A woman wore a bathing suit on a red carpet and she wasn’t a size six.
She wasn’t 22 years old. She wasn’t white and blonde and pointy.
And she looked incredible. Incredible.
Here she is:
The overwhelming feeling that washes over me when I gaze upon Dascha Polanco - who plays Dayara in Orange Is The New Black, TV lovers - in her swimsuit at New York Fashion Week is gratitude.
On Mamamia Out Loud, we talk about the no-pants fashion movement:
Gratitude for a woman who is sexy and fearless and bold enough to be wearing exactly what she wants to be wearing, despite the multitudes who would suggest she 'shouldn't' be.
Because when you're a woman and you wear clothes, your world is full of shouldn'ts. You shouldn't be wearing that because you're too fat. Or too short. Or too wide. Or too old.
Or you shouldn't be wearing that because it's too short, it's too tight, it's too revealing.
Or you shouldn't be wearing that because it's too loose, too long, too unflattering.
It covers too much or it doesn't cover enough. You know, for you.
Every piece of fashion advice that we have soaked up since we took our Saturday money to Sportsgirl is aimed at making our bodies look different. 'Lengthen your leg with a nude heel'. 'Horizontal stripes are not your friend'. 'Black is slimming'.
Dascha Polanco wears what the hell she wants.
There is no question that in the fashion world - at Fashion Week, no less - Dascha SHOULDN'T have been wearing that swimsuit.
The women who are permitted to go pant-less on red carpets generally look like this:
And all power to them. This is not about thin, conventionally beautiful women = BAD and bigger, curvier women = GOOD. This is not about that.
It's about every single message that every woman has ever been told about how she is permitted to present herself, express herself through clothes, through her physicality, through her sexuality.
And when Dascha wears this, and Lena Dunham models underwear, and J Crew puts "ordinary" women on their catwalk it feels like finally, finally, there is a glimmer, a possibility, that the culture is accepting that beauty is not one thing. One shape. One colour. One width.
Expect to see Dascha on the cover of some magazines soon. And the words that run alongside, at their best, will be passive aggressively damning. Yes, she might be "loving her curves", but the subtext will be, 'Will you look at this freak, she actually thinks she looks good'.
They're right about one thing. Dascha is a freak. She is a freakishly confident, gorgeous and talented woman who is putting her middle finger up to every 'shouldn't' that's ever been thrown her way.
And I am grateful. My thighs are grateful.
At last, the beautiful freaks are having their moment.
Do you love Dascha's look?
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