When Elsesser scored a Model of the Year prize in late 2023, it should have been a celebratory moment for the history-making new-gen super. Instead, her Instagram comment section sparked self-loathing and doubt
When Paloma Elsesser won the Model of the Year prize at the 2023 British Fashion Awards, it should have been a moment for celebration. Elsesser, who’s racked up appearances on runways spanning major fashion houses like Fendi, Alexander McQueen, and Balenciaga, indie up-and-comers like Eckhaus Latta, Conner Ives, and Luar, and starred on the covers of Vogue, Perfect, and Red3licte, has tangibly changed the face of fashion, making history as one of the most sought-after curve models (and models in general) of recent years.
But instead of the joy she deserved to feel on winning the award and deserved recognition from the fashion industry, the aftermath turned into a nightmare. As trolls and keyboard warriors hiding behind their screens filled up her Instagram and TikTok comments with fatphobic vitriol, Elsesser bowed out, putting her account on pause and stepping away from social media.
Now, a little over two months later, Elsesser has penned a heartfelt and profoundly sad letter detailing what she went through after scoring the award, the battles she faces when it comes to self-acceptance, and what it feels like to basically carry the weight of the fashion industry on her back as its go-to curve model. “People were having full-blown conversations in the comment sections of my own posts. Comments like ‘She’s a diversity pick’ and ‘Real models work so hard to get the bodies they have. You just get to sit around eating cheeseburgers’ flooded my phone,” Elsesser wrote in the piece, published today (February 15) on The Cut.
“In a TikTok that was liked 219,000 times, Kanye West fuelled the fire, alleging I was part of a vast conspiracy to ‘push obesity to us’. This narrative has long followed me and many in the public eye whose bodies aren’t thin. Yet over the last few years, fatphobia has become acceptable again. Representation in the media has become less alluring to folks, and its purpose is being reduced to ‘woke ideology’.” Known for his endless controversial outbursts, Ye also had it in for another Black woman with a larger body, when he launched a hate campaign against former Vogue stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson. Karefa-Johnson criticised the ‘White Lives Matter’ t-shirts he sent down the Yeezy runway in October 2022, with Ye encouraging his fans to go after her on social media.l
“I used to view myself as s flawed individual – this mentally ill, chubby brown girl with a messy house and an ongoing struggle to open my mail. Modelling changed my narrative and gave me a sense of purpose in challenging norms around our bodies that I too have been indoctrinated into. My body has become a vessel for connection. A vessel for thought” – Paloma Elsesser
Though she has “learned to be okay with pissing people off”, like everybody else, Elsesser often struggles with her self-image, which is not surprising when her looks are picked apart to a far higher degree than most models. “Are these people [who comment] not aware that I too think I’m ugly, fat, short, and a bad model sometimes?” she continues in the letter. “I used to view myself as s flawed individual – this mentally ill, chubby brown girl with a messy house and an ongoing struggle to open my mail. Modelling changed my narrative and gave me a sense of purpose in challenging norms around our bodies that I too have been indoctrinated into. My body has become a vessel for connection. A vessel for thought.”
More depressing still, when you consider the ways in which Elsesser and others like her have changed the industry for the better, she admits that sometimes it’s hard to see the point of “trying to shape a world where acceptance and critical thinking are possible, only to be plunged into the depths of self-loathing”. “What’s the point if you end up in the same place, entangled in a misery we know all too well?” she writes. “Still, I can’t help but feel that if I hide away, fatphobia will win and so many potential gains will fade further into the distance.”
She’s probably right. As Dazed reported in early 2022, in recent seasons it’s felt like fashion has been stirring a backlash to the body-positivity movement, fostering a worrying return to the size zero aesthetic of the early 00s. More recently, a Vogue Business report published in October 2023 found that of 9,584 looks across 230 shows and presentations in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, just 0.9 per cent were plus-size (above a US 14 or UK 18) and 3.9 per cent were mid-size (US 6-12 or UK 10-16).
Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta have never been interested in far-fetched runway themes. Theirs is a simple philosophy, one that offers wearable clothes that can be absorbed into existing lives, rather than arcane concepts to be projected onto them. And with the pressure mounting on smaller brands to perform in this super-charged, post-pandemic climate, the pair took this show as an opportunity to press pause, refining their label in noone’s image but its own.Photography Cris Fragkou
Big fashion houses which dabbled in casting larger models for a while have reverted back to ‘straight’ size bodies only, despite having the resources and cold hard cash to implement meaningful changes on the catwalk if only they were committed to them. “The industry may carve out space for a select few names like mine, but it firmly shuts the door on countless others,” Elsesser wrote. “The pride in being part of a list of ‘firsts’ is fading; being the first curve model for a campaign loses its significance when the brand fails to open its doors to the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.” Instead, it’s up to rising names like Karoline Vitto, Chopova Lowena, and Sinéad O'Dwyer to lead the charge when it comes to better representation, despite limited funds and financial support.
The industry may on the surface appear to be making change – and in many small ways, it is – but when it comes to representing different bodies, there are plenty of people spouting the importance of diversifying the catwalk, but few putting their money where their mouth is and actually doing it. There are no two ways about it: fatphobia is still an insidious and deep-rooted stigma within the fashion industry, and until we get our own house in order, what hope do we have of quieting the trolls in the comment section?
“There may be moments when I wish I could move through this industry with ease. But sometimes the work is painful and the accolades are met with fear,” Elsesser’s letter concludes. “Perhaps I deserve recognition not just for the wins but for the effort, the struggle, and the hope that it might just matter to someone else. Is it all that bad if we start to believe we’re deserving of something?”
