BOOTYLICIOUS! The women who put bottoms and bosoms back in vogue

Today I came across a recent issue of The Sunday Times Magazine which featured an article on plus sized models. The article looks at four beautiful models who are not the conventional model size and Gary Dakin, their modeling agent. Dakin’s biggest star is the model Crystal Rene, a size 14 who is a beautiful woman with large curves in all the right places. She turned to plus sized modeling after battling with Anorexia as a normal or ‘straight’ model. Dakin tells us that large is his ideal of beauty. “My best friend at school was 6ft tall, a big girl.... my Grandmother was a big woman... the ideal of beauty I grew up with’  He even encourages his girls to put on weight. ‘They’re supplied with padding to plump up hips, “chicken cutlets” to stuff into bras’. 

The fashion industry has questioned the plus- sized look suggesting that it was ‘promoting an image that is as unhealthy as emaciation’. Alexandra Shulman, an editor of Vogue, does not believe this is the future of fashion and feels that ‘readers (don’t) want very, very skinny girls; at the same time I don’t think they want size 16 girls either. I don’t think anyone sees a big girl walking down the runway and thinks ‘Oh, I must put some weight on”

I believe the increase of plus- sized models is definitely a step in a positive direction but even these women leave me feeling insecure. Although the reporter Louise France describes the girls as having ‘Stretch marks, dimples, squashy rolls of tummy’, none of these are visible in the photos. Yes the women look larger but they still look perfectly in proportion with every curve in the right place. Im probably a lot smaller in size than them but I still feel ugly in comparison, with all my lumps and bumps in the wrong places, and I'm sure many other girls would feel the same. Is the model we really need a woman with wonky boobs and a thick waist? The trouble is that fashion functions through aspiration. The aim of it is to use clothes to make you create an image of who you want to be. If the image was you already what would you be aspiring to be? At least these models aren’t promoting Anorexia and are encouraging young women that they can be both big and beautiful.