14 DAY TRIAL // The September issue of Glamour magazine featured on page 194, almost suffocated by ads and fashion shots depicting stick-thin, almost breakable models, a small picture of a woman to whom every other one out there could relate. Her name is Lizzie Miller: she is a 20-year-old model who, at 1.80m, weighs about 80 kg, meaning around or less than the average American woman, and who is considered by the industry too fat to model even plus-size lines. Her case has brought attention to the average lady at last, ABC News says.
The tiny photo in the women’s mag showed Miller wearing nothing but a winning smile. However, it was not her chest, her arms or her legs that caught the eye, but rather a very visible, albeit small, roll of fat on her stomach. The moment the print issue of the magazine hit newsstands, tens of women (and even some men) rushed to the magazine’s website to express their satisfaction at finally getting a real woman in the pages of a glossy magazine.
This kind of attention has inevitably brought back the question of whether part of today’s women’s problems are not also related to the sense of alienation they feel every time they open up a magazine, or watch TV, or simply walk around. It has also made of Miller the hottest commodity in modeling at the moment, with Glamour vouching to do a follow-up with more shots of her and the Today show asking her to come and talk about what it was like to be regular-sized in the world of fashion.
“Miller, who signed with Wilhelmina Models as a plus-size model at age 13, posed for the September issue of Glamour as part of a story on women who’re comfortable in their own skin. While she and other plus-size models appreciate the attention showered on the shot, they say it should be normal to see images of beautiful, full-figured women in pop culture.” ABC News writes of the reactions to the Glamour shot. Miller herself recalls how she grew up and would look through the pages of glossy magazines and find not even one model there to whom she could relate.
As for whether she’s promoting an unhealthy image, Miller says she’s far from that, since she is not overweight, just normal. “It’s sad. In the industry anything over size six is considered a plus-size. 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. The fact that this picture caused such a frenzy, it says that this is, obviously, something that people need to see. I’m not trying to promote obesity, and I’m not obese, but I’m also not stick thin.” Miller explains.