A recent trend on ‘TikTok’ is posing the question, “is it a fit or is she just skinny?” to judge whether certain clothes only look good because of the body types of people pictured wearing them. The overall premise of the trend is that people of different sizes will try on outfits worn by (and pictured on) skinny people in order to judge whether the piece is truly fashionable. Some popular examples include Emma Arletta and Miranda Lapkin‘s tiktoks.
Many videos on this topic suggest ‘skinny’ people can wear something really basic and it will be regarded as fashionable when it is actually their body that is fashionable. Some people have even pointed out that, as you would use accessories to enhance your look, ‘skinny’ people can use their torsos and flat stomachs in a similar way. Although this trend is somewhat problematic for suggesting that women who are slimmer only look stylish because of their body rather than their clothing choices, it does a good job of pointing out the misrepresentation of bodies in the media. This TikTok trend highlights that ‘skinny’ should not be the default of the fashion world and that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution.
If you have watched The Devil Wears Prada (2006), you will have learned how the existence of trends begin (thank you, Miranda Priestly). Designers of established fashion houses such as Gucci and Chanel send their work down the runway each season. These looks trickle down into markets that are more accessible (such as fast fashion brands like Zara or H&M), where the majority of the population shop. The key issue in this chain is that the initial fashion house designers make their clothes in sample sizes. Models are then selected to fit the clothes, rather than the clothes being made to fit the model. As such, runway models typically have to meet requirements of being a certain height and weight – resulting in a runway of similarly thin and tall bodies. With this beauty standard being the main representation in high fashion, clothes are not being made to ‘suit’ various bodies. The clothing trends that we are seeing as a result of the trickle-down effect are thus quite literally made for smaller sizes.
Trends catered to slimmer bodies also causes the issue of more accessible fashion brands increasingly making their own sizing smaller. Creating a size range that has a smaller difference in between allows brands to cater to more body types within the slimmer region. As a consequence, many of us find that in different shops, we are different sizes – when, in reality, it’s not us getting bigger but rather the clothes getting smaller. We are all aware of how this can make people insecure about their bodies, and we are aware of the lengths people will go to attain the same beauty standard that we see in the media. TikTok trends like this are immensely helpful in reminding people what the average body looks like in a media full of unrealistic body expectations. Hopefully, conversations about the fashion industry’s ‘skinny bias’ will contribute to a change of sizing methods in the fashion industry as a whole.