The body positivity movement is everywhere – except if you’re size 16

In a slightly bored moment last week, I clicked through an enticing pop-up to the online shop of a famous and expensive fashion designer. I was led there by a nice-looking dress that caught my eye, and I glanced over at the sizing chart. It read 8, 10, 12, 14, 14.5. I looked at it for a moment, trying to understand it. Was I going mad? What in the world is 14.5? And where was the 16?

And then seconds later I realised – of course, no one who would realistically buy this dress would ever admit to being a 16. A fate worse than death; a life not worth living, a dress not worth having. If you are a 16 or above, you might as well buy yourself a giant muumuu and a large sofa and plan never to leave the house.

It was a familiar message to me when I was growing up in the Nineties, where the fashion was to look like you might be about to burst into tears from sheer hunger. Even being a size 14 was somewhat beyond the pale back then – if you wore anything brightly coloured at all someone was bound to say, “I just really admire your confidence, that’s all. I couldn’t do it.”

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But I thought things had changed. The body positivity movement is everywhere, so-called plus-size models are becoming ever more mainstream, and many shops now stock a decent range of sizes.

But then the 14.5 business came up, followed by a little online furore about a company selling and displaying a size 16 yoga outfit in its window, which was described as “dangerous” by journalist Isabel Oakeshott on the basis that it “encouraged obesity”. The dangerous outfit was then purchased, worn and shared online by an equally dangerous woman who looked just fine to me. Double fine, in fact. Positively glowing.

For as one Tweeter pointed out, if you grew up in the 1990s you know that images of excessively thin women can be as damaging as anything else. But now new shapes of womanhood have become fashionable and it seems we have a wider and more flexible model to work with, both figuratively and if that sensational yoga outfit is anything to go by, quite literally too. To my eye, this can only be a good thing.