A plus-size model during a fashion show as part of a day against fat phobia in Paris, France. Photo / AP
A plus-size model during a fashion show as part of a day against fat phobia in Paris, France. Photo / AP
Chic, svelte, feline.
This is the caricature of "la Parisienne," the well-heeled woman who embodies the essence of the world's most fashionable city. Think Coco Chanel, Catherine Deneuve and Inès de la Fressange: paragons of style, arbiters of taste. To make the cut, you have to be many things. Until recently, one of those things was thin.
Not any more.
The city of Paris has formally launched a campaign against "grossophobia," or fat shaming. Mayor Anne Hidalgo convened the conference after the stunning success of a book, On Ne Naît Pas Grosse (You Are Not Born Fat), published this year. The book was written by Gabrielle Deydier, a teacher and journalist who has long struggled to find steady employment because of her weight.
"Fat phobia is a reality lived by so many citizens," Hidalgo said.
Come nighttime, the cocktail hour of "apéro" — where you might have some nice red wine, and possibly some nuts or a little nibble of cheese — can absolutely count as a meal.
And, of course, many Parisians walk everywhere they go, and climb steep flights of stairs back to tiny apartments that cost the arms and the legs they otherwise exhaust.
Obesity is far less visible here in the French capital than it is in much of the United States or Britain. According to a 2017 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, drawing on data up to 2015, only 15.3 per cent of the French population is obese, compared with 26.9 per cent and 38.2 per cent of the British and American populations, respectively.
Paris, the seat of global luxury industries. Photo / AP
The predominant view in Paris is that you are born thin, and if you do your job right, nothing will ever change.
But it is because of this view, Deydier argues in her book, that fat people — and especially fat women — are stigmatised in French society.
She cites multiple personal experiences with discrimination in the workplace and says she has even had trouble finding long-term accommodation as a result of irregular work.
"I think we have a problem with minorities in general in France," she said after her book was published. "We say we are politically correct, but in fact we are not at all. The biggest problem is that people generally do not consider fat phobia to be on the same level as other discriminations because they think that if someone is fat, it's their fault and that they should change."
This is especially the case for French women, Deydier says, who live in a society with an aggressive ideal of femininity. "There is this feeling that women have to be perfect in every way," she said.
But this standard of French femininity is known far outside France. In the United States, for example, books such as French Women Don't Get Fat are periodic bestsellers.
Plus-size models present creations during a fashion show as part of a day against fat phobia in Paris, France. Photo / AP
In fact, myths such as that of the lithe, stylish French woman and her perfect body are part of the rhetoric that is most often used to shame American women, said Jes Baker, an American blogger and body activist who also spoke in Paris last weekend. "Fat is not wrong. What is wrong is the way we address fat. It's time for change, and this conversation is happening all over the world."
The city hosted a rare plus-size fashion show in the lavish expanse of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris's city hall. Such fashion shows are not common in France, where the annual couture events remain something of a religious rite — and mostly the province of rail-thin fashion editors and the even-thinner models they applaud.
In any case, the choice of venue was significant, as the Hôtel de Ville is often used for those other shows.
This time, with Rihanna's music on blast, the models came walking down the aisle, modeling a variety of styles.
