Observing Ghanaian Fashion Week: Are African Models Following The Western Standard?

October 10th, 2012 - By gtetteyfio

1981 Show at Ghana Fashion and Design Week

From StyleBlazer

Standards of beauty vary through time, countries and cultures, except when it comes to fashion it seems.  The barely-there-bodies of skinny woman have been the trend on almost all catwalks for as long as we can remember. But what of a country and culture which associates thinness with poverty and AIDS?

According to The Guardian, when Ghanaian Fashion and Design Week arrived this year, so did whole groups of frail-framed models “moving together in small, conspiratorial looking packs.” And one curvy onlooker’s amused commentary on their alien-like appearance was telling of the west African country’s traditionally full female forms.
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  • Lola

    The older generation of Ghanaian women – i.e. those over 45 years old – tend to believe that women should be plump. But the Ghanaian woman of this modern era does not wish to be fat/thick. Nowadays most of them exercise to keep fit for they have come to understand (and appreciate) that being big is neither healthy nor attractive. Of course, this holds true for young women who reside in the cities; ladies in the rural areas still prefer to be big.

  • glad-b

    I know very few large Ghanians ( I grew up in a town with many of them). Most of the ladies I know are a size 0 or 2. I just assumed that they were mostly, naturally thin.

  • Meyaka

    For as long as I could remember in my country models came in all shape and forms, but the popular ones were definitively stick thin, as far as the rest my country is half modern and half traditional, you have the city with its big bright lights, malls and cars, and you have the village wich is much more humble and less “western”.

    • lina

      Every African country is half traditional half western especially in big cities sad that Africans are bombarded with the western standard of beauty and we all start to think and act just like them and let of our own cultures.

      • Meyaka

        Every African country is not half traditional and half modern, have you been to Burkina Faso? Mali? Sudan? Ethiopia? And those are just at the top of my head, for my part idk a lot of my people that act “western” if anything they are more traditional than “western”.

  • Kenedy

    It makes sense that they would…..trust me…..we watch the same shows that Americans watch, including Americas next top model & keeping up with the kartrashians…..african cultures are so different, yet so similar to western societies…it makes perfect sense, globalization is what it is