Trailblazing model Denise Bidot has a super-smart response to being called “plus-size”
We’ve talked about the gorgeous and amazing Denise Bidot on Hello Giggles before, remember? She’s one of the models that participated in Victoria Janashvili’s Curves, an art photography book celebrating women of all shapes and sizes that was successfully Kickstarted earlier this year. She also made history last year by being the first plus-sized model to walk two New York Fashion Week runways for straight-sized brands Chromat and Serena Williams’ HSN. This past Fashion Week she rocked it for Chromat again.
Bidot is one of the most recognizable and in-demand plus-size models in the world, and here’s what she recently had to say about the term “plus-size” to Cosmo. Her perspective on the language is so smart and in tune, hats off.
“I think other people have a problem with [the term ‘plus-size’] more than I do. I don’t care what you call me. I’m glad to even have a place in this fashion industry. Plus-size, straight-size, in-betweenie — I don’t care regardless. I’m just a woman. I’m a curvy woman, and hopefully some day they do end up cutting out the word plus-size. But, for right now it’s nice to just have a section for us.”
Bidot perfectly articulates the trickiness of normalizing and mainstreaming plus-size fashion. In order to be accepted, the size has become a movement, and that’s also brought a level of visibility to sizing in the industry that not all plus-size girls even want. As the plus-size movement is covered by the media more and more frequently, it sounds more and more like many plus-size models, fashion bloggers, and consumers want what Bidot wants — for “plus-size” to be cut out as a descriptor, for modeling to just be modeling, and for clothes to just be clothes. So while of course she, and other women, are glad that the fashion world is opening up its arms and welcoming more diverse bodies, the real dream realized will be when fashion is just fashion and no longer presented with hyphenated adjectives that set different body types apart.
Thanks Denise Bidot, for being as awesome OFF the runway as you are ON it.
