In an interesting profile on the fashion industry's plus-size "it" girl, Crystal Renn, The New York Times gets her take on the media and society's ideas of body image.
Renn recently published a haunting memoir recounting her days as a young model, struggling with anorexia and a difficult industry to infiltrate at her natural size. Renn, who now enjoys a spot on top of the plus-size genre of modeling at 165 pounds and a size 12, dipped below 100 pounds during the height of her disorder, for what she thought would be the height of her success.
She brings an interesting point of view to the issue du jour in the world of women's fashion media, revealing that her size is actually fetishized for its largesse, with her shape as airbrushed to emphasize thickness as much as thinness would be on a smaller model. Her fat rolls serve as a focal point, where a "straight-size" model would get the same level of attention for her ribs. At a size 12, Renn is technically below the average size of the American woman, bringing up a whole new absurdity to the term "plus-size" model.
As the debate over what a "normal" size looks like rages on, we're more and more certain that there's no such thing. After all that's morphed in the media, they're never as skinny or, apparently, as fat as what we're seeing.
