Look, it really doesn’t matter how ‘skinny’ store mannequins are

The world today is obsessed with representation, and making sure that everybody is properly represented in the media, and in fashion etc. – and so it should be. There needs to be more representation in terms of larger catwalk models, people of colour on the front of magazines, people of colour in tv shows, need I go on?

But one place I’ve never thought about and gone, “these aren’t representing the masses enough”? Storefront mannequins. Well, any mannequins really. You want to know why? Because that’s, quite frankly, ridiculous.

A recent survey came out declaring store mannequins to be “severely underweight”. Yeah, they probably are. Wanna know why? Because they don’t fucking eat anything. They are literally plastic dolls that stores use to show you what they think are the best clothes they have on offer right now. They’re not there to go “Look at us, this is how you’re supposed to look, we’re the best of the best”.

And thank god, because I don’t know about you but I have never looked at a shiny, white, plastic doll with no face and excessively long arms and legs and thought “Yeah, you know what, that’s what I want to look like”. And I think if you really think about it, you’ll realise you don’t want to look like that either.

Being upset about the size of a mannequin is not helpful, it’s reductive. It’s aiming our attention at the wrong thing entirely. What about the ridiculously thin models inside the store, plastered all over the walls? Or in the magazines, on the catwalk, on the TV? Aim your attention at these things that actually need to change and be more representative of the general public as a whole, not just the size six minority.

I don’t feel disheartened when I see clothes on mannequins and they’re not my body shape or size. I barely even register the mannequins are even there unless I like the clothes they’re wearing, to be honest. And even if I do like the clothes, find them, and then try them on, I don’t look in the mirror disgusted at myself because I don’t look how the mannequin looks because that’s stupid. If the clothes don’t suit me, they don’t suit me.

I take them off, put them back, moan a bit about how my boobs are too big for fashion these days, and then move on. I don’t start a massive Facebook rant about how it looked good on the mannequin and not me and that’s definitely the fault of the store because they have tiny mannequins that portray an unrealistic version of what women should look like, because they don’t. I mean, seriously, half the time they don’t even have heads.

If you really, genuinely go into a shop and think that you should look like the mannequin does in those clothes, then you need to work on your own body positivity. The mannequin doesn’t decide how good you look in a certain outfit, or how good you should look – you do.