YES, French women do get fat. And the curvier among them are tired of being dictated to about what they can wear, as they showed on a plus-size Parisian catwalk.

    From horizontal stripes to a bra playing peek-a-boo under a blazer, buxom models taking part in a show organized by Pulp Fashion Week on Friday put paid to the myth that the ideal, chic French woman is wafer thin.

    “We have always been told that round women cannot be beautiful and sexy, that you have to dress yourself in old-fashioned stores,” said Blanche Kazi, who founded the plus-size Pulp Fashion Week in 2013.

    She said the idea that only the minuscule sizes seen in magazines represented real beauty was “dictatorship.”

    “Look at my models, they are size 42 to 50 [U.S. 10 to 18, British 14 to 22] — and they all have a voluptuous beauty.”

    Sexy lingerie, cocktail chic, and summer dresses: the clothes seen on the runway in a prelude to Pulp Fashion Week in April are not that easy to find in Parisian stores in these sizes.

    Plus-size fashion has expanded rapidly in recent years, with runway shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris and designers increasingly adapting to the fact that skinny models are far from the norm.

    France has long been associated with the stereotype that its women can guzzle red wine, eat cheese, baguettes and pastry, skip working out and never gain an inch.

    It is an image that has fuelled countless English-language books such as the best-seller “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” whose author Mireille Guiliano followed up with a cookbook and runs a website by the same name.

    But although the country’s traditional culture of eating may long have kept the French slimmer, the popularity of American-style fast-food joints like Starbucks and McDonald’s has led to expanding girths and a growing problem with obesity.

    A 2012 study by ObEpi-Roche showed French women’s waists had expanded by 6.7 cm in 15 years. The French Clothing Industry Union said that the average-sized woman had gone from a 38 in 1970 to a 40 today.

    Clothing brands have taken notice, but few in France offer bigger sizes. In Paris, the concept store Women Curves opened in September, but the shop remains an exception.

    Curvy fashionistas bemoan the difficulty of finding trendy clothes in France, and travel London or New York to do their shopping, or turn to the Internet.

    Pulp Fashion Week’s artistic director Lalaa Misaki gave up and created her own clothing line, but still feels acceptance for her size is hard to find in France.

    “When I go to New York I feel free, I dress like the other women. In Paris if I wear something short, if I expose some flesh, I get nasty looks,” she said.

    Kazi said hyper-fashion aware Parisians feared curvy women chipped away at the image of the perfect French woman.

    “The media objects to giving us attention because they are afraid of curvy women being seen as obese women,” she said. (SD-Agencies)