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I spent this past Saturday evening in the midst of one of the most creative, engaging and thought-provoking experiences that I’ve had at Cornell. The Cornell Fashion Collective’s 31st Annual Runway Show was a two-hour-long thrillride that had designers delivering piece after piece of visually stunning and carefully crafted fashion.

As each model walked up and down the twin catwalks, I couldn’t help but notice the beauty of them all. Every step, hand motion and facial expression added to each designer’s story of inspiration, whether that story was about an aloof high schooler who loves collecting acorns, or the mysterious patrons of a ski lodge in the Pacific Northwest.

Towards the end of the show, I began to realize that the beautifully-made pieces of clothing weren’t the only pieces of art on the runway — the models themselves were living artistic tributes to the celebration of the human body.

Some of the collections showcased on Saturday drew inspiration from models whose body types were not the same as your typical fashion model. Ranging from petite to plus size, these models made me really think about the inevitable relationship between women, body positivity and the fashion industry.

We all know how it works — the ideals of beauty are thrown in our faces every day from advertisements claiming that you need this makeup to look beautiful, or you need these undergarments to squeeze you into that little black dress. Women and girls learn at a very young age that skinny is good, and not skinny is not good. You can either be porcelain pale or tropical tan, and everything in between is just boring. You should have curves, but not too many. The longer your legs, the higher your value. Short hair is for boys, not girls. No thunder thighs, cankles or wobbly arms allowed. Skinny is good, and not skinny is not good.

These ideals translate to the fashion industry, where the number one goal is to create garments that people want to buy and wear themselves. Guess who looks great in most clothing? Thin and fit people! This idea makes sense — designers want to incentivize people to buy their clothing by presenting them in an attractive way.

The problem with the representation of women in the fashion industry is that when thin people are presented as the only type of people who deserve to wear such clothing, it is suggested that people that aren’t as thin as runway models aren’t worthy. When almost every single model you see is thin as a rail, it gets to you.

While body positivity and inclusiveness of non-traditional body type models are indeed wonderful things, we must also be careful to not head too far in the other direction. Recently, the term “real women” has been used frequently to describe women who do not have the typical runway model body. “Real women have curves” is a related mantra that attempts to be body positive, but could end up having the opposite effect.

These phrases suggest that very thin women with few curves aren’t “real women.” This evokes an entirely different set of beauty ideals, where women are expected to be thin, but at the same time possess voluptuous curves. Are very skinny, non-curvy women imaginary? Nope — they are real women too. Every woman is a “real” woman.

This includes women for whom obstacles in the fashion industry lie outside the realm of body type. Racial issues abound in the fashion world — an overwhelming majority of models used in the United States are white, while people of color are extremely underrepresented. At the 2013 iteration of New York Fashion Week, 80 percent of the 4,637 looks were modeled by white women. Asian women comprised 8.1 percent, black women comprised 8 percent, and Latina women comprised 3.2 percent.

Does this mean that non-white models are somehow less suited to showcase pieces of clothing as an art form? Of course not. But that’s the message that this phenomenon sends to every young person of color around the world when they look at the fashion industry and do not see themselves included. The fashion industry is only one example of a society that does not equally represent all races — check out the Congress of the United States, the CEOs of the Fortune 500 or the entirety of the American entertainment industry for more.

The issues of body image and race in the fashion industry are widespread and have deep roots. We are always seeing advertisements featuring impossibly skinny women that have obviously been altered to seem even thinner than they already are, and many magazines alter photographs of celebrities and models with dark skin to make them appear to have a lighter and whiter skin tone. These facades are useless — yet even though we see through them, they can still hurt us.

Overall, I am very grateful to the Cornell Fashion Collective for providing me a venue to learn more about the fashion industry and the true artistry of apparel design. I am truly impressed with and inspired by the level of inclusion that all designers achieved throughout the show. I was delighted to watch models of all body types and ethnicities walking down the runways like the beautiful people that they are. We can only hope that the fashion industry as a whole can take a hint, and that we will see more diversity on runways.

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