As she launches her new clothing line this month, Melissa McCarthy says she doesn’t want to see her clothes in a different section just because they include options for larger women.
“I don’t like the segregated plus section,” the actress told Refinery 29. “You’re saying: ‘You don’t get what everybody else gets. You have to go shop up by the tire section.'”
Melissa McCarthy Seven7 sizes run from 4 through 28, and she is advocating for doing away with the “plus-size” label because, as she says, “Women come in all sizes.”
“Seventy percent of women in the United States are a size 14 or above, and that’s technically ‘plus-size,’ so you’re taking your biggest category of people and telling them, ‘You’re not really worthy.’ I find that very strange,” McCarthy said. “I also find it very bad business. It doesn’t make a lot of sense numbers-wise. It’s like, if you open a restaurant and you say, ‘We’re primarily gonna serve people that don’t eat.’ ”
A woman of substance herself, McCarthy knows of what she speaks.
Not only did she aspire to be a fashion designer in her younger years (she moved to New York in the 1980s to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology), but McCarthy — who has recently shed some pounds — has long had problems finding clothing she likes in her size.
“Even starting with ‘Girlmore Girls,’ (I’d say to the costume designer,) ‘Let’s rip the bottom off. Can I put different sleeves on it? If I rip this sweater apart, can you make a hat out of it?’ ” she said. “And then when I would go out and shop by myself, I guess I was always kind of repeatedly disappointed that things skewed so much older or so much younger.”
The star of the forthcoming “Ghostbusters” reboot now has a better relationship with jeans, having designed some she feels work better for larger women. She’ll see her line debut at retailers like Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, HSN and Lane Bryant. Some of the stores have agreed to her request to display her clothing with all the other sizes, she said.
“I said, ‘Run the sizes as I make them and let friends go shopping with their friends. Stop segregating women,’ ” McCarthy said “And they said, ‘OK.’ “