Apologies for another nonsense post this week. I don’t think I’ll have time for any full-length ones in October. My wedding is a mere three weeks away, after all! This week you get a mini-rant…
Any readers out there watch the show Project Runway in the US? I’ve complained about their treatment of non-fashion model women twice before, and this season is following suit, unfortunately.
Last week’s episode 10 was the “street muse” challenge, wherein the designers had to wander Washington Square Park in NYC and find a model/muse from among the people hanging out. A large portion of the NYU campus is just south of the park and the show was filming in the middle of the day, so I knew right off the bat they’d have a glut of young, college-age women to choose from—no middle aged ladies need apply!
I was still hopeful that the designers would choose a variety of women, but nope, they all chose white, slender, tall women—including a yoga teacher and a ballet dancer. So basically they picked women who were as close to models as they could find. So boring!
One of the designers even approached a pair of girls and asked just one of them to be his model; when the other expressed interest, he told her she was too short. So apparently he’s incapable of designing for anyone who isn’t at least 5’8”?
To be fair, this particular episode was at least absent the body snark so present in other seasons when the designers had to work with “real” women, but it was still pretty disappointing. I’m of the opinion that if you can only design clothes for models, then you’re not a very good designer.
