I wanted to follow up on my blog from last week about body image because I just found another article in the New York Times which gives a very honest perspective from a size 12 model. Crystal Renn is the highest paid plus-size model, but she went through hell and back to get there. In her recently published memoir Hungry, she discusses a six-year-long eating disorder that she had because of the fashion industry. Much of it stemmed from a modeling scout that told her she could be a model if she went from a hip size of 43 inches to a mere 34. Needless to say, Renn drank Diet Coke and ate only sugar-free Jell-O for three months. She lost 42 percent of her body weight, but she wasn’t happy.
As a plus-size model, she feels like she is fighting for something she believes in. But, unfortunately, she still hears the “you’re not big” phrase from editors and photographers, which inevitably means that there are other plus-size models out there which they do consider to be “too big”. With anorexic 13-year-olds and the Heidi Montags of the world cutting their body away, there’s no doubt that our society has created an impossible standard when it comes to body image. Renn hopes that she will eventually work in a fashion industry where there’s diversity. Or is our society really that demanding of the ideal image? What do you think?
