The BBC faced growing anger after Jonathan Ross was cleared to return to his £6 million-a-year job
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Let's face it, the fashion world is allergic to real women. Wriggling out of regulating the catwalk, as the British Fashion Council did yesterday, is symptomatic of an industry in thrall to size zero - and in denial about what the female body actually looks like.
By capitulating to pressure from New York, Milan and Paris - which refuse to recognise models' health as a serious concern - the BFC has sent out a clear message: if designers want a skeleton with a pulse to model their clothes, they can go right ahead.
It's depressing news. But as a size 14, I'm less concerned about big fashion houses' lust for skinny women than their distaste for larger ones.
To me, the reluctance of labels to show their clothes on models with more realistic body shapes hints at an underlying misogyny, a terror of the sexuality that womanly contours imply.
But it also explains why I can't find a thing to wear. Yes, on the high street you can now find clothes up to a respectable 16 in many stores (though fashion giants like Reiss still resist). But you only have to stray down Sloane Street, past the guarded doors of Gucci and YSL, to discover the rail is bare.
Of the high-end designers that do provide larger sizes, don't expect to find them proudly displayed in-store. These days I can barely bring myself to pick through a handful of size 6-10 outfits before enduring the humiliation of asking the (stick thin) assistant if there's anything else through the back. Often there is, but for some inexplicable reason the bigger sizes must be hidden away.
Buying a dress in the right size doesn't always work in any case. You soon discover it's cut for a teenage boy's body, not one with hips and breasts. Even designer shoes discriminate against my big bones. Christian Louboutin may be the shoe du jour but try to squeeze a size 8 foot in one and you'll feel renewed sympathy for the Ugly Sisters.
It's frustrating. I like fashion and I've money to spend. All I want are well-cut clothes that fit. But size is fashion's last taboo. From refusing to acknowledge the idiocy of using ultra-skinny adolescents to model clothes that only middleaged women can afford, to the commercial madness of failing to provide the rest of us with a wardrobe that fits, it is the elephant in the changing room.
Which is exactly how I felt that last time I visited New Bond Street.
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I just think this article, 'Real Women Aren't Served By Size Zero' by Charlotte Ross is disgraceful and highly prejudice. I have been naturally thin since I was a child. And from my own experience I know, expecially as a teenager it can cause alot of anxiety becuase you feel you don't fit in and don't meet society's standards of 'beauty' eg big boobs. All you bigger ladies have to do is look mens magaizines and in womens mags which are forever going on about how the fuller figure is more desirable that the shameful 'boyish' figure. To add to this I can not believe how short sited and insensitive people are as to call fatter women 'real' women. Therefore excluding naturally thin women from this category.
So does that mean as a natural size eight I am a 'fake' woman. Well let me see, i don't have plastic boobs so i think im real? I just think is it so hurtful and prejudice of the media and bigger women to constantly call themselves 'real' as opposed to thin women as a means of making themselves feel better. How do they think this sort of behaviour makes skinny teenage girls feel who are desperate for bigger boob and hips. Do you seriously think the average woman would want to look like a boy? The answer is no.
I think the important thing is to celebrate the natural female body and its variety so long as its natural. I disagree with someone starving themselve to be a size zero as i disagree with someone eating so much they become morbidly obese. but healthy is beautiful.
- Katy, Barnstaple UK
A size 0 is not all it is crack up to be. I am 5' 1'' and 95 lbs. I am actually a double 00. I can't find anything that fits me. Most tops and sweaters are too baggy and buying jeans is a joke. They are way too long and hang on my hips. A lot of people think it is okay to make fun of my size; especially when they notice I am constantly pulling up my jeans so my butt does not hang out. These same people tell me to go shop in the kids section. I am an adult. I don't want to wear pink or purple T-shirts to work.
Like plus sized woman, I would also like to wear fashionable clothes, but they don't make them in my size either. Most designer brands come in either size 2 or 4. If I ask the sale assistant if they have the smaller sizes in the back, they suggest I go to the kids section.
- Andrea, chicago, Illinois
I have always preferred and been attracted to what many would consider to be overweight ladies. To me, Delta Burke is very attractive and far from a size zero.
- Tim, Jackson, MS, usa
