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Caryn Franklin
Photo courtesy of Ryerson University |
"
Every body counts" was the message that Caryn Franklin imparted to an audience of fashion students, faculty, media and invited guests at the first annual
Diversity Now! lecture at
Ryerson University on October 20, 2012. As a former fashion editor, Caryn had many years of experience as a fashion insider, and wanted to foster a movement that challenged and redesigned the beauty ideal to be more inclusive, where "every body counts". In 2009, Caryn Franklin, along with supermodel Erin O’Connor and communications specialist Debra Bourne, founded
All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, a campaign to promote diversity in the size, shape, ethnicity and age range of models on the catwalk and in fashion imagery.
In her first lecture in Canada, Caryn encouraged fashion students to think about the unattainable standards of beauty seen in mainstream fashion imagery that perpetuate the standard of the tall, thin, young and white ideal. She noted that fashion imagery has "begun to normalize something that is not normal" in promoting and perpetuating "image of unachievable beauty", and quoted statistics about body image and self esteem to show the level of "unease and destabilization that the fashion industry creates." She said "we have all internalized a body dysmorphia" and asked "isn't it time to make changes?"
