This is with Crystal Renn
On December 12, 2013, our group had an interview with Crystal Renn, a “plus-sized” model. The most surprising thing was that Crystal is considered a “plus-sized” model, and she’s only a size 8. Crystal didn’t want to be a model at first. She didn’t even know what models were. Her standard of beauty was looking at people in the mall. She got scouted when she was 14 years old and has been a model ever since (12 years, which is a long time for a model). When she saw computer images of models, she was shocked that they were actually real people. Their features seemed too perfect, and their bodies were so skinny they looked distorted.
Crystal said her modeling story affects all women and girls. She has had challenges with her looks and her body, and has been very open about them. She had anorexia for many years when she was younger, including her early years of modeling. She weighed 95 pounds, skinnier than the others. It wasn’t natural. It was shocking to look at her. Her agency got a message saying, “I can see every rib in her back and front, and her spine going all the way down. It’s really disturbing, and I’m going to have to retouch the image.” A second person, an editor at Glamour, said “This is a really serious problem, the way that she’s eating and obsessive. There’s something going on. She should be told about plus-sized modeling.” Plus-sized modeling gave Crystal a chance to go into recovery. She was able eat more, be healthy, and be herself. After having anorexia for many years and then being a plus-size model, she went down to a size 8. Now she’s in the middle, and nobody is doing that. It’s absolutely unheard of. There’s a large gap between the very skinny people and the people who are a size 12 or 14. The media is telling girls that you have to be a 2 or a 4 to be skinny and pretty. If you’re a 12 you’re plus-sized, and there’s no middle! You can’t be called a “normal sized” girl, because there isn’t any. It’s either being super skinny or “plus-sized.” I think that it’s really terrible that this gap is here. Girls shouldn’t have to try and make themselves something that they’re not, and it’s not possible for many girls to be a size 2 or 4. Even if it were possible, girls shouldn’t be told to spend their time and money on trying to change their bodies.
An interesting thing that Crystal told us was: “You’re looking really healthy” means you’ve gotten bigger, too big and not acceptable. “You look amazing” means you are skinny, as in you’re sick, but it looks great because you’re so skinny. In fact, the weight for a standard fashion model is about 20-30 pounds lighter than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
“Being a plus-sized model was the best thing I ever discovered,” Crystal said. She didn’t know it was an option before. It gave her the opportunity to feel that she was still a model while being healthy at the same time. She didn’t have to conform to an unnatural body size. She was able to see beauty in a different way. It showed her that the middle size could also be beautiful.
