Wed, Sep 09, 2009
The New Paper

This is how a real woman looks like

THE appearance in Glamour magazine of a model who fills more of the page than fashion’s usual rake-thin stars is getting big cheers from US women.

Lizzie Miller has blonde hair and an effortless smile, but it is her chubby tummy and fuller legs that are winning attention.

Never before has a small roll of fat around the middle of a 20-year-old model garnered so much attention worldwide.

Miss Miller graces an article on feeling good in one’s own skin – not something that fashion industry critics believe the regular army of impossibly sculpted youngsters promotes.

More than 1,000 readers have responded since Glamour’s September issue in the US came out.

‘I am gasping with delight… I love the woman on p194,’ one wrote of the 3×3 picture .

‘Anyone who thinks that this model is unhealthy should have their head examined. She’s tall, has an athletic build and a bit of a tummy. End of story,’ another said.

Miss Miller told The Daily Record: ‘The comments made me quite teary-eyed. I know how those women feel. There was a time when I couldn’t even strip in front of my friends, I was so self-conscious.’

Glamour’s editor-in-chief Cindi Leive said ‘the letters about it started to flood my inbox literally the day Glamour hit newsstands’.

‘I hope it’s the beginning of a revolution,’ she said.

At least it could start a revolution in Miss Miller’s career, AFP reported. She has already been invited on television shows and her image is all over the Internet.

Her tummy featured as a story on America’s morning TV programme Today, one of the most-watched shows in the country, Daily Mail reported.

Miss Miller, from San Jose, California, admits that when she first saw the picture in the magazine, she thought it was less than flattering.

She recalled: ‘Then I saw what the editor saw. I stopped zoning in on my stomach and took a step back and saw the picture as a whole and I thought, wow, this really is a beautiful picture.’

Now Glamour is planning a follow-up feature in November’s issue which will include more shots of Miss Miller.

Another happy result: She has been inundated with offers of work.

Shift in perceptions

She said: ‘I never thought it would cause such a stir in America, never mind worldwide. It showed me how hungry people were to see this kind of image.’

But she hopes that public pressure will ultimately lead to a shift towards average size women appearing in magazines.

She said: ‘I think they have been dealing with thin women for so long a lot of them are afraid to change but I hope the commotion this picture has caused starts to make them reconsider.’

She told Daily Record that he father was apprehensive at her doing a nude shoot, adding: ‘I did remind him that it was Glamour magazine and not Playboy. At first, he was worried but then he was really supportive. Even my grandmother loved it.’

She said: ‘It is beautiful. I hope women get that little glimmer of hope that they don’t need to be tiny to be sexy.’

Many of the women who spoke out in support of the image were horrified that the professional model – who is 155cm and 79km – is considered too big to model even plus-size lines.

She said she struggled with weight in her adolescence, but was inspired to accept her fuller shape thanks to the success of generously proportioned stars like Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce Knowles.

Miss Miller told The Guardian: ‘Pretty much every picture in a magazine or ad is airbrushed… I don’t think the public understands how much smoke and mirrors are involved in making women look like that.’

This article was first published in The New Paper

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