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Opinion: Is Tyra's Plus-Sized Model Search Sending The Right Message To Teens?
Posted on Jan 28th 2010 5:00PM by Bev SklarFiled Under: Celebs & Entertainment
Can you hear the collective gasp? Tyra Banks just announced she's searching for America's Next Top plus-sized teen Model. No rail-thin size zeros allowed. Oh my. First the women of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty hit the scene, now the stunningly powerful Tyra is casting 13 to 19-year-olds standing 5-foot 9-inches to 6-foot, 1-inch tall who wear size 12 to 20 dresses.Shaking up the pencil-thin modeling world is a good thing. But is a very tall 16-year-old wearing a size 12 skirt a slap in the face to beauty? Hardly. As reported in US Magazine, Banks claims she's satisfying her mission to widen the perceptions of true beauty within the industry and universally. She is not pleased that "plus-sized" is viewed so negatively. "I want young girls to realize that what's considered plus-sized is the average American woman ... That woman is healthy, fit and beautiful," Banks told US Magazine.
However, there's a significant difference in health between a teenager wearing a size 12 dress and one reaching for size 20 jeans. Obesity jeopardizes your health at any age.
It remains undeniable nearly one in three teens today are overweight or obese. Which means this casting call is speaking to a significant number of teenage girls at a highly impressionable time of their lives. Girls that shouldn't have to flip through style mags featuring only ultra-skinny or a plus-sized model being insultingly photographed squeezing into an undersized, silk dress like Glamour's plus-sized Crystal Renn was. Tyra's search could also have a potentially important fallout -- plus-sized teen fashion icons could bolster self-esteems that have been repeatedly bombarded by a fashion industry that excludes, rather than includes. Even so, it should be healthy bodies of various shapes that are represented, and not simply body types that reinforce the plague of obesity that is costing the U.S. billions of dollars and countless lives.
My daughter isn't a teenager yet. But when the hormones hit and the curves emerge, let's hope the fashion world speaks a language her unique, healthy and beautiful size will understand.
Maybe Tyra's new show will also counteract the disappearance of clothing on plus-sized racks.
