Ralph Lauren's ad of this woman sparked controversy at the end of September when it had a sneak-preview on Boing-Boing. Gee, I wonder why. As Paul Constant of The Stranger commented, "This person does not even look human."

I know that in the UK and France, the governments are trying to restrict the use of airbrushed advertisements by placing some sort of warning label on the photos. Instead, I think they should go one step further and take away the metaphorical airbrushing licenses of some of these photo-shopping maniacs. Seriously, if you give the airbrushing rights to a perfectionist in photoshop (perhaps someone who is also concerned about their own body image), they will not stop until the model is airbrushed until her entire body disappears.

Where is the woman's waist? Her figure looks like a perfect "X", which is probably how they airbrushed out her natural body shape, which is probably slimmer than 99.9% of the population anyway. Are her arms even sexy? These are not the days where the women models have the buffed out arms of a Michelle Obama. Her elbows look like they could take out somebody and if she truly had this shape, I would put her more in the Amy Winehouse body-category than in something to truly strive for.


I'm glad to see that more magazines including Glamour and Brigitte are including plus-sized models in their pages. Next month, Glamour will be publishing a nude pictoral of plus-sized models. Brigette, a German magazine, recently held a contest to find plus-sized models based not only on their bodies and faces, but on their attitudes to their own personal beauty.  

I wish that more clothing designers would do the same in their advertisements. Selling a pair of jeans to a 5'4" woman who weighs 140 lbs. by using an airbrushed model who is more than likely 5'10" and less than 110 lbs. is like trying to buy a chihuahua dog sweater for your pit bull. The sweater may be cute on the chihuahua, but it's going to look ridiculous on the pitt bull.