A campaign photoshopped magazine covers with plus-size women and it looks amazing

It’s estimated that 67 per cent of American women are plus-size (size 14 or larger). According to the CDC, the average American woman’s measurements equate to a size 14, while other studies put her between a 16 and 18. In the UK, the plus-size market constitutes 12.4 per cent of all UK clothing sales and is worth in excess of £5 billion. So why are magazines still predominantly representing skinny women?

To fight against this, a refreshing campaign called More Plus Please has been photoshopping plus-size women onto existing magazine covers. The idea is to show just at home these women look on the front page— if you hadn’t seen this was part of a campaign you wouldn’t have known they were photoshopped.

“If 50 per cent of us are plus-size, why are we so hidden in the media?” say Navabi, the plus-size brand behind More Plus Please. “We believe it should be the norm for plus-size women to appear in magazines and on their covers. And to show just how ‘normal’ and fabulous they’d look, we have produced these covers featuring some of our favourite plus-size women.”

While they acknowledge a great deal has been done to encourage body-positivity in the media, they emphasize we’ve still got a long way to go. Things they believe we need to push for are designers including more size diversity in their shows, brands producing samples beyond size 8 and generally a fairer-sized representation of women in the media.

To illustrate More Plus Please, they surveyed the most popular women’s magazines in Germany and the UK, all purchased during the same week. They counted the number of “model size” women, and the number of plus-size women. Grazia had just a two percent plus-size percentage, with just one out of their 53 models falling into the plus-size category. Stylist had no plus-sized models at all, while Elle, Porter and Vogue had just one.

I spoke to model and blogger Chloe Pierre whose pictures were included in the campaign. She said: “Like me, Navabi are passionate about plus-size women having better choices and representation within fashion. This is more about making a positive statement for more plus representation in magazines. I’m so glad it’s going absolutely mad on social media this morning and in the most positive way ever.

Chloe added: “For me personally, I love the opportunities made possible to me through blogging and modelling fabulous, well made and luxurious plus-size fashion pieces such as those at Navabi. Honestly if you had asked me if I would be doing this or if I was even away of the plus-size community 10 years ago I wouldn’t have believed you, but I couldn’t be more proud to represent a part of society often overlooked in mainstream fashion, especially, here in the UK.”

Despite this, Chloe can’t deny that attitudes towards plus-size in the fashion industry need to change “I think things are improving, but not quick enough. Like most things, we need to scream to make ourselves heard and prove people and fashion wrong. Unfortunately the industry is slow to change, with only a few models portraying plus-size for the whole world and even then its not diverse but even one small step, is still a step in the right direction.”