The Size-ist "Ethical Consumer" Trend

Full disclosure: yours truly casts a skeptical eye on the whole ethical consumer movement for many reasons.

But let's just say you would rather buy "eco-friendly"/organic/vegan/fair trade products but you don't want the ugly hippie crap. You want the fashionable, nice stuff.

Well, if you don't have Gwyneth Paltrow's figure, good luck.

Take a peeky-poo at online sites that sell these products and see if you can find anything besides accessories that a size 12+ can wear. The denim lines are all 31" and below. The tops never go above a large and I'm willing to bet a lot of those larges fit like a medium. Edun doesn't sell bigger sizes for women and neither do other lines that wave around their politically-correct bonafides for being socially-conscious.

For all of their bluster about compassion and awareness, the designers, the magazines that promote this stuff, and the shops that sell the merchandise still don't mind discriminating against larger-sized customers. Is it because they think we're too busy eating Ho-Hos and doughnuts to care? Or that we somehow symbolize overconsumption because of the size of our bodies?

The actresses, pop stars, and magazine editors who go on about how green their fabulous lives are and seek to lecture the rest of us on how we live ought to remember not everyone looks like them and even if we wanted to buy their gospel, there are virtually no options to do so.

Yet another premium denim brand sizes up

This time it's James Jeans, available at http://www.saksfifthavenue.com in three different styles, ranging from $207-209.

Of course this benefits tweener girls who just two years ago had few upscale, trendy choices in denim. Keep it up!

New Paige Premium Denim

Paige Premium Denim has created a new plus style for spring, the Lomita:



It retails for $209 and like the previous Paiges, it's only available at Nordstrom/Nordstrom.com