Anyone who hasn’t been living in a fashion deprived box for the last year will know that when Crystal Renn burst onto the scene as a full figured model she made quite an impact. Crystal, who was scouted at the age of 14 and told to lose weight if she wanted to be a successful model, has had more success as a UK size 16 model than she ever had as an anorexic UK size 4.
But Renn has faced challenges from her critics in recent weeks. After making public her struggle with weight in her book ‘Hungry: A Young Model’s story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves’, Renn seems to have abandoned the opinions (and curves) that have made her a role model to regular women everywhere. While walking for Chanel’s 2011 Resort collection in Cannes, Renn had lost a significant amount of weight, leading onlooker and editor-in-chief of Flare Magazine Lisa Tant to comment that it is a “Mystery to me why Crystal Renn is called ‘plus size’…she looks normal, not plus”.
So why the weight loss? Renn’s publicist ensures us that Renn has been hiking and lost the weight due to this. But what does this say about plus size models? Then main thing that plus size models promote is that they are more of a realistic and healthy body shape than the thin models that own the catwalks. But, if Renn was so healthy how did she lose so much weight hiking? Surely exercise should be part of anybody’s routine, model or not and so quite an unhealthy image comes across when we learn that Renn’s ‘natural’ size 16 was due to a potentially lazy lifestyle.
Maybe I’m just cynical but it seems to me that Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld (who has said on various occasions that he disapproves of plus size models) only started to use Renn because of her weight loss? And if this is so, was the weight loss a conscious decision by Renn to get more high fashion work and not just a welcome side effect of three weeks hiking in Patagonia? Not that Renn couldn’t get work with her former voluptuous body. Crystal is the first plus size model to ever have a cover of Harpers Bazaar and has featured in four different Vogues worldwide. Given all this it seems plausible that Crystals weight loss was just a result of exercise… but this simply reinforces the bigger issue of plus size modelling in general. What size counts as ‘plus’? If Renn maintains this healthy lifestyle shouldn’t this be seen as an encouraging image for women? You needn’t be stick thin but it is important to keep fit too! Crystal Renn’s stunning face means that she can model regardless of her size, but if her aim is to be a role model to ‘real women’ then I think that her current regime is the most inspirational.
Written by Michaela Lydon
