The fashion industry has championed diversity. Shockingly little has changed, new research finds
An analysis of 25 years worth of fashion industry data found that the fashion industry is more diverse in some ways, but the body ideal promoted by ultra-thin models is still the norm.
Saucye West never thought modeling was in the cards for her. At 400 pounds, she is far from the norm promoted by the fashion industry. But strutting down a Bay Area runway for her first show in the 2010s in her high heels, cameras flashing and the audience watching in awe, she felt like a star.
“It just made me feel so empowered to do that and to do it with how my body looked,” West said. “It was nothing like how the other women’s bodies looked, and I was getting just as much attention as everybody else was.”
Conversations around body positivity have hit the mainstream, and some of the biggest names in fashion, from Versace to Chanel, have made a show of hiring more models who are over size 12, known as plus size models.
But in an industry that has still been slow to change its ideas around body and beauty standards, West is still an outlier, despite having had a decade-spanning career as a fashion influencer, model and activist. And now, there’s research to back that up.
In analyzing 25 years worth of fashion industry data, encompassing nearly 800,000 ads, magazine covers, runway shows and model profiles, researchers found that the industry has strongly clung to its traditional beauty standards and that its acceptance of plus size bodies has changed shockingly little. The number of plus size models and models of color has increased, but researchers say that means little in an industry where they have typically had so little representation.
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“It does appear to be that we’re seeing more plus size models and more women of color more visibly in fashion than we used to, but what it looks like is the average [body size] isn’t really changing,” said Sagar Kumar, a researcher at Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute involved in the new work.
The discrepancies matter because the fashion industry wields incredible power in how people, especially women, see themselves, according to experts. Repetitive exposure to these largely unachievable body ideals “can have a long and lasting impact on self-esteem and mental health” for young women, Caryn Franklin, a UK fashion and identity commentator, told Northeastern Global News. People compare themselves to the standard set by the industry and realize they fall short, which can cause their body dissatisfaction, disordered eating and, ultimately, mortality to rise.
“This is the danger of emphasizing one exclusive body shape at a time when young women are very impressionable and susceptible to external conditioning,” Franklin said. “The result is they learn to self-objectify which means ignoring their inner voice whilst normalizing the pressure from outside forces: fashion.”
The researchers looked at data from 2000 to 2024, including ads, magazines, runway shows and individual model profiles in the U.S. While the share of non-white models rose from about 13% in 2011 to more than 40% in 2024, when it comes to body size, it’s a different story.
In 2000, the average model had a 60-centimeter waist, the equivalent of a U.S. size zero, and 18% body fat, according to data collected by the researchers. In 2024, the numbers had barely changed: Models, on average, had a 62-centimeter waist and 19% body fat.
Comparing their data against the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), researchers found there was virtually no overlap in body size between models and the general U.S. population.
In 2000, the average American woman had an 88-centimeter waist, generally a size large or extra large, or between a size 12 and 18, in the U.S., and 37% body fat. In 2024, those numbers increased slightly to 92 centimeters and 40% but were still far out of sync with the image being depicted by the fashion industry.
Even plus size models are, on average, smaller than the average American woman, although they more closely correspond to the general population, Kumar said.
“Even within the moments where the industry as a whole has tried to be a little more inclusive, there’s always been a limit of how far that inclusion will go when it comes to body size,” said Tigress Osborn, executive director of advocacy organization the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. “There’s always been a designation of what’s a ‘good fat body,’ what is a ‘curves in all the right places’ body.”
The disconnect was also apparent when the researchers looked at how brands have concentrated their diversity efforts. The data revealed that such efforts don’t actually increase how inclusive the industry is overall. Plus size models are 4.5 times more likely to be non-white, meaning fashion brands have increased visible diversity on the margins without changing the norm, according to Kumar.
“[The industry] is ticking off as many diversity boxes as possible so that it looks like the industry has become more diverse,” Kumar said.
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Efforts have been made to regulate the fashion industry out of its limited body ideal, with mixed results, Kumar said. In 2006, Milan Fashion Week established a firm rule that fashion houses couldn’t hire models under a body mass index measure of 18.5, which is considered the cutoff of underweight. In 2017, Paris Fashion Week required that models had to be certified as “healthy” by a doctor but there was no set weight minimum.
But the impact of these attempts to reign in the fashion industry have been limited, Kumar said. He admitted that this research is a piece of a much larger puzzle that points to a need for change in the industry, one that will require the work of researchers, legislators and activists like West.
Even brands that say they want to be inclusive are often more focused on changing size numbers, a practice known as vanity sizing, than adopting inclusive hiring or marketing practices, said West, who also serves as an inclusion consultant with fashion brands.
The decisions around photoshoots, runway shows and magazine covers are made in board rooms, but the impacts trickle down to the public, West noted.
“The reality is, even if you don’t want to look like me, there are people who look like me who need to see it and … who need to know that you don’t have to be small to be beautiful,” she said.
At the end of the day, changing fashion will require more than industry mandates, according to Osborn. It will take changing cultural norms around how people view bodies and changing beliefs that are core to the industry, she said.
“Not every fat person is living with this idea that clothing has to be slimming to be appropriate for us,” Osborn said. “People want to be able to wear what they want and express what they want.”
