There seems to be a resurgence of sorts of the negative campaign against skinny Guyanese women, and in case anyone is wondering, the crusade was initiated a long time ago.
The debate has its genesis locally in the beauty pageant arena which is now endemic in this country. Every two weeks there is a pageant being promoted in some village or neighbourhood and young women are being drawn in like fish to bait. But this in itself is another issue. However the majority of hopefuls are usually skinny women. Slim, skinny, thin, lean they all mean the same thing.
It appears some people still have issues with this but instead of trying to dig deeper and develop a better understanding of why this is and start a movement to bring about change they choose to take on the skinny community. As if, the majority of skinny women in Guyana have waged war against food and are waving flags supporting anorexia and bulimia.
Currently the Miss Guyana Renaissance Pageant is being promoted as the mature women pageant which celebrates the virtues of an adult female. How fabulous. Another great thing about the pageant is that women of all sizes are in the line-up, and though some would dispute this, one of the women can be considered skinny. For some reason, one of our local television presenters concluded that the Miss Guyana Renaissance is “not another skinny pageant”. In essence, you don’t have to be skinny to qualify.
The stereotyping that beauty pageants the world over has left on skinny women will probably always be attached to them even though many skinny women out there did not ask to be thin. They are just thin and no matter how many JR Burgers, Royal Castle meals and Popeye’s sandwiches they eat, there is no escaping the skinny look.
When fashion magazines and designers the world over started splashing skinny women on their pages and on the big runways everyone concluded that skinny was in and that a woman has to be skinny to look good. What many people did not realize, was that in accepting such wisdom they were also buying into a label of thin women they would ultimately reject.
And reject it they did. Now skinny women are the enemies because in reality many women are not size 0, 1, 4 and even 6. They are 7, 8, 9, 10 and even bigger. So what has happened is that skinny no longer rocks. It is this thing that troubles women who see the beauty pageants, fashion magazines and runways as an industry that have sidelined them.
But coming back to home, Guyanese skinny women do not need the verbal jabs about being typecast for pageants because they are skinny by genes not choice. There are those who hit the gym to keep their figures but they cannot exactly be called skinny since skinny women are not in the gym.
If the Guyana Fashion Weekend did leave a lasting impression, it was the fact that plus size women were as big a hit on the runaway as the skinny women. In fact, one plus size female, a US import, rocked the runaway. She was big, beautiful, sassy and a whole lot of attitude.
(thescene@stabroeknews.com)
