Home Fashion My ascent as a Times Square Billboard Model.

My ascent as a Times Square Billboard Model.

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The split between America’s reality and fantasy is a mirror of the fashion industry. There is an omnipresent divide between “straight size” models (sizes 0-4) and “plus-size” models (sizes 8-20). The plus-size models are general relegated to the smaller, more specialized companies and that has led to a backlash among curvy models and women against thin girls. This backlash spreads an equally unhealthy ideal: that thinness is evil, and only heavy women are beautiful and worthy of attention.

I think if we work to eradicate this divide and emulate health in all its forms, we will improve the fashion industry and our cultural mindset about beauty and body image. For example, there are women who are healthy at 5’11′ and a size 0. But they are few and far between and for every 1 of these naturally skinny girls, there are dozens that are starving themselves. The same can be said for a woman who is 5’7″ and size 18. Of course there are some, but most are living an unhealthy lifestyle. So, what if the fashion industry had a place for both the extremes and everything in between. If a woman that ate and lived well was the ideal, instead of the outlier.

Crystal Renn said on the Today show, “what I think would end the confusion is if we just call each other, you know, all the models, just models. No more straight-size, no more plus-size, because then I think it’s us against them. Them against us. And that is absolutely not the way women should look at each other.”  Renn has the support of the biggest names in fashion in her quest to erase these harmful labels, and I hope the rest of the fashion world will follow suit.

The fashion and entertainment industry will, of course, always have an element of glamour that comes from being exclusive and worshipping the ideal body. But if we shift what America views as the ideal body, we can allow for health and vigor to be a part of that glamorous world.

Kylie Bisutti: The next Supermodel on the Horizon?

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