This week on the forum Reddit a user posted a picture of what they considered an “obese” mannequin, to which other users made various comments calling the image disgusting. Below is an article by the Huffington Post defending the mannequin and the change some department stores are starting to implement. It seems when it comes to mannequins, the American public just can’t make up its mind. Users of online forum Reddit responded with a good bit of disgust yesterday after someone posted a picture of an “obese mannequin” from an unknown store to the r/WTF subreddit. Titled, “Anyone else horrified that they make obese mannequins too now?” the post has garnered hundreds of comments and thousands of up votes. As MSN points out, while it’s no secret the U.S. has “many plus-sized citizens,” (more than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control) by and large department stores have traditionally stuck with very svelte mannequins to model the latest trends. In fact, when department store J.C. Penney debuted some noticeably larger mannequins at the opening of its New York City store in August of 2009, New York Times critic Cintra Wilson wrote an infamously catty review of the retail giant: [J.C. Penney has] made a point of providing clothing for people of all sizes (a strategy, company officials have said, to snatch business from nearby Macy’s). To this end, it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of ‘Roseanne.’ Those who took offense to Wilson’s piece included, “overweight people, tourists, plastic mannequins, people who are attuned to rampant classism, residents of ‘middle America,’ diabetics, and anyone who has ever found an attractive article of clothing at a J.C. Penney,” noted Consumerist. The snark cuts both ways, however. Last year, Gap received its share of grief after the debut of its hopelessly skinny “Death Camp Chic” mannequins. The store was blasted for promoting anorexia, reports the Daily News, and blogger Alice Taylor told the Washington Post the “anorexic-thin” skinny jeans-wearing dummy was appalling. “I was amazed that they would advertise such skinny legs – skinnier than a healthy [Body Mass Index] person and even skinnier than someone already underweight,” she wrote.

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