While I'm busy bitchin' about designers....

Can it be that we make some of our own troubles?.....

Carolina Herrera Will Tell You If You're Too Thin to Look Good


Go on over to Style.com, take a look at Ms. Herrera's Spring '08 RTW runway show and judge for yourself if she's just blowin' it out her butt on the skinny model issue...

Carolina Herrera Spring '08 RTW

(Okay, I'll admit that her models do have some meat on their bones - but I see her share of boney knees as well!)

But the part of the piece I found most interesting was her comment on the unthinkableness of showing the collections on "very fat" people (Tell me Carolina, what qualifies in your mind as "very fat"? A perfectly acceptable size 14 perhaps?) because women come to the shows to fantasize about the clothes they see on the runway making them look like the models.

Normally, I would blow that off as just another designer excuse - but when Stacy London of What Not To Wear fame noted that it was a true statement based on "studies" that women don't want to see the clothes on realistically sized women, well that made me pause 'cause Stacy has never come across to me as a size Nazi by any means.

So that begs the question ladies -- Is it them - or is it us? Are designers trying to foist an unrealistic image on us - or are we demanding it because we ourselves are unrealistic about what truly makes us look good? 'Cause honey, if any of us - especially we 50+ babes - are thinking that any dress ever made is going to make us look like some pre-pubescent 12 year old made up to look like an 18 year old, tottering down the runway on way too high heels, we're not just unrealistic - we're delusional!

To get right down to it - are we too cowardly to look ourselves in the mirror, take honest stock of what we really look like and have to work with today and not only work with it but demand that those who design the clothes we consider wearing work with it too? And not just demand - but give permission to designers to design and show for real women with all our curves and bumps and bones and wonderful imperfections.

Because if we are saying that's what we want, but turning our noises up when we see the clothes on the runway on real women, not children (thus giving us a real picture of what they are likely to look like on us) then we get what we deserve - unwearable clothes that make us look downright ridiculous.

And if we can't bring ourselves to do it for ourselves for God's sake lets at least do it for our daughters and our nieces and all the young women coming up behind us - so that maybe, just maybe the crown of Queen of Denial won't be passed down to another generation!