THE RISE OF BODY POSITIVITY

Being body positive is about accepting and celebrating all body types and sizes as beautiful. It is about being comfortable in your own skin and loving it!

The concept of body positivity in fashion has a whole history of trauma and suffering to it until recent times when women finally started embracing their body and their beauty by wearing the type of clothing they wanted to and challenging the norm.

Although it might sound bizarre to you when I say we’re talking stages of grief here, let me take you through all the struggles women had to go through to be accepted as they were, rather than try to mold themselves into what society wanted them to be.

While we wish it was like this throughout history, the unfortunate and sad reality is that it wasn’t. The concept of body positivity and the evolvement of the perfect female body has always been changing. The definition of the perfect female body has kept changing over the years. To actually understand those changes across the different timelines is another story in itself, and maybe we will cover that in more detail in a different blog.

 The definition of the perfect female body has largely been influenced by the patriarchy over the years. But over the last few decades, women’s voices have garnered decibel with the feminism movement gathering momentum, we are finally stepping into a period in history where accepting different body types, women’s comfort, and functionality of their clothing, whilst still retaining flair and sex appeal have received the importance and acceptance it requires.
Take a look at this work of figurative art made at least 35,000 years ago. The venus of Hohle Fels – a sculpture describing a woman with wide hips and legs. This was a sign of healthy childbearing bodies – where we could barely see any depiction of (today’s)beauty standards!

Now let’s have a look at the early 1920s – An era of women’s fashion evolvement.

SEXY UNDERGARMENT OR AN INSTRUMENT OF TORTURE?

Corsets were introduced into women’s fashion clothing – changing the proportions of the female body completely. This little garment worn inside a gown defined women’s beauty at the time.

Women had deformed and abnormal skeletons and corsets were a way to bring the alignment of their spines back to normal again.

As the hourglass figure was much desired back then, corsets paired up with long gowns have given an elongated look to one’s body.

The smaller the waist, the better the figure, and the more the suffocation!

Despite the fact that most women looked pretty in this outfit, it destroyed their ribs inside – but the royalty back in the day required women to do so.

Miserable, right? One can also call this stage one of grief: denial.
This created breathing problems because the corsets were tied extremely tightly to acquire the desired shape.

DRESS REFORM MOVEMENT

 “Freedom Trash Can”

Finally, during the early 20^th century, health degradation, war, and a whole lot of other reasons led to women finally ditching the corsets. Sounds cool right?

Finally, we can call it freedom for a lot of waists too!
It was time women started exploring themselves in all aspects of democracy.

WHY PLUS SIZE MODELLING STILL HAS A LONG WAY TO GO

Haven’t there been a lot of times when you hop on to social media or you’re watching TV, you would see nothing else but extremely slim models and garments meant only for slim women?

Not too many designers had plus-size models in their fashion shows. Bigger brands were promoting slim and malnourished bodies to a point where a plus-size woman couldn’t even think of being a plus-size model!

After too many controversies of the bigger brands influencing a lot of teens into maintaining a slim malnourished body, many brands have adapted to body-inclusive fashion and Versace was amongst the first big brands to take a step to change this trend by introducing plus size clothing to the ramp.

THE STAGE OF ACCEPTANCE

The road is long when it comes to getting to the point where the runway is truly inclusive.

But with awareness self-love and more and more brands getting into the plus size clothing game, we are already heading towards winning the battle! At 30 Looks, we believe in self-love supremacy! Whichever the body size, whichever the figure type, a woman feeling beautiful in every piece of clothing she wears is our prime purpose. To all the women, who bravely, unashamedly, unapologetically ditch the societal norms in their journey towards self-acceptance and self-love – We love you, we are proud of you and we will continue to work for you, and launch products that are centered around your comfort and styling and mean and support more of this cause. Happy Dressing begins and ends with YOU <3!

‘Discard everything that does not spark joy’
Even clothing!

Although we can’t influence a bigger audience into loving themselves the way they are, we are trying to create more plus-size clothing ranges for all you beautiful ladies to tell you that we love you!

Hope you enjoyed reading this! Keep following us for more content and share your thoughts with us on our social media.

Happy dressing gorgeous!

 Team 30looks,
xoxo.