Costumes and Body Image

Amulya

Moderator
Regarding vintage clothes, there is another thread where it was mentioned they were better made and that's true. Some clothes are so weird these days. For example I have several dresses that are kind of bulging at the stomach. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with them. My mother pointed out that there were extra pleats at the stomach so there is too much fabric! Why make it like that? They weren't made as pregnancy clothes but just got this weird extra fabric there. My vintage dresses are just normal. Plus a lot of stuff before the 70s was made for people to fit them, not something that came mass made out of a store. My mother used to be a couturier and she said she learned to make clothes for all body types and if you designed something proper for someones figure you could make anyone look amazing. Shame that it is too expensive to get things made and I am not very good at it myself. I only can make belly dance costumes haha.
 

Ariadne

Well-known member
The funny thing is couture is returning through online business. People are investing in one or two really well made pieces then filling the rest with off the rack pieces. With the way the economy is going they want something that will last. In the long term it costs less.
 

Darshiva

Moderator
When I have access to it (don't ask, I'll get cranky :p !) I use my sewing machine to alter my clothes (usually for length) but if the garment is super nice & the alteration is beyond my skill I'll take it to a professional to get fitted.

I'm also mega annoyed with the complete lack of anything I find interesting in clothes so I've decided to start making my own - at least that way I can wear what I think looks awesome. Hubby agreed & bought me a whole heap of fabric he wants made into clothes for him - a couple of weeks before I packed up the sewing machine. ;)
 

Amulya

Moderator
The funny thing is couture is returning through online business. People are investing in one or two really well made pieces then filling the rest with off the rack pieces. With the way the economy is going they want something that will last. In the long term it costs less.

Yes Etsy comes in mind for me. I got a nice dress from there. And some people have market stalls here, I bought a home made dress from one of them, but still had to adjust it.

Btw don't know if everybody here sees the same ads on this forum, but there is one that pops up a lot, Utsav. I recently got some stuff made by them. Some good and one really bad (they have different companies working for them, so they are not using same the seamstresses for everything) But again, I still ended up having to take stuff in. That one really bad item is beyond saving :( I need to give it to a tailor to turn it onto something useful but I already paid $75 for it and can't afford that. So if anyone thinks of ordering from them, beware!

And another thing: if you order from Indian companies, they often forget that women have breasts, so there are no seams in the boob area and that makes dresses and things look really unflattering.
 

LadyLoba

New member
As someone who, at age 38, has always struggled to feel attractive, I can relate to the body image issues thread here. Belly dance is helping me realize how gorgeous curves look. If I could have any shape I want, I'd want an 11-12 inch difference between my waist and hips. I hate to hear that any one gets criticized for their natural shape though. Different people like different shapes, just like we all like different everything....and it really isn't necessary for people to announce it if they don't like your figure, no matter what that figure is or why they don't like it.
 

indrayu

New member
I didn't realise how much your body shape and metabolism is just what you are born with until I saw a documentary on a group of ordinary people preparing to run a marathon. After all the training and the event itself, some of the women who had wanted to lose weight, hadn't. They were fitter, of course, but skin fold tests showed not much fat reduction. So if running a marathon won't shift it what will??

I love the various shapes people come packaged in. I used to go to a life drawing group and everyone felt the same: a celebration of every body. When one model announced that she wanted to lose weight, there were protests.
 

Aniseteph

New member
I didn't realise how much your body shape and metabolism is just what you are born with until I saw a documentary on a group of ordinary people preparing to run a marathon. After all the training and the event itself, some of the women who had wanted to lose weight, hadn't. They were fitter, of course, but skin fold tests showed not much fat reduction.

I wonder if this is related to TOFI ("Thin Outside. Fat Inside") where people carry a lot of fat round internal organs without having much fat to show for it on the outside. Skin fold doesn't tell you about that internal fat, and if their training shifted that and increased their muscle mass they might not see a weight loss. IIRC fat on the inside is worse for health than on the outside, so thinking they hadn't lost fat/weight could be totally misleading.
 

indrayu

New member
Ah, that could explain it. Seeing as the body shape of most long-distance runners is light and lean, and the body usually runs out of easily-available energy and has to start "feeding" from its own muscle towards the end of a marathon, I was wondering how that could be.
 

walladah

New member
I might have missed some posts

because i still cannot access the first post of every page, but still, i would like to write something i have already written elsewhere:
we are too much concerned with what a patriarchal society intensified by commodification expects from us. Industrial clothes are made for a type of body which is defeminised as curves are difficult to be dressed at low cost mass production and this is how they make us believe their silly clothes are ok and our bodies are full of flaws. I am thin but still i cannot find good-fitting clothes easily, this is why i also make my own stuff when i can or when i cannot find what i want.

Bellydance costuming is designed by definition to celebrate our bodies, then once we put on bellydance clothes it becomes evident that there is something totally wrong with western everyday clothing. It is not about sequins and sparkle. It is still goergous without anything sparkling or jiggling on it. Then maybe we need to think and create some fashion for everyday to fit our bodies instead of trying to fit in industrial fashion. I think that bellydance costuming and practice costuming has made us more aware of pattern, sewing techniques and feminine fashion...
 

Elisheva

New member
Sorry, I'm a little late to this party...

I was surprised to read that some people think having a dramatic bust-hip or waist-hip ratio makes belly dancing easier. I have not found that to be the case. My dance teacher is a very slim and petite lady, and if she wants to do a chest pop or a figure eight, she doesn't have to move very much to make the move pronounced and dramatic. She's also well built to do small, poppy movements. In my case, if I want to pop my chest or push my hip out to the side, I have to make a much bigger movement and it's harder. I also believe it's harder for me to do small, poppy movements. I accept that may be because I am not a professional or advanced level dancer, and yet it just naturally seems harder to make 30HH boobs move like that.

Regarding costume and body image, this is interesting to me because I've just recently ordered a costume and was asking for help here on how to make it flattering on my hard-to-dress shape. The right costume can make you feel like goddess...the wrong one can make you feel like Waynetta Slob. I think women should not underestimate just how much the right or wrong clothes can change the way they look.

Close on to this is the 'real women' nonsense that seems to crop up a lot, as if some women are somehow more 'real' than others based on arbitrary standards of beauty. It really gets my goat. If a woman has smaller boobs than I have, is she less 'real'? If a woman is prettier than I am, is she less 'real'? The most annoying thing is that women who are touted for being 'real' are usually pretty attractive in a conventional sense anyway. Oh, they might not be quite tall or thin or high-cheekboned enough to be a fashion model but general consensus would say they're not pushing any boundaries. Rarely are they truly plus sized, rarely do they have visible moles or scars, rarely are they ethnic minorities or disabled.
 

gisela

Super Moderator
I always took the "real women" thing to mean pictures that had not been photoshopped as opposed to heavily edited images of women. Apparently not everyone uses it in this sense.

Yesterday, I thought of this thread when I heard on the swedish news that a model agency had been looking for "model-material" outside of an anorexia-clinic. How's that for disgusting and inappropriate behaviour?!
 

Shanazel

Moderator
I see "real" to mean people (not just women) who are not dieted into thinness or pumped up by steroids or implanted into jaw dropping curves or carved into classic Holywood lines by plastic surgeons or airbushed and photoshopped into Disneyland-like perfection or paved over with so much makeup that one may as well be a plastic doll.

Beautiful real people
of all ages, sizes, ethnic groups, with disabilties, wrinkles, and scars.
610_okeeffe_intro.jpgFrida-Kahlo-in-Hospital-Bed.jpgmigrant_mother.jpg

Gisela and co.jpgbd7 more craziness.jpgJean and dolphin.JPGeartha-kitt-301687.jpg303468_3502495595203_1211371023_n.jpg

Just because the fashion and entertainment industries have limited definitions of beauty doesn't mean we have to accept those definitions.
 

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Munniko

New member
On the note of the Dove real beauty ads it is interesting all the objecting things that keep coming up, like being accused of photoshopping their "real sized" models. Also how many people found the real beauty ad mildly racist because the few people of color they showed took apparently 10 seconds in total of the entire 6 minute commercial and the women mostly featured were skinnier blonde females.
 

Shanazel

Moderator
No good deed goes unpunished or at least without having the motives behind it questioned.

Dove chose ordinary women for this commercial: neither breathtakingly beautiful nor horse-scaringly ugly, in a mixture of races that roughly mirrors the composition of the US as a whole. The point made by the commercial is a good one and if Dove attracts a few more buyers with this message, good for them. Dove also partners with several organizations to promote self-esteem in young women who are such easy prey for the beauty/fashion industry.

Some people would not be satisfied if you hanged them with new rope.
 

Amulya

Moderator
Dove also didn't use people of very different heights I noticed. And they don't show a healthy very slim woman in there either, while that exists too. They would need many many more types of people to make it more realistic.

The men's video was funny! I was expecting something like that though hahaha
 

MizzNaaa

New member
[video=youtube;l3kxH-7o8FQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l3kxH-7o8FQ[/video]
(I apologize right now for resurrecting the video.)
.




I have nothing to contribute to this discussion to be honest, at least not when I have a mid-term tomorrow. But...What is this? I don't even...

I mourn the 9 minutes forever lost to me after watching this.
 

Yame

New member
I find it interesting that for some people, "body acceptance" means putting other people down for the way they look so that they can feel better about their own looks. I hate threads like this because that is almost always the turn they take.

If somebody posted here using derogatory or otherwise harsh terms to describe overweight women, many of us (including myself) would be throwing a fit. Yet it seems like it's perfectly okay to use equally harsh and derogatory terms to describe underweight women. Why is that?

I'm sorry to break it to you guys, but no, it's NOT okay to put underweight women down and tell them they should just "deal with it" so that overweight or average-sized women can feel better about themselves. It's not okay and it's not necessary, either. This isn't a zero sum game.

Body acceptance is about being open to ALL body types and learning to love ourselves regardless of our body types. It's about loving ourselves, loving our bodies, and understanding that we are more than just bodies. It's about applying those concepts to ourselves and others.

I'm so sick and tired of people constantly comparing this body type with that one and arguing over which one is superior. We are all different, we are all different genetically, we have different lifestyles and we have different preferences. Why can't we happily live in a world that accounts for those differences instead of making up standards and rules about what we and others should or shouldn't look like and should or shouldn't want to see?

Eating disorders are a real problem. Eating tissues to stay thin is not cool, and not healthy. That doesn't mean we should be bashing all thin people based on their looks to discourage this sort of behavior. I mean, eating junk food isn't healthy either, but that doesn't mean it's okay to judge people based on their weight and making assumptions about them. We will be healthier as a society by placing emphasis on health instead of looks, NOT by trying to bully people into attempting to make themselves look like this or that.
 

Shanazel

Moderator
So who is putting thin people down? The general consensus of the posters on this thread seems to be health is valued above body shape and all natural body shapes are acceptable. The thread opened with a post about the appalling lengths to which people go to remain unnaturally thin. I've not heard of people dying in attempts to gain weight but dying to get or stay thin- oh, yeah.

"Thin" has been fashionable all my life. "Fat" has been something to be fought against, yea unto the point of sacrificing one's health and even one's life in order to be a fashionable "thin." Dove and ordinary people protesting the fashion industry's narrow view of beauty are working to literally save the lives of people who eat tissue in order to keep their jobs. When I was a teen, I went to a doctor about my weight, explained I was only eating once a day, and was still having trouble losing weight. The son of a bitch sneered at me and said he knew people who only ate every third day in order to lose weight. And there I had medical advice to starve my body into submission.

Derogatory comments about body size hurt when a person is "too thin" but society's attitude toward body size can kill when a person is too heavy.
 
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