Oct. 30--How great is Becky Leigh Hopper?
The 23-year-old was shopping at a Topshop in London on Tuesday when her friend Georgia Bibby pointed out the remarkably thin legs on one of the mannequins. Bibby, who happened to be dressed like the mannequin -- leggings, brown ankle boots -- stood next to the mannequin for a photo, which Hopper tweeted to her followers.
"The girl on the left is a size 8/10. #Topshop #poorbodyimage #irresponsible #fashion #highstreet," Hopper wrote.
The image was retweeted more than 6,000 times by Thursday.
"The point of my tweet was to hopefully get Topshop to show a more diverse range of body shapes and sizes with their mannequins," Hopper writes on her blog.
The problem, of course, is that girls and women are bombarded with images of ultra-skinny bodies as the ideal -- we've talked about thigh gap in this space -- and many feel pressured to emulate these unobtainable shapes, which leads to eating disorders, depression and lifelong body image issues.
Hopper, though, put the pressure where it truly belongs: with the peddlers of the unrealistic ideal.
"Whilst we very much understand and appreciate that eating disorders are definitely not only caused by a piece of plastic in a shop window, it's also very clear that this is yet another portrayal of a very thin female body, which has been forced down the throats of society for decades," she writes. "This clearly won't help girls be comfortable with the skin they're in."
Hopper told The Independent she's received some tweets calling Bibby "obese" and a few others accusing her of shaming thin girls.
"We believe that all girls are beautiful and all should be comfortable in their own skin, whether they be a size 4 or a 24," she writes. "The mannequins in Topshop are all this size and misrepresent a normal body image for their demographic -- young influential girls."
Topshop hasn't released a statement in response to Hopper's tweet or the attendant brouhaha.
Maybe they're busy ordering new mannequins.
hstevens@tribune.com
Twitter @heidistevens13
