Big news in the retail industry this week is that a leading department store has begun using size 16 mannequins in its window displays.
Debenhams has been applauded by many campaigners for using these larger and more realistic models to advertise its women’s clothes.
As pointed out by The Telegraph newspaper, the mannequins are not actually ‘large’ at all; they are actually the size of an average woman in the UK.
Ed Watson, of Debenhams, told the newspaper: “We’ve developed our own range of size 16 mannequins to sit alongside our usual size 10 dummies. We felt it was important to better represent what real women actually look like when advertising our clothes.
“We hope that it will help people in some small way to feel comfortable about their bodies and, crucially, that other retailers will follow.”
The store also gave up airbrushing pictures of models last year, in an aim to better represent what women really look like.
This unrealistic size 10 role model argument is of course ongoing. I’ve read stories in the past about the statistics of popular toy dolls and mini figures, whose measurements mean that if they were real people, they would be unable to stand up and would not have enough room inside them for all their vital organs!
There are also regular reports about the dangers of super skinny role models in magazines and on television, for both women and girls, often leading to eating disorders.
We are never going to get away completely from images of thin and attractive models – at the end of the day, we probably all like to look at these. But it is fantastic and very healthy to see this more sensible approach to advertising fashion.