While Beyonce may not have been "plus sized" in the right photo, the fat phobic would definitely have called her "fat" in her thicker days. Black people have always skittered away from bone thinness as being "beautiful" so many of us, including me, loved her because she wasn't mimicking thin white beauty standards.
I was actually disappointed when she lost weight.
Another article I read says there's a 70 pound difference between the Beyonce photo on the left and one on the right. I don't see that many pounds gone, but estimating weight loss and weight gain is probably very subjective based on what you consider "beautiful" But Bey looks like she was pushing that size 14 on the right - camera adding pounds or not.
So why in the heck would someone, with her power, who has had her bootilicious days put out a clothing line for women without a plus size line?
"From Lululemon to Givenchy, it’s about that “it” factor, that coolness, that status. And to the fashion industry, nothing says “status” like thinness. Which means that what it’s not doing is selling to the plus-size market—one of the largest-growing markets, at $17.5 billion, and the most underserved market—because to the fashion industry, fat people are like “the dead Macy’s in the dying mall” of clientele: Nobody in the industry wants to go there because selling clothes to the average woman is not cool.
“Nobody” now includes Beyoncé.
If “sales” were what mattered, the music superstar wouldn’t have taken her new “athleisure” line, Ivy Park, to Topshop, a U.K. retailer that doesn’t even bother to carry plus sizes. And Beyoncé is Beyoncé, so I doubt Topshop was her only option. (Nordstrom’s website lists Ivy Park among clothing size 16-18, or XXL, but when you click on the items, the largest size available is still a 12-14. A quick call to a Nordstrom representative clarified that 12-14, or XL, is, in fact, the largest size you can purchase.) Beyoncé could have taken Ivy Park to any retailer and acknowledged that some of her fans—the main people who would gladly pay whatever to be just a little bit closer to her—come in sizes larger than a 12 or 14, but she didn’t.
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I swear, it's three steps forward with Beyonce and two steps back --every single time. From a feminist, I expect better.
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