at women who feel comfortable with their looks, women who don't doubt--for even a second--that they posses weapons of mass seduction....
