Again, I can’t remember who said this, but the comment was made that Whitney is the type of woman a man wants in his bed, but Anya is the type of woman that women want to see selling clothes in magazines. It does raise the question: does our (female consumers) consumption of fashion magazines go up in proportion to the thinness of the featured models? Are there stats on this? I just wonder.

At any rate, models used to be expecteds to fit standard or ’sample size’ clothing that was provided by the clothing maker…and this is why, I believe, there were no larger models for a long time. Samples were sent in size 6 and that was it. Women in the double-digit sizes could still look at outfits on models and then have the outfit ordered in her own size. So the ‘model’ was originally intended to be average-sized, to fit the sample clothing that the designers sent to the shop.

And I know of plenty of ‘plus size’ models before this Whitney chick came along…Emme, Sophie Dahl, and Anna Nicole Smith, to name some.

As a side note, I didn’t believe that those judges, in good conscience, could *possibly* have elected Fatima to win ~ that woman is a poster-girl for emaciation! Sure, sure…with a ‘pretty face’ et cetera….but there’s no denying that there was something…hmm…concentration-campy about her. I’ll leave it at that.
And they were probably betting that Anya and Fatima could get plenty of work on their own after the show was over, whereas Whitney can make the most of her “launch” into modelling without necessarily relegated to the plus-size, consolation prize, alterna-world of “big girl” modelling.

Ok. So maybe she IS only ‘plus size’ in the model world. But how many women watch shows like ‘America’s Next Top Model’ and get the impression that those contestants are the epitome of beautiful? So many women see stick-thin women presented as ‘beautiful’ and believe that they should put forth an effort to look the same.
Consider the core concept of ‘model’: a model is someone or something that is meant to be a representation, and often is meant to be emulated (hence ‘role model’). Women who are models are supposed to be such that others want to follow their lead; they are presented as the ideal female spokespeople.
When we see only super-skinny women in the role of ’spokesperson for women,’ we come to believe (in those warped little heads of ours) that if we look ‘normal’ (average weight and curvy figures), we aren’t being the best women we can be.
Tyra doesn’t seem to understand that a lot of women take modelling far more seriously than they should. For too many girls, the model world is the real world. And it’s all because of what modelling is: a demonstration of what a woman is ’supposed to be.’