My love affair with fashion shifted when the size of my body changed

April Hélène-Horton is an Australian writer, speaker and model known on social media as The Bodzilla. She told me that “the constant referral to bodies that deviate from the hyper-thin ideal as ‘curve models’ is still a problem. Industry terms such as ‘curve’, where they really mean ‘not thin’ … tell us we haven’t made a long-term impact.” The word “fat”, it seems, is still a bit too much for the fashion world.

Bodies on plus-size or curve catwalks are also largely similarly shaped: classic hourglass figures with large breasts and hips but tiny waists and barely a hint of belly. What we see on catwalks is “acceptable” fatness. Fatness that is not actually very fat at all. Fatness that the fashion industry deems worthy of being seen – or at least 0.4 per cent of the time.

There are, of course, greater challenges for the fat community than fashion: access to public spaces, workplace discrimination and equal medical care come to mind. There is, for example, extensive evidence that fat people are short-changed by doctors, who treat how their body looks and not the underlying medical concern.

Nonetheless, clothes matter. Partly because everyone should be entitled to wear clothes that fit them and that they like. And also because fashion is a cultural trendsetter, its values shaping the values of a community that glamorises and idealises the people who wear its products.

Then there are those in the fashion industry hijacking body diversity as a marketing tool – but not living up to their promise. Author, podcaster and actor Rosie Waterland told me about fashion brands that run “big, self-congratulatory campaigns saying, ‘We love all bodies so we’re extending our sizes!’ ” but don’t make clothes beyond a size 18.

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Asked if some progress is better than nothing, Waterland argues that “to be told, ‘It’s so important to include all women but not you, fatty’, is corporate gaslighting”. She adds that brands which market themselves as being inclusive of bigger bodies but still exclude so many shapes and sizes “can ironically have a profoundly negative impact on people’s body image”.

It’s well past time for brands to do better by everyone’s bodies.

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