BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – It’s 7 p.m., and Karina Salazar, 26, has visited more than 10 stores in a commercial area of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, searching for a pair of jeans in her size. The design student says it hasn’t been easy.
She finally finds a pair of jeans that fit, but now she is tired and angry. She says it bothers her that shopping, an activity that’s supposed to be enjoyable, has instead become frustrating because she wears a larger size.
“Going out to buy clothes discourages me,” she says. “I don’t feel the excitement that a thin woman can feel. For me, it’s terror.”
Salazar is about 5 feet 2 inches with a curvaceous and full figure. She wears a size 46, or a size 16 in the United States, which she says designers and clothing manufacturers neglect.
“Each time that I notice the need for new clothes, I think about the torment that I will have to undergo during the day not knowing if I will find what I’m looking for, if I will have to resign myself to something that in reality doesn’t satisfy me or, worse, leave empty-handed because there is nothing for me.”
She says this hurts her self-image.
“Each time that I go out to buy clothes,” she says, “my self-esteem returns home worse than when I left.”
The lack of clothing options for women who wear larger sizes reflects a stereotype of beauty in Argentine culture that critics say is disseminated by the media and advertising. Activists and government officials are debating a bill for a national law to regulate clothing sizes. While some stores maintain the right to target a certain market, new stores are emerging to cater to people who wear larger sizes. In addition to a wider selection of sizes, advocates say increased education is key to expanding the country’s concept of beauty.
Various provinces enacted laws in 2007 to regulate clothing sizes, including Santa Fe, Mendoza, Entre Ríos, Santa Cruz and Córdoba. The Autonomous City of Buenos Aires also has a law on sizes, as does Buenos Aires province, though it governs only adolescent clothing. On a national level, a bill governing clothing sizes gained approval from only one body of the bicameral legislature in 2009.
In 2007, a nongovernmental organization called Fundación Mujeres en Igualdad conducted a study of commercial areas in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. In a survey of 35 stores, the study found that there was no uniform system of sizes. Some stores used sizes such as 1, 2, 3 and 4; others used small, medium and large; and others used 19 through 37. Stores didn’t carry sizes larger than 42, though manufacturers produce sizes up to 56.
In January 2012, D’Alessio International Research Online surveyed 268 women older than 18 from Argentina’s middle class about their level of satisfaction with their bodies. Ninety-six percent responded that they had at some time felt uncomfortable with the way they look. While 17 percent said they had had plastic surgery, 37 percent said they wanted to have surgery to improve some aspect of their bodies.
Sharon Haywood, founder and director of AnyBody Argentina, a nongovernmental organization, links the lack of larger sizes to a rigid cultural standard of beauty.
“The visual culture in Argentina is toxic,” says Haywood, who is also the co-editor of Adios Barbie, a website that promotes body acceptance. “You can’t walk two blocks in the capital without seeing a poster in the street, an advertisement on the buses or a magazine in the kiosks that shows a woman similar to Barbie with very little clothing on.”
The population in Buenos Aires reflects different immigration currents that this port city has witnessed, according to the Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos, which studies migration patterns to and from Latin America. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, there was a strong influx of immigrants from Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland and France. In recent years, immigrants have come from Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, as well as China and Eastern Europe. Features, sizes and body measures reflect this diversity.
But Haywood says that the media ignores this diversity and instead imposes a stereotype of women as the ideal of beauty.
“The advertisements and the media disseminate only one image of the woman: thin, White and many times blond,” Haywood says, “that, in reality, doesn’t reflect the diversity of Argentine women. They glorify a standard of beauty that, for the majority, is unattainable.”
Haywood says that this affects self-esteem because the majority of Argentine women struggle to find fashionable clothing in their size.
“The women and youth only have one example of what it means to be a woman,” she says. “This has a grave effect on the self-esteem of girls and their self-image. The youth are in a key stage when they form their perception of themselves, and they learn quickly that they need to adhere to this one social image of the woman in order to be accepted.”
This phenomenon also contributes to eating disorders, like anorexia nervosa, Haywood says.
“Although the roots of eating disorders are complex, I don’t doubt that the lack of sizes has an important role,” she says. “It is understandable then that women and youth feel driven to modify their body in order to wear the clothing that they want.”
Data reported by the Asociación de Lucha contra la Bulimia y la Anorexia in 2011 revealed that Argentina has the second-highest eating disorder rate in the world, behind Japan. The international association that works to prevent and treat eating disorders based its findings on research by a psychiatrist and researcher in London, who found that 29 percent of Argentines suffer from an eating disorder and one in 100 women struggle with bulimia or anorexia.
Salazar says she fends off discrimination daily because her body doesn’t fit the stereotype.
“There’s a lot of cruelty on behalf of the people,” she says, “discrimination and insults disguised as catcalls.”
This has personal and professional consequences for her.
“To look for a job is a source of insecurity for me,” she says. “And not to mention, that anyone feels entitled to invade your personal life and tell you that you have to go on a diet or judge you by the stereotypes as lazy, unkempt or super sexualized.”
Monique Altschul, executive director of Fundación Mujeres en Igualdad, the organization that conducted the study investigating clothing sizes, says the media uses a double discourse.
“The media have a double message,” she says. “On one side, they spread the fashion trends through totally discriminatory suggestions. And at the same time, they know that is a very popular subject matter.”
Altschul and María Luisa Storani, a member of the national Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Argentine Congress, have drafted a bill for a national law regulating sizes.
Their goal is for the Argentine Congress to debate the issue in 2013. Fundación Mujeres en Igualdad has been promoting the bill through various events in 2012, such as a congressional breakfast in August.
“The initiative has been received well in the sphere of the Chamber of Deputies of the nation,” Storani says. “There are deputies who have a commitment to the fight for human rights and gender rights, who are more interested and committed to what this addresses.”
Haywood says that it’s essential to conduct a study to serve as a basis for a law of sizes. AnyBody’s website invites visitors to sign a petition for the approval of a “coherent and inclusive” law.
“We require an anthropometric study about Argentine bodies in order to be able to make sizes for Argentines,” she says. “When we have anthropometric data that can give a range of sizes and real measures of the Argentine woman, a national sizes law will be able to be created that really serves the consumers.”
Altschul says that resistance to such legislation comes especially from members of the business sector with ties to the fashion industry, recalling the study the organization did in 2007.
“We found a monolithic position,” she says. “They asked us to forget about the law because we are only going to hurt importers, manufacturers and merchants.”
Storani says that the business owners’ bigger worry is that displaying larger sizes will hurt the prestige of their brands.
“There are specific brands that are famous for being trendy, for sale for being fashionable,” she says. “And that doesn’t match with the ‘fat’ women.”
Samina Fernández, 23, manages a local clothing store called Sultana in Buenos Aires’ Once neighborhood. She denies that merchants are boycotting the law of sizes to uphold a certain image.
“As merchants, we carry out an economic activity and, therefore, we respond to a certain type of client that we’re looking to satisfy,” she says. “Each business owner has the right to select their market and whom they want to sell to. It’s one of the principles of marketing, and that isn’t discriminating. It’s simply identifying your market, nothing more.”
Fernández assures that her store stocks larger sizes. She says that accusing merchants of not having wide selections of larger sizes or displaying them doesn’t take into account the difficulties they face as well.
“That is putting the blame on only one side without taking into account the other factors, such as size of the business, capacity of production, economic possibilities of investing in more variety of sizes,” she says. “The ideal would be a situation in which everyone wins without dividing the waters between the good and the bad.”
Meanwhile, some stores dedicated to offering larger sizes have emerged, such as Syes, located in the capital. It sells shirts, jackets and pants from size 42 to 56.
One customer is Fabiola Jiménez, 35, a mother of three children who says she weighs 75 kilograms (165 pounds).
“I love the clothing that they sell here,” she says. “It’s beautiful, and I don’t feel as if I’m wearing a sack or dressing myself in order to cover up my body. I am from a big family of wide hips, wide torsos, and it’s a tragedy for me to buy clothing, above all after three kids. But here, I found a place to come to dress myself.”
Jiménez says that this type of business considers women of larger sizes in its offerings.
“The good thing about these stores is that they specialize in people like me,” she says. “So they understand why you have come in.”
At the same time, the store fills a lucrative commercial niche.
“Moreover, they win a loyal clientele that other stores for thin women don’t satisfy,” she says.
As a design student, Salazar says that there’s a niche market of people who wear larger sizes that the politics of marketing in big clothing stores doesn’t consider.
“As a designer, I believe that there is an interesting market with the desire to dress themselves well, composed of people of a larger size,” she says. “I don’t like to use the word ‘fat.’ It has a pejorative connotation, and people of a larger size aren’t always fat. Sometimes, their build is thick, their bones are wide, but they are in their weight. These people should have more attention from Argentine designers.”
Salazar says that in addition to promoting a law, society must emphasize education from early ages.
“The law of sizes is not going to solve anything while there’s not education about the topic,” she says. “You must teach the people that not everything is image and reinforce the acceptance of the body from infancy. The concept of beauty has to change, as well as the focus of the fashion industry.”
Salazar says she hopes that, through education, the country can achieve a cultural change with respect to beauty stereotypes.
“You have to develop a new ethics of fashion that facilitates a cutural change and avoids suffering with respect to the body,” she says.
