If you go outside and look around you, what do you see? All types of human beings. People are different in size, height, age, skin tone, sex, and ability; they’re all diverse. We live in a multicultural society and yet we are unable to portray this in the fashion industry. In a world where fashion has a great influence on society, where media is able to reach millions of people every day, you would think that the models being used for covers and advertisements would resemble the world’s population a bit more, but sadly, this is not the case.

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By using primarily Caucasian models, the fashion industry perpetuates a portrayal of women based on a Californian blonde, blue-eyed stereotype that was made popular in the 70’s. Although the Cheryl Tiegs’ and Christie Brinkley’s of this world have been replaced by European born Doutzen Kroes’ and Karolina Kurkova’s, the image that only a certain model is desirable, still persists. 

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What happens to us as women if we are constantly second guessing ourselves and are made to identify ourselves with a primarily Caucasian image of beauty? How does this portrayal affect day-to-day women; the African or Asian women, the average size women (who are considered “ plus size”  by the fashion industry), the older women, the women with disabilities and handicaps?

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We live in a world where diversity is the norm; where nobody is the same; and where everyone is beautiful in their own way. The fashion industry, which has an annual estimated global turn-over of $1,200,000,000,000. should therefore portray their diverse customers in a diverse range of models. It should no longer be acceptable to portray one standard beauty image and exposing the fashion industry's lack of model diversity is one step towards a more diverse fashion industry. 

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