If you had any doubt that retailers make plus-size clothing seem depressing, then Target's dress in "Manatee Gray" might change your mind. No, you heard right. I wish I could say I was joking, but this dress was actually named after a humongous sea mammal. Actually, you know what, I don't wish I was joking because this is NO laughing matter. It's no wonder plus-size clothing has had such a bad rep. Isn't this so messed up?
Read more on ¿Qué más?: Finally someone is honest about how ugly "plus-size" clothes are
It all came out after self-described "Digital Maven" Susan Clemens was doing a little online shopping on Target.com. She suddenly noticed a really strange dissimilarity between the names of the colors on two dresses that were otherwise the same, only one was plus-sized. The color of the "regular" sized dress was called "Dark Heather Gray," while its plus-sized equivalent of the shade (which was in the exact same color) was referred to as "Manatee Gray." While I'm sure this is not the retailer's idea of a mean practical joke, it proves that there is still some small level of discrimination going on when it comes to plus-sized fashion. Seriously, if the dresses were the same why couldn't they just get the same name?
Target spokesperson, Joshua Thomas, claims that the name was used solely to describe the shade of the dress. "Manatee Gray is a color found on many products across a range of categories on the Target website, some of them in women's regular, and even petite sizes," he told Forbes. He claims there were two different teams that worked on the names, one for the "Missy" line and one for the plus-sized line–and apparently they didn't coordinate when it came to inputting the product name and information for the site. Wow. That's one big oversight. The offensive shade has since been taken down from the website. Let's hope if they put it back in stock, it's with a new, nicer name!
I personally find this extremely offensive to all the full-figured chicas out there. Plus-sized women have a hard enough time finding fashionable clothing options in their size. They don't need to also find them named after large animals. Whether it's targeted for plus-sized, tall, or even petite women, NO woman wants to buy clothing that's named after a creature that weighs over a ton. In fact, I'll put it real simple for you retailers: Don't name your clothes after a manatee, hippopotamus, elephant, blue whale, rhino, or any other large mammal and the shopping world will be a much better place.
Image via Twitter
