...unexpected ranting...

"No One Wants to See Round Women"

said Chanel genius, Karl Lagerfeld recently.

And, according to French Vogue, blackface... "what's the big deal?"

Every one is all a-flutter about the fashion industry's exclusionary practices and often offensive images of women. Me... not so much. The fashion industry is elitist and generally intolerant of all women, not just "round" ones. Models are never skinny enough and always beautiful but... "her eyes are too wide" "too close together" "her hips are too big" "her face too angular" "too round." WTF ever.

I don't care what anyone says, the fashion industry does not like women.

So Karl Lagerfield may be an ass and he may be offensive and he may look like a villain from outer space:

but he's not an anomaly. This is how people feel, he's just one of the few who will say it out loud. And for that I say kudos to you Mr. Lagerfeld, at least I know what I'm dealing with, with your crazy ass. And I totally won't tell anyone that you used to be f-... well, you know:

So if I don't have an issue with that, why this post? Well first, I've been crazy busy and haven't had the time to blog, let alone think, lately. And this is me getting back into a groove. But secondly, and more importantly, I'm super sick of people attacking the fashion industry for being sizist, or racist, or exoticizing certain women, or stealing from communities of color in a decidedly imperialist manner but being unwilling to look at how these are only more focused versions of what's going on in the rest of the world and what they're doing themselves.

I love all of the tv news shows, especially of the entertainment variety, who reported on this with their anchors liposucked to within an inch of their lives, botoxed beyond recognition and full of saline saying how deplorable his statements were (but not quite emoting their outrage). And then couching the post in between "news" stories about Nicole Richie's post-baby body and who's got the worst cellulite of the summer (random selection of stories not necessarily on air when this ish went down, but... you know).

The point is that we worship certain kinds of images but many of us who rail against them also willingly fall victim to it. We make a big fuss about the media and society circumscribing certain kinds of bodies to women (and men) but then ignore how those bodies (and their attendant conceptions of beauty) are raced and/or how this litmus of perfection allows us to judge other people's characters/lives/behaviors based on their bodies. (And this goes on both sides. We can't make judgments about skinny girls not eating or dieting all the time and falling into the "trap" simply because they're small.) We gotta do better. So until you're willing to check yourself, stop talking. And if you're not sure if I'm aiming this at you, consider:

If you're one of those people who totally nods your head every few months when there's some new scandal about those stick thin, possibly anorexic, models but won't date a girl over a size 6 or makes fun of that girl in the next cubicle for being a "lard ass," SHUT THE FUCK UP! You have absolutely no room to talk. And if you're one of those douches who points out how wrong it is that all of the models in your favorite ad campaign are white but clutches your purse when a Black man enters the elevator, FUCK YOU! You have no room to talk.

Today's message has been brought to you by the word "fuck" and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream.

Weighing in:

The Awesomeness
The Tastiest

The Saddest- I was going to link to some pics of anorexic models and girls, but that shit is so disturbing and sad that I just couldn't...