Honey they shrunk the supermodel

As a teen, I thought Cindy Crawford was the epitome of hot.

Cindy "Chunky" Crawford rocks a runway in 1995, years before forcing me to buy a house full of Rooms To Go furniture.

Cindy "Chunky" Crawford rocks a runway in 1995, years before forcing me to buy a house full of Rooms To Go furniture.

Imagine my chagrin today as I perused an article in the January issue of PLUS Model Magazine that alleges Cindy wore a size 6, the same size as many of today’s non-super models.

It was quite a blow to learn I should have been buying Kate Moss calendars all those years.

The article says Cindy and other renowned hotties from a more portly era of posing (Paulina Porizkova and Billy Joel’s ex-wife) would be too chunky to make it onto the runways of today’s slimmer, and perhaps dangerously trimmer world of fashion. To prove their point, the magazine provides pics of a plus size model alongside a much thinner “straight size model.”

Fox News has a worksafe writeup, but for the pics you have to click on the full meal deal.

The pictures should “open the minds of the fashion industry,” which is stepping further away from reality, according to PLUS founder and editor-in-chief, Madeline Figueroa Jones, who is probably at least a size 8.

Jones, who may be frailer emotionally than physically, said she nearly cried when she first saw the pictures, but still ran them.

The magazine points out fashion models appear to be shrinking: “Twenty years ago the average fashion model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman. Today she weighs 23 percent less” and “most runway models meet the Body Mass Index physical criteria for Anorexia.”

Now, Cindy is 45, a mother of two and still easy on the eyes. She says she feels sorry for the supermodels of today and points out the obvious — “straight size models” have no curves.

Maybe that’s why my calendar collection stopped in 1989.

95 comments Add your comment

MrsLesh

January 12th, 2012
7:31 pm

Negative comments about women’s size and weight are always irritating. Some of these comments are vicious and some are truthful. The bottomline is we should all try to eat right and exercise. We are all made up differently and what might look fat to one person does not look that way to another. It doesn’t mean that person is not healthy. So, let’s stop embracing these stick-thin women as if they are perfect because they are not!

Downtown Heffa

January 12th, 2012
7:42 pm

Size 12 or larger should be considered plus size.

sarcasm101

January 12th, 2012
7:46 pm

Anorexia is the new black! Bulimia is for maintenance.

Harold

January 12th, 2012
8:05 pm

Ladies if you are getting a tad large, just make your hair larger. It works every time.

Explains why the hair in the South is so dang big, don’t it!!!!

Vote for Pedro

January 12th, 2012
8:10 pm

If you want to know why you are so fat look in the mirror… The rear view mirror.

Your car makes you fat and lazy, plus it takes you to drive thru’s.

Get rid of the car and you will lose your ton of weight.

Ron Burgundy

January 12th, 2012
8:18 pm

ITS ALL PINK INSIDE!!!

rukidding

January 12th, 2012
8:40 pm

So an 8 or a 10 is considered plus size? Seriously? I’m a size 6-8 and I would laugh at someone who called me plus sized. When are we going to wake up and see what we are doing to young girls? If God had wanted me to look like a twig, I’d be hanging on a tree!

Larger Lady

January 12th, 2012
8:58 pm

As someone who has struggled with weight issues all her life, I have a few personal insights to add to this conversation:

1. I don’t think “regular” sizes have gotten bigger. I have lost a lot of weight twice in my life – decades apart – and the sizes I got down to were the same. If clothes were being made so much bigger now, you’d think I’d have managed to fit into even tinier sizes at the same weight when I was finally that “skinny” girl. I do find it interesting that while more emphasis is put on size 0 to 4, the industry has also over the last decade or so started building up – adding sizes above a 16-18, as more and more women need them. One cam buy 1x up to 5x or more these days. 20 up to 30.

2. I am 6 feet tall, and even at my skinniest, which by today’s BMI was underweight for my height – and from old pix, looked emaciated most places – I still could only shrink down to a size 10. Yet, there were the haters who convinced me I was still fat.

3. The fashion industry is NOT in the service of women. There is little love for women’s bodies among most designers, who sniff at the thought of having to cut cloth for real bodies. The same industry that worships at the altar of thin also tells us we must color our hair, botox our face, get electrolysis, undergo plastic surgery, and do anything to avoid looking like ourselves.

4. I don’t understand how my body size could provoke such words of disgust and ridicule from someone like the most rabid haters on this site. Such indictments caused me great sorrow in my youth (and drove me further into the arms of COMFORT FOOD). I can state from personal experience that FAT is the last acceptable target of prejudice and public derision. You can’t ridicule gays, talk down blacks or other races, or say “retarded” any more. AND I”M NOT ADVOCATING THAT WE SHOULD! I just wish it would become politically incorrect to ridicule obese people.

5. While all people’s metabolisms are different, there is a growing trend of obesity in this country. That is cause for concern. As we adopt more sedentary life styles in front of our computers and LED TVs, the trend will continue and accelerate. I wonder if the level of hate towards obese people will ever lessen, even when more and more people qualify as “targets”?

KJ

January 12th, 2012
9:06 pm

“What nobody is saying is that a “size 6″ has become meaningless to define anything.”

Yup. There are size 6s that are in excellent shape, and “size 6s” that couldn’t find the gym if they dunked the stairmasters in krispy kreme glaze.

While some of you are in obvious fat-denial… why would you care about the sizes of supermodels anyway? They represent .00000000001% of the population, and I don’t know of a single man who cares who’s coming down the runway this season. It’s a complete non-issue.

SF = moron

January 12th, 2012
9:09 pm

@SorryFolks- You are a moron, a jerk, and my bet is that you’re still single looking for that “perfect woman” that exists only in your own mind, since no decent woman will put up with you. (whew, I feel better with that off my chest!)

You are psychotic if you think that a size 6 is a plus size for women. I’m a former collegiate rower currently a fitness instructor who teaches high-impact aerobics classes 5-6 times/week, and I am a size 6. And I promise you that not a single one of my customers, friends, or anyone who saw me in person or in a photograph would call me “plus-size.” BTW, I can also guarantee that you would never make it through one of my classes!

Yes, there are people who are obese, unhealthy, lazy, and pull the wool over their own eyes about a physical situation that could possibly cut their life short. However, you are making incorrect assumptions and judgements by associating a number with a lifestyle- frankly, I think you probably know very little about women’s clothing sizing. You brag about your own measurements- frankly, they’re the same as my husband’s and, while he is not obese at all, he could certainly stand to get in a little bit better shape (and he’d be the first to admit it!).