Devoted to changing your idea of what makes a lady beautiful… As long as you are thin and white?

So there’s this website called Suicide Girls, they’ve been going a few years but I rediscovered them on Instagram recently. Their tagline of being “devoted to changing your idea of what makes a lady beautiful” caught my eye and upon looking through I saw a variety pin up girls sporting tattoos and piercings.

I love tattoos. A lot. If I had more money, I’d be covered!! And so a site and social media portraying so called alternative women with ink and metal made me happy.

That slogan of changing ideas of beauty also appealed to me and so I hit follow, looking forward to some awesome women coming up in my Instagram feed.

And they do. But after a week, a bloody annoying pattern emerges. Yes, there are lots of beautiful, interesting and inked up women. But the HUUUUUUGE majority are both thin and white.

Ok, it’s great to promote tattooed women as beautiful, but thin white women don’t usually have that many issues being portrayed in the media. And as tats become commonplace in society, it’s really not that alternative.

So where are the bigger women? Where are the women of colour?

In the first 100 posts on the Instagram feed there are 6 women of colour.

And one woman who looks bigger than a size 10. And that post is filled with fat shaming comments.

What’s going on Suicide Girls? I love the idea of promoting an alternative view to traditional beauty, but surely you could bring yourself to show some larger ladies to your audience?

As the average size of women is around a UK 16, why don’t you show more average sized women?

Or does the idea of “what makes a lady beautiful” only apply to the thin white ones…

Though progress is being made with more and more plus size women as models and most recently the wonderful Tess Holliday I just wish we could see more of this.

What do you think?

Sam x