Topshop Comes Under Fire for Using Excessively Skinny Mannequins

Topshop is the latest to come under fire for perpetuating unrealistic body standards.

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Image via Complex Original
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The use of extremely skinny models in the fashion industry has become a hot-button issue, and now mannequins are being wrangled into the conversation. One Topshop customer's angry complaint about the store's "ridiculously tiny mannequin" has led to sweeping change at the retailer, which has agreed to discontinue this particular model, according to its Facebook page.

The customer, Laura Berry, planned on buying her favorite style of denim jeans before noticing how problematic the mannequin they were styled on was. Berry blasts the retailer for not being sensitive to the already-harsh beauty standards modern-day women face and perpetuating even more unrealistic body types with its mannequins.

"The year is 2015," she writes on the brand's Facebook page. "A time when I like to believe we are conscious of the harsh unrealities often imposed on us by the fashion industry." She writes that nothing in the store showed anything larger than a UK size 6, which is a size 1 in the U.S. This is a huge problem considering "young women aspire to the somewhat cult image your store offers," she says.

As affirmation that one person can make a difference, Topshop responded that while the model was a size 10, it had been stylized to "have more impact in store." It announced that it would no longer order that specific mannequin.

Topshop could copy a store in Venezuela that used mannequins with oversized butts and boobs. Just a suggestion.

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