L-A: I’m stepping into territory that can be categorized as follows: “too effing easy” and “done to death”. Through Elle Canada’s facebook page I ended up on Coco Perez reading about Crystal Renn’s recent photo spread in Harper’s Bazaar. I have little time for that Perez fellow, so I’m a little ashamed to say it got me onto a post topic for today. Anyway, the Perez fellow muses about whether Crystal Renn should still be considered a plus sized model:
nice wedges.
To be fair, Harper’s Bazaar has not hired the model to be a token plus sized girl in a token “beauty at any size” sort of issue. They’ve just hired her to model some of the Resort 2011 collection (which I like. Especially those Chloé wedges). Crystal Renn is just known for her size issues: after being discovered as a model and told to drop over 1/3 of her body weight and she did so. Eventually, she gained back 70 pounds and at a size 12, was considered plus size. She’s written about this. Before we carry on, for comparison, let’s look at Renn in a 2006 Gaultier show:
The questions of, “is Renn still plus sized?” have been floating around the interwebz since the Harper’s spread was released. And here are my answers to the question:
- probably not.
- who the fuck cares.
- she’s not super model skinny, but she looks good, so that’s okay.
What I like is that even though she is bigger than your average model (she’s somewhere between a size 8 and 10 right now, according to her agent), she was hired to do the work of your average model. That’s what really sticks in my craw about the plus sized models: they’re hired for only plus sized work. And when they’re hired for anything other than that, we get all “oooh! look how good we are! we accept bigger sizes!”
I’m not saying no to the skinny model, I’m just saying good job for hiring the non-skinny-but-still-kind-of-skinny model. More importantly, maybe we can stop asking if a model is plus sized or not. Because when we ask that, we question why she is the size she is and we keep focusing on size in terms of good size and bad size. And there shouldn’t be good size/bad size. There should be healthy size. And healthy sizes should include skinny and not skinny, and healthy can include some weight gain and some weight loss.
And that’s my take on a subject that already has a million takes on it. My apologies for beating a dead horse. (also, apologies if this didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’m on the sudafed today).
Ally: It’s first thing Monday morning and I’m running behind. I feel as though this post needs significant thought, and not a “What L-A said”. That’s how I feel though. What L-A said. Interested in hearing what readers think.
