You probably wouldn’t be surprised if I told you that the biggest fashion houses in the world prefer to see their clothes on skinny women.
The beauty, fashion, and entertainment industry have been promoting the idea that skinny is beautiful for years. They have done so to the point where it is difficult to change people’s minds on the subject.
The body positive movement has made some strides in recent years but change is slow in coming.
Celebrities are now gearing up for the 2019 Grammy awards and some are finding it more difficult than others to locate an outfit. The reason? It has to do with their size.
Bebe Rexha will be there because she has been nominated for two of the trophies. She recently talked about the discrimination that has been a problem for her when looking for a dress to wear to that big night out.
A video was posted on Instagram by the 29-year-old artist. She revealed that the designers she was hoping would send her a dress kept turning her down because of her size.
Rexha dropped the bomb on her fans when she recently revealed that she was ‘too big’. She wears a size 6-8.
“So I finally get nominated at the Grammys and it’s like the coolest thing ever,” Rexha begins the video. “And a lot of times artists will go and talk to designers and they’ll make them custom dresses to walk the red carpet. So I had my team hit out a lot of designers and a lot of them do not want to dress me because I’m too big.”
She continues: “You’re saying all the women in the world that are a size 8 and up are not beautiful and that they cannot wear your dresses. So to all the people who said I’m thick and I can’t wear your dress, f—k you, I don’t want to wear your f—g dresses.”
The video was captioned in such a way as to defend herself but she also wanted to advocate designers to “empower women to love their bodies instead of making girls and women feel less than by their size [SIC].”
“If you don’t like my fashion style or my music that’s one thing. But don’t say you can’t dress someone that isn’t a runway size,” she wrote. “We are beautiful any size! Small or large!”
After her rant, Designer August Getty stepped up to the plate and offered to create the gown she could wear to the event.
“You are beautiful! Every woman of every size is beautiful!” he wrote. “Just let me know when I should start sketching.”
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated experience.
The host of the upcoming 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards, Megan Mullaly said that she had to buy a dress for herself online. She claims that no designer is going to put her in one of their creations.
“Looks like I will be buying my dress online though, as per my usual, even though there is literally a 100 percent chance that I will be on camera, because I’M HOSTING IT,” Mullally wrote on Instagram. Even with all the publicity she would bring them, Mullaly said that “Designers do not send me dresses.”
The former star of Will & Grace Continued, “I’m online scrolling through the gowns sections of various websites- which I know how to do pretty well at this point- and then I tried to order something from Saks fifth avenue and they canceled my order ???? oh, the glamor of it all.”
In the end, Mullaly was also able to grab the attention of a few designers. It included Christian Siriano, a ‘size inclusive’ designer.
He wrote, “I’d love to dress you!”
Additional celebrities have also had a difficult time, including Melissa McCarthy. It seems as if finding designer dresses for the red carpet is an ongoing issue unless you are super skinny.
McCarthy gave an interview with Redbook magazine in which she “asked five or six designers – very high-level ones who make lots of dresses for people,” to create an outfit for her to wear to the 2012 Oscars, “and they all said no.”
We are sure that Rhexa will look absolutely fantastic in whatever she finds for the February 10th Grammys. She also deserves our respect for standing up for herself and anyone else who refuses to be defined by their size.