Do you want Gender Equality? The importance of standing up for size inclusivity.

Every new year since when I was younger, like so many others across the world, I wrote down all my hopes and dreams for the coming year.

This year marks 11 years since I first had the idea for Careaux and this got me thinking about all my hopes and dreams at that moment. In my teenage brain, I did not know the words diversity or inclusion, or even the dynamics of how the fashion industry worked. I just knew what I saw growing up in the media and in magazines and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like how it didn’t make sense how we value one body over another, how we tore women down and circled parts of their body if they didn’t look like the airbrushed image, how products were marketed to women to ‘correct’ themselves to make them look ‘slimmer’ to ‘flatter them’ to ‘hide their stomach’ and how we only talked about how women looked and not how they had changed the world or how clever they were and their incredible achievements. I didn’t like how growing up when I used to go shopping with my friends, we used to try and clothes and — my beautiful friends and so many women who I looked up to would try on clothes and if they didn’t fit perfectly (when literally every single one of our bodies are different and ready to wear sizes were originally made to be altered after purchase) or didn’t offer their size, would wish they could change something about themselves, wish they were taller, wish their waist was smaller, wish their legs were longer- how is this ok? I wanted to do everything I could to change that.

I was torn, I completely loved clothes and fashion and how clothes have such power to hold beautiful memories and be a part of people’s lives everyday- it is such a privilege! But I did not ever want to play a part in tearing women down, making women feel bad about themselves in order to sell products, or excluding women for example because of their size as to me that is the opposite of gender equality. I of course as well know there are exceptions and companies who have been doing incredible work. But I knew so little back then about how these issues were so deep-rooted in the industry and in all honestly I didn’t understand how hard it would be to do something that goes against all of this- sample sizes only available in UK size 8 and below, from retailers who only stock up to size 16, to photographers who default setting is to airbrush images, to find factories and suppliers who can offer more than 8 sizes per production run. It isn’t more difficult to do this, it is just the industry has operated this way for so long that this is seen as the easiest option- to do what has been done before. And even if it was more difficult, that is when the change truly needs to happen, we should be doing everything we can to achieve equality and equity. This made me think how can we champion gender equality and women empowerment, yet within fashion, given that over 45% of women are size 16 and above, why do most brands only offer 8–16? That means nearly 45% of women are being excluded. Why is more not being done to address this equality? If you are a woman who is a size 18 why should you not have access to the same styles and choice of fashion as a size 14 or a size 10? There is nothing equal about this. Now many people will be quick to say this is just ‘clothes’ which is a whole different discussion and completely untrue, but how clothes and fashion plays a part in body image and what young girls growing up see in the media and something that affects all of this- we cannot just dismiss this as it feeds into how girls and women view and we have seen can have a negative impact on how we feel and value ourselves.

Of course, we have seen some great progress in the industry in terms of all sides of diversity — from industry responses to Black lives matter, to more disabled models and ‘plus-size’ models, but in my opinion, we are still celebrating one-offs, publishing articles that one brand has extended their sizes or featured one ‘plus-size’ model. It is important to celebrate progress but each of us deserves more, we as women deserve more, young girls growing up deserve more.

And ultimately if we are ever going to achieve gender equality we need more.

It is the responsibility of all of us. Next time you shop or go on social media check which sizes are available, and ask why they are not? And think is that really equal? Next time you go to buy or support a brand, remember your daughters, nieces, friends, mothers, grandmothers, and yourself- gender equality involves every girl and woman being represented including every shape and size.

Not being inclusive, means excluding someone and in this case other women, why would you want to support that?