Marketing of curves and its ethical implications

For years, fashion marketing has been under fire because of the prototype it imposes: unnaturally skinny girls, whose thin bodies are perfect to exalt the dresses they wear and not to divert the attention from them. Anyway, fashion has been accused to induce women to pursue this ideal of thinness and to make them insecure and even unhealthy, causing an increasing number of food disorders - such as anorexia and bulimia. Confronted with these heavenly models - whose bodies are far from "real women", with their extra pounds, cellulite and love handles - women get convinced that those are the perfect bodies, the ones that should be pursued and imitated.

One controversial example in this sense is Victoria's Secret's campaign launched in 2014, known as The Perfect Body, in which some models of this worldwide famous brand pose in their underwear. The controversial slogan was heavily criticised and a petition was signed aimed at making the campaign end. 

Marketing of curves: Victoria's Secret unethical campaing (2014)

This campaign is ethically debatable, since it conveys the sexist idea that only a skinny body could be considered perfect and that this is the ideal that men and women must adopt. Moreover, the exaltation of thinness has been considered unethical because it may lead women - especially teens, that are more sensible to advertising and fashion - to get less and less healthy in the name of a questionable image of beauty.

In the last years, anyway, the tendency is trading places: even if the icon of thinness in fashion dies hard, in the last decade the curvy trend is getting more and more powerful, invading the field of fashion and catwalks. 

Social networks and magazines have been invaded by these curvy icons, promoted as a new icon of beauty, closer to the reality and to common women.

In the field of fashion, even the 42 (Italian size) is considered curvy, but step by step even objectively fat women started becoming fashion icons.

The most famous example in this sense is Ashley Graham, 27 years old, that - with her 175 cm and her 77 kg - is becoming the queen of curvy pride.

Marketing of curves: Ashley Graham

If curvy movement started mainly to fight the anorexic trend dominating catwalks with its antithetical marketing message - that female body is always beautiful, that does not have to follow a prototype and that does not have to sacrifice its most femenine shade in the name of thinness and perfection - then it started promoting another prototype: the buttery - or even fat - woman, whose sensuality is unbridled. Curvy marketing is inundating every field, from fashion to press, from cinema to music - I bet everyone knows the song All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor, which can be considered the hymn of the curvy pride.

Marketing of curves: All About That Bass

It is the exact opposite of the old - but still alive - skinny icon of fashion, but doesn't it have ethical implications as well? Is promoting fatty women more ethical than showing skinny ones? Is fat really healthier, especially in this era of consumerism where obesity is a dramatic health concern?

The marketing of the curves: obesity incidence in the US

I want you to think about these possibile ethical issues and I would be glad if you left your opinion about this debated topic in the comments.