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Last week Whitney Thompson became the first plus-sized model to win "America's Next Top Model." Or as one of her makeup artists said before the final runway competition, she was the "first juicy booty to make it on to the runway."
Of course the phrase "plus-sized model" is a relative term. Whitney says she's a size 10 and though in the modeling world, that's considered big enough to call for a forklift, in the real world that's considered, dare I say it...pretty normal.
ANTM is one of my personal guilty pleasures. All that strutting and pouting in high heels and expensive weaves gives me the giggles. The show also taught me a shocking lesson: models really have to know stuff. They aren't just breadstick thin hangers with no brains. They're highly trained professionals, skilled in a all kinds of important techniques. Like actors, they need to know their facial structure. Like dancers, they need to know movement. Like prisoners, they need to know how to live off bread and water.
Two weeks ago Tyra demonstrated the difference between a plain facial expression and the same expression except this time with her eyes smiling. The difference was simply a matter of how she squinted her eyes, but I tried to do it and I nearly dislocated my eye socket.
It's a lot of makeup and hairstyles and pretty pictures. And as long as you don't take the whole enterprise too seriously, it's harmless fun.
But there's a bunch of people, especially girls who do take a lot of this stuff seriously and I wonder if Whitney Thompson's win is good for them. In this LA Times interview Whitney talks about how being larger than a size 2 was often a problem:
I anticipated the worst at every challenge and photo shoot, like when they handed me a size 2 skirt and said "Put this on" and the stylist was cutting it and sewing it on. It's embarrassing. What girl wants to be told "You're too fat so we're going to glue you into the skirt." That is difficult, but I anticipated the worst. I was prepared mentally for that. Thank God, because that could really drag you down.
When asked if she was given "crap" from the other contestants about "being full figured," this is part of what she had to say:
You saw when Stacy Ann was like "Whatever, you're fat." And I was like "Uh, perhaps you meant P-H-A-T," which is totally my personality. There were a few times. I think the girls were a little jealous that they had to diet and they had to do this work to be super skinny, and I was like "Well, I don't, and my pictures still came out better than yours."
Whitney has confidence, that's for sure, and like Marissa Jaret Winokur on this season's "Dancing with the Stars," she refused to let her size define her ability. It was a kick to see a woman on reality TV, larger than the norm, being sassy, sexy, and more than holding her own with the skinny Minnies. In the final strut-off Whitney sashayed those juicy hips down the runway like nobody's business, while her waif-like opponent appeared stiff and uncomfortable.
In an interview with ABC News Whitney had this to say:
"I've stood there in the middle of an agency with everyone pointing at me and saying 'four more inches off the hips would be great,'" Thompson said. "I don't recommend any girl putting herself through that, but I did and I stand here unchanged, physically.
"Right before I left to do the first episode in L.A., I was with one of my best friends and she said, 'You're fat. You are not going to make it in this competition,'" she continued. "So every week that I made it, I was like, 'Ha!' Obviously, we're not friends anymore."
Around the blogosphere, Crazy Jen and her friend Kimmie were thrilled:
We always wanted her to win but it always seemed like the judges had it in for the larger than toothpick models. So...anyways, she won!
