L'Officiel Austria Digital Cover Girl: International Petite Model Arina Maksimova

How can the industry help in the development of the movement?

Arina Maksimova: “Smart campaigns can help a lot. Some brands are already brave enough to offer jobs to petite models, but it doesn’t have an effort on society. The majority still sees just a pretty girl on a billboard, they don’t know a story behind it, they can’t recognise she is short (which is ironical) and how hard she had to prove she deserves a chance to work on the same level as tall ones. Petite model’s discrimination has to be considered as discrimination based on body feature, as it actually is, this problem has really big social weight, since you can’t change this feature of your body, no matter how much effort you put. I consider popularisation of this topic as my main mission. Put petite model next to 1.80 girl, show the diversity openly! Why would you try to hide model’s height if it’s not something anyone should be ashamed of?”

But not only brands create discrimination, what’s the responsibility of model agencies?

Arina Maksimova: “Right now the industry says: If you’re not tall enough-don’t even dream about it, we won’t even put an option on application of choosing height lower 1,70. Potential models simply don’t have a chance to try, agencies block a road to them on the very first stage, they just cannot apply for a casting. Agencies think petite models won’t succeed, but they didn’t even try to present them to market. The society right now wants the diversity, and it’s the best time ever to ruin the stereotype about height, but someone has to start. If big players such as IMG, NEXT, Elite take a risk and begin promoting short girls, it will be a sensation and definitely the opening of new era.”

What will you consider as a success of petite model’s movement?

Arina Maksimova: “Appearance of petite girls in high fashion shows. Disappearing of the limitation for shortest height 1,70 in agencies’ applications (it will take a long time to reach equal treatment between tall and short models, but at least to give them access to castings is a base). And the last one is more global, but it shows public sentiment the most - petite clothes in the majority of brands’ lines.”