TV personality and former supermodel Tyra Banks recently wrote an open letter in to Vogue praising the magazine for making the decision to ban photos of models who look like they have an eating disorder. She says in the letter, which ran in The Daily Beast:
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Tyra Banks models in the Victoria's Secret fashion show, 1999
“If I was just starting to model at age 17 in 2012, I could not have had the career that I did. I would’ve been considered too heavy. In my time, the average model’s size was a four or six. Today you are expected to be a size zero. When I started out, I didn’t know such a size even existed.”
The creator, producer and judge of TV’s “America’s next top model” gave this account of how she ultimately was deemed too heavy to continue her career as a model at one point:
“In my early 20s I was a size four. But then I started to get curvy. My agency gave my mom a list of designers that didn’t want to book me in their fashion shows anymore. In order to continue working, I would’ve had to fight Mother Nature and get used to depriving myself of nutrition. As my mom wiped the tears from my face, she said, ‘Tyra, you know what we’re going to do about this? We’re going to go eat pizza.’ We sat in a tiny pizzeria in Milan and strategized about how to turn my curves into a curveball. In a way, it was my decision not to starve myself that turned me into a supermodel, and later on, a businesswoman.”
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Banks’ letter got many responses. Here are some from Yahoo:
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- “I’ve always enjoyed the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, until this season. I noticed that the models were noticeably thinner this year. The Victoria’s Secret models used to be a little curvier than the typical runway model, very feminine and sexy, and made the lingerie look fabulous. This year most of the models had no curves; it was like watching 13-year-old girls playing dress-up. I didn’t see anything that motivated me to run out and buy their merchandise!”
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- “This anorexic look that the designers are pushing through is just ridiculous. Sure, there are few girls who can be 5’10″ and 110 lb, but they are extremely rare. The other models have to starve themselves or do drugs to be that thin. I would have to starve myself and also break my hips to make them smaller before I could fit into size 0. I love my body the way it is and refuse to change to be some anorexic doll who is one meal away from dying from starvation.”
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- “I think ‘most women’ would appreciate seeing models that looked more ‘normal’ in size. It’s kind of like when I see a commercial for anti aging cream, and they have a young 20 something model doing the commercial. It’s NOT realistic, and it’s insulting. I wish they would have sizes starting at ’6,’ and walk the cat walk with models all the way up to a size 12. Have all those different sized models intermingling. Now, that would be realistic.”
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- “If models were size 4 twenty years ago and size 0 today, I shudder to think what they will look like 20 years from now if the trend continues.”
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See more photos of Tyra Banks here
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Tyra Banks: ‘You are expected to be a size zero’ is a post from: In Your Face