Community: Real Life

Zero worship


Helen Tonge

Helen is taking a gap year before going on to study English at the University of York. She enjoys reading, travelling, going to the theatre and hanging out with friends.

Helen is fed up with the perception that size zero women have ugly or unhealthy bodies.

It all started on New Years' Day when I was bargain hunting with a friend. We wandered into a clothes shop and as I was flicking through the rails I came across something I'd often heard about before, but never seen for myself; size zero. It was a pair of white jeans and a rather striking pink tunic top, to be precise. On a whim, I decided to try them on, and dragged my giggling friend into the changing rooms for a good laugh at the fashion world's expense. The joke was on me. They fitted.

I've always been the size I am; I don't have an eating disorder, I've never even been on a diet, and I can't remember the last time I did anything more energetic than walking to my car. I'm telling you this not to try to defend my size, or apologise for it. I would never do either. I'm telling you this so that I can emphasise the fact that like you, I can't help the way I am.


And I can't be the only one, either. There must be hundreds and thousands of young women like me, and few of them will feel privileged and smug about their delicate, fine-boned frames. Many of them will feel angry, saddened and persecuted. The invitation to love your body in whatever shape it comes is not, it seems, extended to us. When we're not being called anorexic, we're being told that we're not 'real women'. Real women have big boobs. Real women have curves.

I'm in full support of size zero, and do you know why? No, it's not because I'm some evil magazine hag hell-bent on turning all women into clones. The reason is simple damn it, I want clothes that fit!

A typical shopping trip for me consists of finding something I like, then buying the smallest size they have available, especially jeans. I hitch them up and five minutes later they work their way down again, giving me the ever popular and oh-so-glamorous 'whale tail' look I so admire. I look like a lunatic, hopping along trying to pull up my jeans in public and as I'm walking along, down they come. I welcomed the return of high-waisted trousers with open arms in the hope that, with the introduction of size zero, I might own some clothing that actually sits on my waist, rather than falling down to my hips.

"We seem to be going down the same old route of finding something potentially dangerous and, rather than taking steps to render it safe, jumping the gun and banning it entirely."


Sadly, that hope is fading rapidly. In recent years the fashion world has been conspiring to ban size zero models from catwalks and advertisements. The message is clear; thin people are offensive and dangerous, and the public doesn't want to look at them. Apparently, we influence young girls to the extent that some of them develop anorexia, a disease, which is widely acknowledged to be more about control than actual weight.

"It's to protect the models," people whine. If the evil skinny people are allowed free reign, the competition to be really, really skinny amongst models will increase, resulting in abuse within the industry and ever more dangerous and drastic measures being taken in the battle to lose weight. In this respect, they have a point.

What troubles me, though, is that we seem to be going down the same old route of finding something potentially dangerous and, rather than taking steps to render it safe, jumping the gun and banning it entirely. Surely taking measure to encourage designers to employ models in a range of sizes, so that all body types are fairly represented, would be better?

Then there's the confusion between being size zero with having a BMI index of under 18: in other words, being underweight. The two don't always go hand in hand, and the unreliability of the BMI index only confuses people further, making it seem as though if you're a size zero, you must be underweight. Referring to every underweight person as size zero is as inaccurate and insulting as pointing at every slightly overweight person and calling them a size 30. So, to clarify: being underweight does not make you size zero. Being size zero does not make you underweight. Nor does having a BMI of under 18 if you are too old, too young, too tall or too short.

Just as curves are attractive, and body fat is natural,  all I ask is that we please stop getting at people who are naturally skinny; just like the so-called 'real women' of this world, we can be beautiful too.

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