The new taboo: how ‘flattering’ became fashion’s ultimate F-word

‘I’ve got loads of dresses that I bought because someone in the changing room told me they were flattering,” says Billie Bhatia, the fashion features editor at Stylist magazine. “In that moment, I feel lifted. My insecurities about my body are erased.” But Bhatia, 30, has been having second thoughts about the word. “Occasionally, it means a great colour that makes your skin glow, but most of the time ‘flattering’ is just a byword for ‘slimming’,” she says. “If someone delivered the same compliment, but substituted the word ‘slimming’ for ‘flattering’, would you think that was an OK way to talk to a woman?

No, right? Everyone likes to hear a compliment. But ‘flattering’ is a dangerous word.”

In 2017, the perfect pair of jeans was “on-trend”. In 2018, it was “fierce”; last year it was “extra”. Right now, it is “dripping”. In fashion, every season comes with a new shorthand. But one compliment – “flattering” – has outlived them all, selling more jeans, more party dresses and more swimsuits than any other word. “Flattering” is fashion clickbait, an add-to-basket dog whistle.

But for generation Z – roughly speaking, those born between 1995 and 2010 – “flattering” is becoming a new Fword. To compliment a woman on her “flattering” dress is passive-aggressive body-policing, sneaked into our consciousness in a Trojan horse of sisterly helpfulness. It is a euphemism for fatshaming, a sniper attack slyly targeting our hidden vulnerabilities. “Flattering”, in other words, is cancelled.

The British model Charli Howard, 29, has been a force for change in the fashion industry since 2015, when an angry Facebook post she wrote about her then agency saying she was too big – she was a UK size 10/12 – went viral. “The issue with the word ‘flattering’,” says Howard, now an activist for model diversity and healthy bodyimage, “is that we instantly associate it with looking thin and therefore looking ‘better’. It suggests your tummy looks flatter or that your waist looks smaller. I find it’s a phrase older generations use.

Girls I speak to from generation Z tend not to use it. Those girls see a diversity on social media that older generations didn’t. Celebrating your flaws is considered cool these days.”

“The teen magazines that I grew up with never went an issue without a ‘how to fix your body issues’ article,” says Emma Davidson, 33, the fashion features editor at Dazed Digital. “It was either about how to look slimmer or about ‘adding curves to a boyish body’. The message was that whatever you looked like, it wasn’t good enough.” Until recently, Davidson says, “there were lots of things I didn’t wear because I thought I was ‘too big’. In the last few years, I’ve begun to accept and celebrate myself. The word ‘flattering’ is part of how fashion tells women that they are taking up too much space in the world. That’s just wrong on so many levels.”

It would be cheering to report that the word “flattering” is therefore being retired from active duty, phased out as society casts aside the cult of skinniness and learns to celebrate beauty in diverse shapes and sizes. The truth, sadly, is rather more complicated. With a few honourable exceptions – Eckhaus Latta’s all-sizes casting at New York fashion week, Vogue covers for plus-size models Ashley Graham and Paloma Elsesser – fashion’s bodily ideal remains stubbornly narrow. The pantheon of