Does the power exist ultimately for women to force the fashion industry to change?

Yes. Women can and do effect change especially in the fashion industry because we have purchasing power and can use that muscle to voice our objections.

A "Hollywood" driven (anorexic young women) industry perpetuated by people in the television and movie industry needs to be tackled head on with a great big smack to the head. Most of the actors are young, most of the actors are thin. Old and curvy is discarded by this industry, and if we do nothing then we are accepting that and endorsing it.

Women with curves and large bodies are real and the sickly looking thin models are projecting a false image of every day women. I once wrote to a big company complaining about their t.v. ad and their skinny model. Whether one complaint made a difference I don't know but if enough women reacted and complained we could show them who has the power. I refuse to buy anything from their store and haven't heard that they would stop using skinny models. Until I hear differently I told them I won't ever shop in their store again. And I haven't.

Write to the companies that advertise with these type of models because they are making a hit on our impressionable teens, make your voice and opinion heard.

Your teenagers, like most teenagers that are probably starving themselves to fit into the "look" that these twerps in Hollywood set for a standard will thank you and just maybe enjoy their meal for once guilt free!

Realizing the problem exists is a one step but following through with the courage to speak up is key. If enough women are bothered by this then, we would begin to see the effect.

First of all, a good number of models are the preferred ideal for all, which is thin with curves. Very rarely do I see twigs and I'm an editorial/runway nerd. Our views of what is healthy and what is not have been skewed. A lot of the models out there today are the same size that the average American woman was a generation ago. I have tons and tons of high school yearbooks from across the nation to prove this. Ask your mother what size most women were in the 70's and before. Honestly, let's stop pushing the definition of curvy until it becomes what we now truly know is overweight and unhealthy.

Our desire to keep things the way they are on the runway comes from our issues with obesity as a culture off of the runway. Once our culture has a healthy view on weight and what is "thin", "fat" and "curvy" and everything in-between, we won't mind seeing models of more varying sizes. But as more and more people become obese, we want an escape. We want a place we can look and not deal with reality. Clothes on runways are often exaggerated and wouldn't be worn in reality, just as models are exaggerated and far better looking than most people on the street, anyway.

The power belongs to the people who buy the current fashions. Money talks and bravo sierra walks.

Since the fashion industry is influenced a lot by gay designers, you see many 5'11" stick figures with short hair strutting down the catwalks of New York, Paris, and Milan. If average women had more of a say by speaking with their dollars, the catwalks would probably look more like a Lane Bryant catalog. If straight men were more dominant in fashion, the models would be 5'6" and have more curves than a mountain road.

In short, try it and see.

Supply and demand.

In theory the majority of women don't buy into the fashion they will be forced to change or go bankrupt.

In practice, the majority of people will follow whatever the televisions tells them is the fashion.

Lets faced, people are like sheep and Mass propaganda almost always work. Mass propaganda works from the fact that people think that they must follow the heard in order to be successful. So in the case of fashion the majority will buy whatever they think the majority will see as cool, hot or whatever silly adjective is invented by the same mass media.

My advice to everyone, throw out the television and start thinking for yourselves. Otherwise, the media will continue to tell you what to think.

They use emaciated models, because they don't have any curves to get in the way. A lot of us women have a hard time finding clothes to fit our curves, like if a shirt is too tight over a big chest, if pants can fit over our hips, etc.

I'm assuming they make the outfits on the runway in all sizes. It's just that the smallest size is used for "show", just like how they put the smallest sizes on mannequins in clothing stores.

Its all economics...the power of supply and demand. If the demand disappears, so will the supply.

As for the emaciated models, they are used because their bodies are perfect 'hangers'...there is no body getting in the way of the design. And those clothes that you see on the runway are not the ones you will see in the stores...they are the 'extreme' examples of their collection...

Its all about the money, women can definitely alter the fashion industry's methods. Supply and demand, they will sell what women want.

It does. If enough women stood up to the designers and the fashion media and said, "This is what we look like; deal," they would die.

For intelligent women like yourself, the answer is yes... ultimately!

As others have correctly stated, it is a supply and demand market. The solution would seem to be obvious, would it not???

"Fools and their money..."

Woman have more of a fashion sense so yeah they probably would.