Archive for April, 2008

I watched ANTM Wednesday night and was shocked to discover that a size 10 is considered plus size and that size 2 is prefered for the runway. Now there will be some who say that that’s just modeling and it was only 1 designer. But it’s the fashion industry and a lot of young women look at the models and want to emulate them, it’s also considered to be the “standard of beauty” for american women by some (a fact which I disagree with but that’s another blog topic).

Then there’s the fact that ANTM is a popular show. This is what cycle 10 or 11?

I watch the show and enjoy it (mostly) but I’ve had a big problem with how they deal with the models weight, sizes and body image issues. Whitney (the “plus sized” model on ANTM) doesn’t look plus sized to me. She looks healthy and normal. And I only hope that the negative connotation of the comments don’t derail her as they have the others in the past. Though I must say, Toccara is my favorite non-winning ANTM.

So I got curious and looked up the definition of plus sized -

a term used to describe models who exhibit clothing in UK Size 12 or higher; more broadly it refers to women of Size 16 or 18 and above

[Source]

Then I started thinking about it some more. Being considered plus size doesn’t bother me – I’m a size 10/12 mostly and have been considered ”full figured” before. And it is the modeling and fashion industry where a size 8 and up is considere to be “big” or “plus”. And there are a ton of top modeling agencies who book plus size models (Elite, Wilhelmina, Ford, Next, etc).

And from the buzz I’ve heard on the internet ANTM isn’t considered realistic to start. And most plus size models don’t go to the same castings as “typical” or “smaller” models. And just to be fair, Fatima at a size 0 or 1 (don’t recall) was considered to be too thin.

I personally perfer the term curvy.

Some resources for curvier women -

http://www.curvychick.com/

http://www.torrid.com/torrid/index.jsp