Monthly Archives: October 2011

Over the past couple of weeks I worked on a set with over 6 models, gorgeous models with great rock hard bodies who were wearing swimwear and I was quite shocked to hear them all talking about how they are either going to get plastic surgery within the next 6 months, be it for breast augmentations or tummy tucks  or even getting their nose fixed here and there. Honestly, there was absolutely nothing wrong with these models but they were all under the impression that if they did not get these procedures they will not get enough work from their agencies. I think it’s complete and utter nonsense.
Now I am well aware I could do with losing weight to feel healthier but, I have always been horrified at the medias perception of what a beautiful woman should look like.  Skinny, Tall, and a strong resemblance to Barbie seems to be the norm.  But I, like many others, am a whole different type of normal beauty.  Curvy, soft, and nowhere near a size 0.  Yet, I believe I shine.  Why can’t we focus on inner beauty, the radiance of a woman’s smile, the curve of her hips, and the light in her eyes?  After doing some reading on the internet, I found this article which is so true and may do us all a favour for reading about it.

The plastic surgery a model needs to look like Barbie

Written by Piper Weiss of Shine Staff.

We know that Barbie’s body is anatomically impossible. So why are we still trying for it?

Every day a new plastic surgery promise emerges: scooped-out backs rear-end lifts, sculpted kneecaps. If it’s possible, it’s suddenly necessary.

But what exactly would you have to go through to get the ‘perfect’ Barbie body? In the latest issue of O Magazine, model Katie Halchishick becomes the human diagram.
Posing for photographer Matthew Ralston, her glamorous, Marilyn Monroe-type features are surgically outlined according to Barbie’s proportions.

Here’s a breakdown of what she’d need done to be the kind of doll women aspire to: a brow lift, a jaw line shave, rhinoplasty, a cheek and neck reduction, a chin implant, scooped-out shoulders, a breast lift, liposuction on her arms, and tummy tuck, which would also have to be sculpted as if it were lined in whale-bone from the inside. And that’s just the half of her.

Halchishick doesn’t actually need or want any of these procedures. She’s proving a point: just because our distorted image of how a body should be is medically attainable, that doesn’t mean it should be attained.

And if you doubt that anyone actually wants to look like Barbie, meet Cindy Jackson, a 55-year-old woman who’s had 52 cosmetic surgeries to look like her plastic idol.”This is the way I should look,” Jackson told Good Morning America. “It’s evolution. It’s medical progress.”  There’s also 10-in-one-day record-holder Heidi Montag, and a revolving door of on-screen personalities who look more like each other and less like human beings by the day.

Not everyone would call that progress. “The number one wish for all teenage girls is to be thinner,” said Halchishick, a former Ford Model who now mentors high school students about body image issues. “They think what makes a girl beautiful is skinny with big boobs, perfect hair, perfect make-up.”  Last year a total of 13.1 million body parts were surgically altered. Five percent of patients were under the age of 20.

Halchishick, who co-founded the website Healthy is the New Skinny, doesn’t place all the blame on surgery or a pint-sized rubber and plastic doll. She believes change has to start in schools, as well as in the fashion industry. “Girls want to know how to lose weight so badly, and the schools don’t want to talk about it, because they’re worried they’ll develop a complex,” she told The Gloss in March. “There need to be models to show [girls] to wish for more.”  She now heads up her own modelling agency for women with natural figures. She’s also campaigned to get plus-sized designers into New York Fashion Week. But her spread in O magazine, the first nude pictorial they’ve ever featured, has been the most buzz-worthy.

Accompanied by an essay by writer Amy Bloom, the photograph is intended to make women rethink their body image ideals. But it hasn’t had that effect on everyone. When one 15-year-old girl saw this photo of Halchishick, her first thought was of her own imperfection, according to a blogger for Healthy is the New Skinny.  “I thought if a girl as pretty as that has to change so much to be perfect, it made me wonder how much more I’d have to change.”

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did… never forget you are beautiful, no matter what size pants you wear and just strive to be the best you can be!

missfitzz