Flashback Friday | Turtle Concepts and Creating Mechanism of Persistence

Two years ago I had the great opportunity to attend the annual Canadian Aboriginal Festival held in Ontario. In conjunction with the large powwow, Turtle Concepts hosts a fashion show to highlight First Nations fashion designers.

Headed up by Dave Jones of the Garden River First Nation, Turtle Concepts has hosted the Fashion Pavilion at the Canadian Aboriginal Festival for over a decade.

RED Model Management Seeks Native Models

Attention Native American and First Nations models, future models, past models, and just, overall, chicks and dudes.

I received an email the other day from a representative at RED Model Management about scouting some Native faces.

Speaking of Navajo... Men of the Navajo Launch Calendar

So, last week I was on a plane, and the girl in the seat in front of me had a magazine. I couldn't help but peep her zine since I haven't really engaged in non-academic reading in quite some time.

She was reading an article about Blake Lively. I don't know who this person is, but the magazine said she dates the hottest guys. Yeah, the hottest. So I'm like "ooh, the hottest?!?" and I adjust my seat to get a better view of the spread. Turns out that Blake dates only white guys, and white guys, dear Popular Culture Magazine, are not the hottest guys.

Case in point - the Men of the Navajo have just released their 2012 calendar. Women on the Facebook page for the Men of the Navajo are rawring at the photos. One commentor even said, "He's hot! Almost as hot as fry bret!" Now that is HOT.

The Men of the Navajo calendar features handsome Native American men from across the Navajo reservation. This attractive and entertaining calendar reveals the modern spirit of today's Navajo men. I hope other Native nations pick up on this calendar trend (hint hint Chippewa and Cree).

Click here to get your Men of the Navajo 2012 Calendar.

Diversity on the Catwalk

I love Jezebel.

Mostly because they are not afraid to disclose the ugly side of the fashion industry, and to do it with solid numbers. and graphs.

The Impact Of Diversity On The Catwalk

Every season, New York fashion week comes around, giving us all endless opportunities to gawk at front-row celebrities and trends in the making. And every season, this website tracks the racial diversity — or, more bluntly, the lack thereof — on display among the models who are cast for the top shows. This season's numbers are in, and fashion week was slightly more diverse than usual.

This is good news, obviously — but it's especially good news coming on the heels of last season, which was the whitest in years.

Model Profile | India Lowery Jones King

"Live everyday as if it were your last."

India Lowery Jones King is a member of the Lumbee Tribe from Lumberton, North Carolina. She recently started modeling, and works closely with Turquoise Soul’s Wabanoonkwe Cameron-Hernandez. She has an eclectic style and is an avid supporter of Native artists, jewelers, and fashion designers. She’s a good friend of mine, and she agreed to answer some questions for me.

I want to start profiling Native models because many times they are ‘the face’ of Native fashion and they represent an important component of the Native fashion world. Here’s her interview, along with images from a photoshoot that she did for Turquoise Soul’s recent collection, Feather Frenzy.

When and why did you start modeling?
I started modeling recently because I wanted to represent Native Americans with pride and honor. Also, I wanted to show people that Native Americans do indeed have a diverse look. Many people assume that Native Americans all have long dark hair and brown skin. This is a stereotype that is typical because of Hollywood. However, Natives have a range of complexions, hair colors, eye colors, and hair textures.

What do you want people to know about Native models like yourself?
Native models represent our people not only with beauty on the outside but the inside as well. Most of us are intellectual beings trying to expose who we are to the world. Rather we are teachers, lawyers, professors, or athletes. We all have something we bring to the circle of life.

How would you define ‘beautiful’?
Beautiful is somewhere underneath the glued on eyelashes and layers of makeup. It is the story that we all have to share. The story of who we are, where we came from, and the paths we have chosen. Beautiful is being able to say that we are strong, independent, hard workers of society.

Why do you think it’s important for Native models to exist?
It's important for Native models to exist because we need to show our future Natives that we are a beautiful people. That we need to come together and show the world how special we are.

What is something that a lot of people don’t know, but should know, about Lumbees?
That we are the Biggest tribe east of the Mississippi River!!!!

Who are your favorite Native designers?
Wabanoonkwe Cameron-Hernandez, Sho-Sho Esquiro, and Virgil Ortiz

What inspires you?
Being alive and being able to make others happy is my daily inspiration. Rather it is a friendly smile or a helping hand. The simplest things can change someone's day or life.

Butterfly Beauty: Interview with First Nations Model Vina Brown

“Beauty has to exist within before it can shine through in its purest form.” – Vina Brown, First Nations model

Check this out – it’s a really interesting interview with a First Nations model that was published on Butterfly Collection Lingerie's blog for National Aboriginal Day in Canada (which was June 21st). Events take place across the country all month to celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal cultures, the importance of First Nations people to the foundations and progress of Canada, as well as a celebration of the cultural traditions, music, and food.

One of Butterfly Collection Lingerie's models is First Nations.

The author of the blog states, "Not only is she a great role model for curvy women she also illuminates how our diversity is beautiful. On her return from the 28th annual Miss Indian World pageant, I interviewed Vina Brown about what it’s like to be an Aboriginal model in Canada. I hope you find it as inspiring as I do."

Here's the interview:

The Beauty of Aboriginal Day

What is your Aboriginal name?
My Heiltsuk name is Glwaxx which means ocean-going canoe. My adult name is going to translate into Silver-tip Grizzly bear. There are different stages in one's life and my people believe that you need to change your name to suit you as you complete each stage in your life. It recognizes, supports and honors these important transitions.

Chantal Rondeau's Year in Review

Check out First Nations journalism student Chantal Rondeau's Year in Review on her blog, Life and Times of a Modern Day NDN Princess. Her 2010 review includes some nods to First Nations fashion designers (Alano Edzerdza and Sho Sho Esquiro) and some Native fashion models.

Click here to read the full post.

Article | Behind-the-Scenes Documentary by Model on Fashion's Darker Side

Behind-the-scenes documentary by US model shines a light on fashion's darker side
By: JENNY BARCHFIELD

PARIS — Discovered at age 14 outside her Manhattan school, Sara Ziff was quickly swept up into the high-glamour whirlwind of the fashion industry, jetting to Paris and Milan for shoots and shows and getting paychecks with an astonishing number of zeros.

She and her boyfriend, a film school graduate, started taking home videos backstage on a lark, but the couple's hobby bloomed into something bigger — an inside peek behind the industry's high-gloss facade into its darker side of body image problems, drugs and even sexual abuse.

Ziff, a blue-eyed blond who walked for luxury supernovas including Louis Vuitton and Chanel, says the couple's documentary, "Picture Me," shows an industry sometimes out of control.

"It's sort of the 'Wild West,' with people feeling the rules don't apply in fashion, for some reason. I'd like to be a part of making some sort of changes in that way," Ziff, 28, told The Associated Press.

She and her boyfriend and co-director, Ole Schell, were in Paris Monday to promote the movie among the fashion glitteratti, who are flocking to the city for the spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear show, which begins Tuesday. The movie, which is currently playing in Los Angeles, is scheduled to be released in Paris next month.

Shot over a period of five years by Ziff, Schell and their model friends, "Picture Me" makes a convincing case for the need for some sort of regulation in an industry where girls begin their careers at age 14 or even as young as 12.

Ziff waited until after high school to pursue her career in earnest. Soon, she was gracing mammoth billboards in her native New York and out-earning her father, a neuro-biologist and professor at New York University.

In the film, we see Ziff evolve from a wide-eyed ingenue into a harried and emotionally strung-out young woman.

She's often in tears, reeling from the sheer exhaustion of the brutal monthlong fashion show calendar, or upset about a tactless comment from one of the professionals backstage. Ziff says the industry tends to see models as objects to be poked, prodded and painted, rather than as sensitive young women.

The movie also prods what Ziff calls the "sordid and salacious" underbelly of fashion, with her and her friends talking on camera about the taboo subjects of cocaine use backstage, bulemia-clogged toilets and photographers' unwanted sexual advances.

Ziff, and Schell, 35, insist they hadn't initially set out to make a tell-all documentary.

"I started by just innocently shooting for fun," said Schell, adding it was his journalist father who convinced the pair to make a film. "So we took all this home video footage, about two years of home video footage, and then interviewed a bunch of Sara's friends, other models, and photographers and fashion designers."

In an industry that Schell describes as "all literally about the image, the final image, (and) all the money and effort that goes into that," it wasn't easy to get such explosive revelations on tape, the pair said.

"It's not always considered so cool to analyze things in the fashion industry," said Schell, who also directed "Win in China," a documentary about capitalism in the Asian giant. "When you peel back the layers and start to examine the machinations behind the scenes, not everyone is interested in participating in that."

Ziff said her modeling agency was not aware of the couple's project. After "Picture Me" debuted on the film festival circuit she changed agencies, she said.

Still, the movie is not all negative. It showcases the camaraderie and the close bonds that develop between models as they turn to one another for support, and it often focuses on the lighthearted and happy moments they share.

"Picture Me" also underscores the way modeling allows teenage girls, often from small towns in Eastern Europe or Latin American, to lift their entire families out of grinding poverty.

At the end of the movie, Ziff is looking for a way out of modeling and gets accepted at Columbia University. Having paid her way through the Ivy League college on her income from modeling, Ziff is to graduate with a degree in political science in December.

In addition to making the movie, Ziff also worked on Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo's campaign for New York governor and said she was surprised about the amount of crossover between fashion and politics.

"In the end, they're both about image," she said.

Jezebel Reports: Fashion Week Diversity By The Numbers

Jezebel Reports:
Fashion Week Diversity By The Numbers
By Jenna Sauers

In September of 2007, it was reported that of all the 101 shows that took place during New York fashion week, one third employed zero models of color. Since then, we've tried to track diversity on the runway every season.

We do this here at Jezebel because what we see on the runway — and who wears it — influences the faces we will go on to see in magazine editorials, advertising campaigns, and all the other images the fashion industry will create over the coming season. The models who walk in the shows are working with the stylists who matter, and being seen by the top editors. Those stylists are thinking of the campaigns, editorials, and other jobs they'll be consulting on over the coming months; the editors are thinking of their feature wells and the garments and stories and faces that might fill them. The industry at large is watching these shows and thinking: Who has buzz? Who's that new face? Who do we have to have? The runway is like a hopper that feeds the fashion industry's image-making machine. And the fact is that those images overwhelmingly feature white faces; this, we believe, perpetuates the cycle of marginalization and racism experienced by people of color.

Even if, come spring, you don't buy any of the overpriced designer clothes fashion week notionally exists to unveil, and even if you are not a habitual reader of the hard-core fashion magazines, chances are you'll still be bombarded with the perfume ads, the Gap campaigns, and the Maybelline billboards — not to mention the garden variety ladymag editorials — that will stem from this season and its casting.


This fashion week, there were 128 New York shows and presentations that were covered by Style.com. (We've always used Style.com as the basis for our data because it publishes look-by-look slideshows, often with models' names included, for a comprehensive swath of New York's shows.) Those 128 shows together presented 4,170 runway looks. That means 4,170 opportunities to choose a woman or girl to model that outfit.


3,410 of those opportunities, or 81.8%, went to white models. That means of course that 760, or 18.2%, went to models who were non-white. Non-white Latina models were used 95 times in all of fashion week, or around 2.3% of the time, and Asian models were used 296 times, or 7.1% of the time. Black models were used 353 times, or 8.4% of the time. Models of other races, like the Moroccan Hind Sahli and the Canadian model Tara Gill, who has Native American heritage, were used 16 times, or 0.4% of the time.

Since Jezebel has been been tracking the relative diversity of New York fashion week for so many seasons, I thought I'd try and chart the last few seasons and their numbers. (We did not generate data for Spring/Summer 2009, or Spring/Summer 2010.) You will notice that this season presents a small improvement on six months ago, in terms of its diversity, but that essentially New York fashion week is right back where it was 18 months ago.


Lots of people within fashion will tell you that casting models is an extraordinarily complex, creative pursuit, one that requires balancing multiple subjective qualities (does this model give me the right feeling?) with more objective ones (does this model fit the clothes, and can she walk?). Some people always say that choosing a cast that suits a designer's creative vision is more important than taking even the most basic steps to insure that cast isn't all-white. (At least, the apologists for the status quo prefer to talk about designers and "creative visions" rather than about casting notices that say "No Ethnic Girls" and black models who say they work less than their white friends.) But why is it considered acceptable for a designer's creative vision to not include people of color? Do those designers not want any black or Latino customers either?

This season, there were six shows and presentations that included no models of color at all. These included Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti — which is cast by the highly influential casting director Russell Marsh, who also casts for Prada and Miu Miu — as well as Mulberry, Reem Acra, and Doo.Ri. Prada, you will recall, is the Italian global luxury brand that went more than a decade without casting even a single black model in any of its shows. (This season, Prada had two black models — Jourdan Dunn and Melodie Monrose — present one look apiece in its 41-look collection.)

There were also plenty of shows that had all-white casts but for one or two models. Anna Sui, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Jeremy Scott, Jill Stuart, Narciso Rodriguez, Rodarte, Diesel Black Gold, and Thakoon are among them. What's worrisome is that that list is thick with some of the most influential and prestigious labels in all of fashion. And they don't seem to see any use for more than a couple token models of color. Mass-market powerhouse Max Azria, via his brands Hervé Leger by Max Azria, Max Azria, and BCBG Max Azria, booked his customary nearly all-white casts, all while telling us he was the "king of diversity in fashion."

Who were the designers who did things better? 3.1 Phillip Lim, who hired nine models of color, and Sophie Théallet, who showed 13 of her 32 looks on models of color, were among the buzzed-about younger designers had very diverse casts. Among the old guard, Carolina Herrera (11/52), Oscar de la Renta (13/60), and Diane von Furstenberg (17/50), had the most diverse casts. Rachel Comey, Betsey Johnson, Costello Tagliapietra, Tara Subkoff's relaunched Imitation line, Jason Wu, Christian Siriano, Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B. line, both Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs, and Richard Chai were also among those labels that valued diversity in their casting.

Melodie Monrose, with 19 shows including Tory Burch and Rag & Bone, was fashion week's top black model. Shena Moulton and Joan Smalls, who booked 13 apiece, were second. Moulton was the only black model at Calvin Klein, and Smalls walked for Alexander Wang, Derek Lam, and Michael Kors, among others. The top Asian model at New York fashion week was again Liu Wen, who walked in 18 shows. Fei Fei Sun and Shu Pei Qin had 16 each. Among non-white Latina models, Simone Carvalho booked nine shows, while Juana Burga had a respectable eight. The only models of other ethnic backgrounds to speak of were Hind Sahli, who worked six shows, and Tara Gill, who booked three.

Why doesn't fashion — especially multi-national brands whose profitability rests on convincing the largest number of consumers possible to purchase their perfumes, underwear, and diffusion lines, like Calvin Klein — have more consideration for the beauty and worth of people who aren't white? Is New York fashion week plateauing at around 82% white, no matter how much advocacy or consciousness-raising gets done, or how many trend pieces get written about this issue? Will it ever become unacceptable to put on a fashion show in a thoroughly multi-racial city like New York and not hire a single model of color? Will it ever become unacceptable to blame that choice on an alleged "creative vision"? As long as these questions remain, we'll continue to ask them, time and time again, and look for answers in seasons to come.

Article | Aboriginal Model A Stir At Fashion Week

Thought this article was interesting, considering the majority of models in the industry are white. Here is one Australian Aboriginal model making headlines:



Aboriginal model a stir at Fashion Week
May 4, 2010 - 12:04AM
AAP

The face of Aboriginal model Samantha Harris has created a major stir on the Australian Fashion Week runway.

The stunning beauty, who transformed herself from a beauty pageant hopeful who wore op shop clothes into a Vogue Australia covergirl, has emerged as the essential drawcard at Fashion Week, which kicked off in Sydney on Monday.

At just 19, Harris is scheduled to appear for 18 designers including Lisa Ho, Camilla, Dion Lee, Rachel Gilbert and Alex Perry, many of whom will use her to open their shows.

She proved herself a fast-rising star by landing a Vogue Australia cover, 17 years after the magazine last featured an Aboriginal model in the coveted spot.

But she's no overnight success story.

Harris started modelling when she was 13 and had worked her way up before Vogue Editor-In-Chief Kirstie Clements felt she had the maturity to be the face of the fashion bible's June issue.

Now, Harris feels ready for the spotlight.

"It took a while to build up to this, so I'm definitely ready now for success," Harris told AAP backstage at RAFW.

"I hope I get a huge cult following."

Harris realised her dreams of modelling only after she endured years of rejection in beauty competitions while the family struggled to finance the striking beauty's ambitions, says her mother Myrna Sussye.

"It was a bit sad, because we would go to competitions and we'd hear other girls with their parents spending $500 on outfits, and we just go to the op shop," Sussye said.

"I would say to Samantha: 'It's okay, I'll take them home, wash them up and iron them and you'll look beautiful, anyway.

"Beauty is from within, anyway, and so I would always say to Samantha, you've got to be beautiful on the inside before it becomes visual.

"That's my Mother's Day present, the (Vogue) cover," adds Sussye.

"I love it ... That was one of the goals, to get the cover of Vogue, and she's made that one as well."

Harris describes the experience of appearing on Vogue's June cover as "so strange, it doesn't seem real".

"It's really overwhelming and it's different to seeing yourself on the cover as opposed to inside the magazine."

Proud father Andrew Harris, who travelled from the Gold Coast with Sussye to celebrate his daughter's breakthrough, says she was always unique.

"She's always being different and there's something special about her," he says.

"She's just pure beauty."

Article | Jerry Hall Shuns Surgery For American Indian Look

Sorry but this article was just too much of a gem to pass up -

Hall Shuns Surgery For American Indian Look
on 02. Apr, 2010

Mick Jagger’s ex-wife Jerry Hall has passed her modeling mantle onto her daughters – because she’s now too "fat, wrinkled and old" to grace magazine covers.

The Texan beauty was an acclaimed fashion model during her 1970s and 1980s heyday, and strutted the runways well into her 40s.

But the star admits her time in front of the camera is up and she’s adamant she will steer clear of surgery – insisting she wants to look like an ancient American Indian.

She tells Woman and Home, “I’m going for the eccentric, wrinkled suntanned look instead. I love the sun. I want to look like a North American Indian – big jewellery and wrinkled, suntanned skin. Much better than the skinny, cut-up look.”

And Hall is happy to let her daughters with the Rolling Stones legend – Lizzie and Georgia – grace the covers of magazines these days.

She adds, “I used to love modeling but now I’m fat, wrinkled and old it’s not so much fun. My daughters Georgia and Lizzy are such beautiful girls and they are both modeling. I’m glad they are doing it and not me. It’s their time now.”

[read original here]

Diversity on the NYFW Runway - Jezebel Reports

(Christian Siriano opened and closed his show with a black model, Sessilee Lopez — and was one of only seven designers to choose to give a coveted opening or closing nod to a model of color)

One of the central questions/issues of my dissertation on Native fashion has to do with presenting diverse concepts of beauty. I spend two chapters wading through this complicated topic.

It all began with an article by Rayna Green in 1988.

While the majority of her musings focused on body size rather other phenotypical attributes such as skin color, she made an important point: Many various perceptions pertaining to size and beauty exist but were being ignored by the fashion industry, which sought a culturally hegemonic ‘look.’ Two decades later, this situation, I contend, continues to exist today.

In my dissertation, I proposed that Native designers of high fashion (along with their models), who are armed with a traditional concept of 'beauty' (i.e. one that extends from tribal epistemologies), have the potential to offer other options for displaying 'beauty' and can subvert globalized notions of the fashioned beauty: the thin and pale-skinned young European-looking female. Some Native designers have been more successful than others at getting diversity on the runway, with the biggest 'hurdle' being the need to 'fit in' in order to 'make it.' In other words, some Native models feel pressured to shrink their body size in order to fit into the small sample sizes used on the runways, and sometimes Native designers hire pale-skinned models to relay to potential buyers that their garments are made for everyone (which is very important in sustaining their fashion businesses). This situation isn't an easy one to discuss - but it is incredibly important.

Jezebel just published their fantastic and comprehensive review of diversity on the runways for New York Fashion Week, and they reported that this year was less diverse than last year, with only 18% of spots in show lineups booked by models of color. The overall impression they derived from the shows was that "what's gonna big for fall is being a white person. (Also: fur.)"

They have this to say:

The importance of this issue can hardly be overstated. The United States is only around 75% white, and according to the Census Bureau's most recent figures, New York City is only 44% white. And many of the least-diverse labels, like Calvin Klein, Diesel, and Donna Karan, are international brands. Wouldn't they want their potential customers to recognize their own forms of beauty in their runway shows? The aesthetic standards set by the fashion industry affect all of our lives. Making a sample size that models don't have to die of anorexia to get into seems to be a real head-scratcher for some designers, but validating the beauty of models who meet every one of the industry's other restrictive standards, and also happen to be non-white, should be a no-brainer.

Readers responded, suggesting the following:
1) prejudiced forces, and preexisting paradigms, in the industry are largely responsible for a disparity in total number of models of color and that the model population is a reflection of what designers want,
2) societal factors influence designers to hire an overwhelmingly white cast for their shows,
3) the images presented on the runway appear in popular magazines and infiltrate and affect our everyday lives (and have particular affect on youth).

Did you get all that? Let's recap: a preexisting framework exists which champions the 'thin and pale' for fashion models, and these standards, along with societal forces (i.e. what regular folks like us 'aspire'), influence the designers' visions and executions for their shows. These shows, in turn, affect our daily lives and shape our self-perceptions and definitions of beauty.

Well isn't that food for thought.

Playing Indian: Artistic or Insulting? Blog repost

(Image from America's Next Top Model)

Today I stumbled across this blog by Eli’s Fashion Chronicles – she writes about fashion, and this particular post questions the ethics of dressing models up as a different race, often using stereotypical garb, but also sometimes using ‘black face’ in order to make white models appear black. She asks, is this artistic? Or is it insulting?

Eli writes:
Artistic? or Insulting?

It is happening again and this time just in time for Black History Month. The most current controversial expression of Fashion has now been followed by the question "Offensive or Artistic". The act of changing models nationality with body paint, & make-up for editorials, and ads. This story has been hitting news for over a year now. It begin when French Vogue's editor-in-chief Carine Roitfield styled a shoot in which she decided to paint Dutch model Lara Stone's face, arms and legs in dark make-up to resemble what we can all assume to be a black person. Perhaps even more controversial is the fact that this specific edition was marketed as the "Women of Color Issue" yet no women of color were displayed on any of its pages.

As weeks passed from that event the trend continued to hit mainstream news. As more images emerged of women of different nationalities portraying different ethnicities with the help of body paint and make-up. The question is now being asked "Should we be offended?". Another case was examined when African-American model Tyra Banks, and host of Americas Next Top Model a, show dedicated to giving aspiring models their big break, aired an episode where the finalist contestants were transformed into different nationalities, all in inspiration of "Hapa" (that's Hawaiian for mixed-race). The nationalities varied in this case between "Russian-Moroccan", "Native American-East Indian", "Botswanan-Polynesian". All the models were portrayed in stereo-typical clothes and head dress. As some look at this as a flattering, and beautiful way to embrace different cultures, colors, and ethnicities; some are asking why not just hire a model of that race or culture?

It's back this month and in time for Black History Month. Editors at L'Officel Hommes have placed this spread in their latest issue. In this editorial spread Caucasian male models get painted a darker shade and outfitted with Afro wigs, chains, etc in order to pantomime being African-American. The spread is questionably entitled “Keep It Goin’ Louder Part 1.” As if the pictures weren’t already controversial the titles meaning is even more unclear.

So I close asking: Would you be flattered or would you be offended if your ethnicity or nationality? Are we being to sensitive? Are we looking to far into this? Are we taking a step back by being offended? Should they just hire models of the chosen decent? And, lastly what do you think, Artistic? or Insulting?
xoxo
eli

Article | On the Issue of Wire-Thin Models

(Image: Models changing backstage at São Paolo Fashion Week. Photo: Getty Images)

As the world is buzzing with fashion week excitement for the Fall/Winter 2010 collections, check out this article, reposted from The Huffington Post, which discusses the issue of wire-thin models on the catwalk for Sao Paulo's Fashion Week, which just ended:

The Velveteen Revolution: Say No to Wire-Thin Models

A message to the fashion industry: If you want hangers to show your clothes off, then put a bunch of hangers on a cleaning-store style conveyor belt and send that down the runway. It will be way cheaper than 'hanging' your garments on wire-thin women.

The fashion industry's state of affairs has grown increasingly disturbing. Even the Creative Director of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, Paulo Borges, said this week, "This situation cannot be ignored. We would like to propose a joint effort towards minimizing this issue and preventing the effects of this trend on models, on our industry and on society itself."

Echoing Mr. Borges plea, today we call out to the fashion, media, and entertainment world for A Velveteen Revolution. Unlike war and peace, this is simple. The message: Just stop.

Stop peddling your wares using underweight models. This is perpetuating an unrealistic and unhealthy body ideal for girls. It is time to halt this practice.

1. Designers and manufacturers: Stop designing for and featuring clothing on emaciated models. Stop advertising campaigns featuring them. Stop airbrushing photos.

2. Retailers: Stop buying and selling the clothing that is being marketed in this way.

3. Modeling Agencies: Stop recruiting and sending out underweight models.

4. Magazine editors: Stop accepting sample clothing for layouts in too small sizing. Stop the excessive self-congratulation when you feature a normal size woman in a spread.

5. Entertainment industry: Stop featuring models and actresses who resemble skeletons.

In our Huffington Post article Bring Back the Belly, we wrote, "Girls growing up today have enough pressure without these unrealistic and unhealthy images of scarecrows." We lamented the fact that magazines are not seamlessly integrating regular-sized models into their fashion spreads; that when regular-sized women are occasionally included in their pages, it's generally in a piece about body image.

Meanwhile, already tiny models are being airbrushed to seem even thinner (to the point of absurdity). We are not advocating unhealthy overweight role models; we're advocating the inclusion of pleasing, healthy bodies in all shapes and all sizes. In our book, Bitches on a Budget, we say "Wake up, look around--in this mulit-culti world we live in there's no longer a single icon of beauty. A woman with a hip modern aesthetic doesn't settle for just loving her inner bitch; she knows the outer one is fine too, whatever her shape!"

It's time for the fashion industry to wake up. Look at how gorgeous, curvy Michelle Obama has become a beacon for style. We are advocating variety. We are advocating an end to deception.

This latest outrage in Sao Paolo, where underweight models have supposedly been banned, is a reminder of how hard it is to make change whether in government or industry. It takes courage and will to foment a revolution. Small steps have been made--but isn't it time for the entire industry to take a stand?

You can read more from Bitches on a Budget at: www.bitchesonabudget.com

Video | Is the Fashion Industry Racist?

In 1997, Jean Paul Gaultier created the first fashion show to feature all black models:



A decade later, individuals who impact the fashion industry, such as Bethann Hardison, gathered in 2007 to talk about the issue of black faces being absent from fashion.



Curious how New York Fashion Week's 116 Shows [in February 2009] treated models of color? Check out these links from Jezebel.com and Abagond.com who break it down.