As of last year, one in four girls in the UK aged 18 to 24 was overweight, making us home to the fattest young women in Europe.
While the government has been reacting to this news with panic and piling healthy living initiatives on us, fashion retailers have been sitting up and taking notice. Whereas clothing shops for larger women once catered solely to older women, they’re finding more and more new customers from the younger generations who are keen to get their hands on the same clothes their thinner peers are buying in high street shops.
The tool connecting these girls to the fashion industry? The girls of the plus-sized blogging world.
‘I think bloggers are key because we’ve got so many followers,’ explains Georgina Horne, the girl behind super-successful plus-sized blog Fuller Figure, Fuller Bust who features on a new documentary on Channel 4. ‘Brands are starting to realise that if they tap into what bloggers have to say, they can see people are starting say, “I want to wear what’s in that shop but they don’t make it in my size.”’
In fact, it’s bloggers and social media that are giving girls the confidence to wear things that they might not have considered before. ‘Before you might have been like, “Oh I want to wear a body-con dress” and then you might leave the house and feel a bit funny, whereas now you can put a photo of yourself on Instagram and get 10 people saying, “You look hot” and it gives you that confidence.
‘If someone says something mean on a night out you can be like, “No, actually when I left the house I was feeling really good about myself so I’ll carry on and have a good time.”’
Georgina started her blog back in 2011 after placing third in Curvy Kate’s Star in a Bra competition. ‘The emphasis was that you don’t have to be a model, so anyone who’s D plus-sized could enter and I realised I quite liked the idea of showing women how stuff looked on me. Like I’m big with a big chest and if there’s another woman who’s the same size as me it’s nice to have something to relate to.’
Since then, Georgina’s garnered nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram, makes money from advertising on her blog, has appeared in the press, bagged herself modelling jobs and has her own clothing line. ‘It’s been amazing!’ She says. And the response from girls has made it all worth it. ‘I’ve had girls come to me and be like, “Oh I never would have worn a dress but then I saw the photos you shared and now I can.’"
The plus-sized modelling industry is growing too with agencies taking on more and more girls of a larger size. And, although the documentary shows uber-blogger, Instagram celebrity and size 24 Tess Munster being pursued by a modelling agency, most plus-sized models average out at a size 14 while the actual national average size is 16.
‘I wish catwalk models were the size of the brands,’ says Georgina. ‘Like, if people are size 16 the models should be bigger. The problem is, though, that society prefers to look at a smaller person and a brand’s got to sell their clothes. It’s like sometimes at Evans they’ll post a picture of a model wearing their clothes and everyone will be like, “Oh the model’s too small” and then they’ll post a blogger in the same outfit who’s a size 20 and they’ll be like, “She looks awful why is she wearing that?!”
‘It would be nice to see bigger models but in society the ideal is the hourglass, toned, happy, usually white, usually brunette. It would be really nice to differ but I can see from both sides why things are the way they are,’ she says.
In recent times Georgina’s lost quite a bit of weight, something that’s prompted a bit of a backlash within the community. ‘A few readers have said, “I thought you were meant to be happy with your body!” And I am, there’s nothing missing from my life it’s just I’m getting married and every so often I catch myself in the mirror and I think, “It would be nice to be a bit smaller.” It’s not because of how my fiancé sees me, it’s not because of society, it’s more for myself.’
Before embarking on her weight-loss challenge, Georgina contacted fellow plus-sized bloggers Callie (From The Corners Of The Curve, Dani (Danielle Vanier) and Bethany (Arched Eyebrow) to get their opinion. ‘I was like, “Look, this is going to happen, what do you guys think?” And they said, “You’ve always wanted to lose weight so what’s the problem?”
‘Bethany really doesn’t like weight loss so she was like, “I don’t want to hear about it,” and I was like, that’s fine! I want to have kids in a few years and you can’t have a water birth if your BMI is over 35 which I bet mine is and also there’s a lot more complications when you’re bigger.’
Of course, the unspoken issue with the growth of the plus-sized community is the worry that it’s promoting and normalising obesity. ‘I think it’s just giving people the comfort to dress how they want and accept themselves a bit more.
‘Obviously people have to bring health into it, which is fair enough, but there’s so many ways you can be thin but unhealthy in your mind and someone who is fat and unhealthy and also has a bad mindset is doubly unhealthy, whereas at least if you give them a good mindset they’re halfway there. It’s so important for people to have role models.’
She continues: ‘If you want to make changes, you have to be happy with how you look because otherwise you’re not going to make nice changes; you’re going to lose weight in a really horrible way. I just don’t see how getting people to that state where they’re happy can ever be a bad thing. You can’t bully people to lose weight. It’s just good to embrace how you look and then think about what you want to do.’
*Plus Sized Wars is on 21 Tuesday April, 8pm on *Channel 4.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
The Realities Of Shopping On The High Street When You’re A Size 24
The Complications Of Being A Fat Girl And Still Loving Fashion
Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.