This TED Talk features fashion designer Becca McCarron Tran, recorded live at TED Salon Trailblazers 2019.

As fashion designers, our decisions have the power to change our culture.

We choose who is cast in our runway shows and campaigns, and ultimately who is celebrated

and considered beautiful, and who's not. Having this platform is a responsibility, one that can

be utilized to exclude people or to empower others. Growing up, I was obsessed with fashion.

I poured over all different types of fashion magazine

at my local Barnes & Noble.

To be fashionable was to be tall, skinny, with long, shiny hair.

That's what I saw as the ideal,

and it was reinforced everywhere I looked.

And to be honest, it still is. I wanted to be like the models, so I stopped eating.

It was a dark time in my life. My eating disorder consumed me. All I could think about was counting

every single calorie, and waking up early before school every day so I could think about was counting every single calorie and waking

up early before school every day so I could run a few miles. It took me years to finally release the grip

that the eating disorder had over my life. But when it did, it freed up so much brain space to think

about what I was truly passionate about. For so long, the fashion industry has worked hard

to center an ideal beauty that celebrates thin, young, white,

cisgender, able-bodied models as the ideal.

It's impossible not to be bombarded

with images of models that have been photoshopped

to where there's not a single pore, fat roll, or stretch mark in sight. You don't need to look hard to find examples. This definition of beauty is

damaging, dangerous, and destructive, and we need to explode it immediately. I'm glad to you agree.

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