I don't need marketers to tell me what's beautiful--and I don't think you do either.

Let me preface this whole post by saying that I am glad to see the continuing and growing of conversations about appreciating beauty in a range of body sizes and that I don't think we should just ignore the representations made in mass media and marketing. 

With all that in mind: I don't give a fuck about "body diversity" in the modeling industry. Why? Because I'm already too pissed at advertising. I don't think it really matters if every high fashion house's advertising campaign and every Target flyer in your Sunday paper could capture over the course of the year the breadth and depth of diversity in human bodies--at the end of the day, they are only doing it to sell you shit you don't need! 

As long as our definitions of beauty and value to come from people that are trying to sell us something, they are probably going to continue to suck. Sure, capitalism has learned some tricks: maybe it is better to run a campaign on self-worth than degradation to get people to buy your product. Still, the change only comes about because something sells better.

I don't want my conception of beauty to be defined by marketers who see my successful understanding of "beauty" in the amount of dollars I spend on their brand. If we care about the messages people are getting from clothing advertising, we need to establish and critique the basic framework of marketing. Marketing doesn't exist to tell us the truth or to help us find alternative options: marketing exists to help those doing the marketing. 

You don't need marketing to tell you what's beautiful. Yet, many young people grow up with a large part of their understanding of the world being framed by what marketing tells them. So, I am happy people are criticizing the lack of body diversity in modeling, but we need to follow up on those critiques with action with young people. This means talking straightforwardly and frankly about where our aesthetic values come from and how the worth of another person never comes from their aesthetic presentation to us.

Let's stop buying the bullshit of beauty marketing and start enriching our own lives with a new concept of the value of beauty that doesn't include dollar signs.