So New Zealand women are not having a bar of skinny mannequins. Our Scottish sisters are with us on this one, and American women, too. In ditching their bony dollies in response to a public outcry, Kiwi chain Glassons is merely following in the footsteps of dirt-cheap retail giant Primark, which pulled a similarly starved-looking mannequin from one of its shops in Glasgow in July after a customer complained. Two months earlier, fancy knickers brand La Perla had to yank an emaciated-looking dummy from the front window of one of its New York stores. Although it's deeply depressing that these things are getting made in the first place, it's great to see social networks giving customers a voice they have not had before.
In all three of the above cases, it was women shopping who tweeted photos of the skinny mannequins. Their tweets were retweeted, and in short order within a matter of hours, in the case of La Perla, the displays were taken down.
I have a lot of respect for Denise L'Estrange-Corbet, but in choosing to focus on the size aspect of the Glassons row - whether clothes look better on thin people - she's missing the point of the stoush. This is not about size, it's about power.
Glassons is a mass-market retailer, it's not selling haute couture. It'll sell you clothes at a low price point, and give you variety; Armani it isn't. There's no artistic vision on the line. Therefore, it's the consumer who has the power here. That's you and me, and anyone else who has ever bought a top in Glassons, or a cheap bikini or a sundress or a pair of canvas shoes.
All it wants to know is what we're after. But it sells us things by pretending to know what that is better than we do. Fashion is aspirational, it's selling dreams more than clothes. So the world of retail operates on a subtle switcheroo; it says if we buy "x" it will make us look and feel good.
The truth is, retailers are as desperate as we are to find that "x" and sell it to us. And who designates that x factor? We do. That's why models are showing rib cages, because we live in a culture that glorifies skinny. That's our culture and we can change it. We can change it by pushing back against it; by tweeting too-skinny mannequins, by rejecting T-shirts with sexy slogans for 9-year-olds.
You're on Facebook, you've got an Instagram account: if you don't like it, call it out. The market will follow. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. American chain JCPenney is already using mannequins based on real bodies, including one in a wheelchair, and one with prosthetics. Never mind the unattainable ideals of fashion designers, at a high-street level, retailers will listen to you. You're giving them their bottom line after all. It's in their best interests to.
