say what's good to...CRYSTAL RENN

who: Crystal Renn, author of "Hungry"

what: "Plus sized" [read size 12] model

where: New York Times

when: Jan 13, 2009

why you should care: In a recent article published by the New York Times, we were introduced to a model named Crystal Renn, who has taken the industry by storm. For a second time. You see, when Renn first came on the scene [age 16, 98lbs] she looked like the image on the right. Fast forward seven years [age 23, size 12], and Renn is the image on the left, one of the highest paid "plus sized" models in the biz.

She's shot editorials for everyone from Glamour, to Elle, to the controversial spread "One Size Fit's All" for V Magazine. In this spread, Renn sports the same designer fashion as another model who is a size 2. It's supposed to show that big girls can wear the same clothes as well as, if not better than, the rail thin models that fill glossies every month.

Unfortunately, I think this spread fails on a couple different fronts. Number 1: As Renn said herself: editors are essentially fetishizing "fat". “When designers and editors choose one fat girl to salivate over, and revel in her avoirdupois, I’m not sure how much it advances the cause of using girls of all sizes in a magazine.” she wrote. Just as editors patted themselves on the back when the All Black Models issue of Vogue Italia came out, now they can move ahead with their preferred skinny models because they'll always be able to look back to the ONE issue where they featured big girls and yell "SEE! We include everyone on our pages!" Pure bullshit, if you ask me. Number 2: Did you know that many of these "plus size" models are size 10 and 12 [which in my head is actually NORMAL], and have ADMITTED to using padding on set to make themselves a size 20? I mean, what the hell sort of twisted logic is that? Either way, the images we see every month are false. And finally: What happens to the size 6 or size 8 girl? Where are they supposed to fit into this? Unfortunately, the whole situation seems like an all or nothing equation which essentially hurts everyone in the end. Big, skinny, small or little, all the images are altered. The sooner we can not only admit but truly understand that, the sooner we can move past these blip in the pan, glorification issues, and finally get on with the show.