So a lady complained about a stylised mannequin in Topshop having the wrong size and the internet lost their minds over it.
While I am a feminist who understands where she was coming from - most stores do have tiny mannequins - I have also worked as a visual merchandiser in the past. This is the person in store who dresses the dolls and the windows.
I side with Topshop on this one.
Basically, she complained about the tiny size of mannequin vs the non tiny size of most normal humans. Fair enough. So Topshop released a statement stating that the height vs the weight of the mannequins meant that the doll is actually a size ten.
NOTE - They did not mention that their idea of a size ten also fits small children.
But, the mannequins are stylised to fit the stores aesthetic. So this means they have waists that don't bend the right way, hands that are shaped with the fingers together and weird round breasts in order to create a strange non realistic shape. The height of said mannequin is also 6 '2' as well.
Not many women are 6 '2. I speak as as a feminist visual merchandiser who likes to date women and is 6ft tall. Trust me. Not a lot of women are this height.
Funnily enough, I used to be Toyshop's visual merchandiser at one point. The mannquins are designed to look roughly like sketches of people wearing clothes. I know that sounds a bit daft but there you go. They are also designed to allow the clothing to go on more easily.
So this was the tweet/rant/email/display of emotion from the lady :
“I’m old enough and wise enough to know I will never be this size, but as we’ve all been impressionable teens at one point, I’m fairly certain if any of us were to witness this in our teenage years, it would have left us wondering if that was what was expected of our bodies,” she wrote, adding, “P.S. just so you know, after taking this picture I used my size 10/12 legs to walk straight out of your store.”
The response from Topshop :
“As the mannequins are solid fiberglass, their form needs to be of certain dimensions to allow clothing to be put on and removed easily; this is therefore not meant to be a representation of the average female body.”
So there you have it. DONE.
Might I just throw into the mix that where was this lady when American Apparel were using overly sexual mannequins? You know, the ones that showed women as mere sex objects and were scouted from their previous lives as sex shop mannequins? (no joke they were) Where were all the complaints then?
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