In my early-mid twenties, I was hired as an account manager at a PR company in London. Imagine, if you will, Ab Fab if led by a willowy, emotionally distant Dutch blonde. My role was to develop and write ideas and stories for our clients to dazzle the bored fashion press and more excitable regional newspapers and organize photo shoots to illustrate them ( shoots I would eventually end up styling - the first foray into my future.) One of my clients was a famous UK hosiery brand, and we were casting leg models for their latest range of mostly-the-same-as-last-season tights.
A slouching, tanned male photographer, a moonlighting fashion editor in head-to-toe black Prada (hired to guarantee coverage in her magazine), and the conservatively attired client sat in a line behind a long makeshift white desk, Portishead trip hopping in the background of the empty studio space. And I, one by one, ushered the parade of waiting leg models in and out. It was my first casting, and I was giddy to be part of it… for about five minutes.
Without a greeting, the photographer took their proffered portfolio, silently looked each model’s legs up and down, picked up his camera, and took a Polaroid. He flicked nonchalantly through the plastic pages as he waited for the image to process and then handed it to the editor, adding his assessment:
“Oof. Look at those pig trotters.”
“Yep.” She agreed, exhaling cigarette smoke. “Can’t believe her agency sent her for this, simply horrific ankles.” The photo was passed onto the client, who nodded their corporate head in agreement. “And puffy feet! Next…”
And so it went… a two-hour conveyor belt of silent girls with numb eyes, who were apparently invisible from the waist up.
“Weird knees…”
“Did you clock that over long second toe? We’re not shooting footless tights, right?”
“Is that cellulite? She can’t be a day over 17?”
“Her proportions are just all off.”
“Fabulous calves, but the thighs are a little too thick.”
“So thin. Two sticks for legs.”
“The whitest skin I’ve ever seen. Do you think her veins would show through the ten denier?”
This was the first experience in my work lifetime of women/girls being judged like cattle. “THEY CAN HEAR YOU.” is what I wish I would have shouted, but I was new, less ballsy, and needed to keep my job, and worse, it would not have made the slightest bit of difference. What struck me then, and even more now, is the model’s reactions—seemingly impenetrable and bleakly unmoved; they just slid their battered portfolios back into oversized bags, kicked off the borrowed heels, replacing them with sneakers, and left for their next judgment without a backward glance.
Fast forward to my early days of styling in Hollywood and working with a very young, slim, and gorgeous client’s wife, who dogmatically insisted on sleeves, turning down beautiful dress after beautiful dress—often pleading, “But could we add sleeves?” With gentle probing over multiple events, she finally admitted that a costume designer had repeatedly told her ( in her teens) never to have her “flabby’ bare arms on any camera—moving or still—and no amount of reassurance could persuade her otherwise, objectively toned and photogenic arms notwithstanding.
Countless variations of this scene later, I came to open new client fittings with “What do you love to wear? The answers were varied but usually brief: “Feminine, suiting, sleek, etc.” This softball led me to the real question: “And what, if anything, do you not like?” The ‘if anything’ here is rhetorical because every time, and I mean every single time, there was immediately a body part, often multiple body parts, and I would inevitably learn again that their pain originated from someone(s) careless, cruel words mixed with a heavy dose of cultural reinforcement. It was shocking at first; the rotating faces of famous Western women had always been held up to me as the standard, and it had never occurred to me that even for them, body critiques were usually the stickiest, most internalized gibes.
I quickly came to understand that, on this subject, they were, indeed,” just like us.” No amount of praise, money, exercise, diet, or designer clothes compensated for perceived flaws or, god forbid, aging. I have, throughout my life, read a gazillion books and articles about body shaming, dysmorphia, and systemic sexism. I understand first and secondhand the double standards and impossibility of female perfection. Too fat, too thin, too old, too bold, flabby arms, pigs trotters. I know that our shame is manufactured for control, and we are so, so much more. I have spent a career reassuring clients of their inherent power and my disgust at the misogynistic media and, more recently, the cruel judgments of the anonymous and private troll armies on the internet.
But when it came to me, my intellectual knowledge was — infuriatingly— mostly disconnected from the shards of residual judgments embedded deep in my psyche, anchored by a lifetime of indoctrination instructing that my appearance needed to—no must—please. I fuzzily recall an older girl at school assessing my legs and sneering to all, “EW, she has those weird backward knees.” Whatever the fuck they are, but here I am, decades later, wondering about them again. Next, my memory bounces to a tactless colleague who asked if I was pregnant a few years after giving birth. On learning no, she doubled down and told me that her assessment was my fault—I should stand straighter! I have a pronounced curve in the base of my spine, so my stomach, without correction, indeed sticks out; plus, any pounds I gain with age are heading directly there. When walking past my reflection, I will often assess for signs of pregnancy—and I usually clock in at around four months.
It is depressing, and it is exhausting.
God knows how much cumulative time I have spent on corrective conversations with myself—time that could have been used any other way, space that could have been freed up in my brain—space and time that most men have never had to waste. On the brighter side, however, my pep talks have grown more potent and liberated. My stomach gave me the love of my life—my daughter. My wrinkles are the privilege of still being alive. Fucking with patriarchal judgment is the rebellion. My mind and its capacity are the real prize… These days, I attempt to counter each negative thought as best I can… I visualize what it might feel like not to wear makeup and not care. (Childhood memory echoing loudly— Penny, you would look prettier if you wore more makeup.) I donate or re-sell clothes that are too small instead of keeping them as a stick. I don’t compulsively look in mirrors anymore. How do I feel?—not—how do I look?
It doesn’t always work. A long career in fashion—creating images to please the system—has left me with warped eyes. But I am relentless in my pursuit and hopeful that one day I’ll be too damn tired to keep housing those shards of shame. Too bored with the waste of my time and emotion. And too complete to have room for them anymore. Perhaps the gift of aging and a young teen daughter whom I refuse to consciously infect might finally propel a return to my rebellious teenage self, who, in a world without the internet, wore what she wanted because it expressed her. Maybe then, for the first time in decades, I will figure out what I, just me, really wants to wear.
If you enjoyed this post, please check out my first novel, “I Never Signed an NDA.” A satirical mystery set in the world of celebrity styling that dispels red carpet myths, reckons with the ever-present misogyny, and answers many of the questions about what really goes on behind the scenes…
It’s devastating isn’t it? I work in film costuming, and the number of famous actors I’ve clothed who have been told that they need to disguise something about their bodies is heartbreaking. So much disordered eating or whole days spent in a gym.