Glamour Photo Of Beautiful Woman With Pudge Gets Readers Excited

If Readers Love This Photo So Much, Why Don’t Magazines Print More Like It?

Posted by: Catherine Strawn Filed in: news
3:45PM, Friday August 21st 2009

Earlier this week, Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive wrote a blog post about a photo in the magazine’s September issue that has caused her inbox to overflow. The 3-by-3-inch photo on page 194 of the magazine is of 20-year-old model Lizzi Miller in a practically non-existent pair of underwear. What got Glamour readers so excited was how normal Miller looks. She’s a size 12 to 14, and has a little pudge on her stomach.

Leive suggests readers toast Miller and “the spectacular sexiness of owning who you are,” and goes on to say that Glamour is listening, and asks what kinds of images women would like to see in the magazine. If this is the kind of image that gets women excited, why don’t magazines print more like it?

While it is a nice idea to believe that magazines are created for their readers, it’s more complicated than that. There are advertisers to appease, along with designers and PR people who try to get their products featured in the most desirable light. With so many cooks in the kitchen, perfection probably seems like the easiest way to please everyone involved. And so we have a beautiful, thin model with clear skin and nice teeth who makes clothes look good, whose looks suggest that she uses the right products on her skin and whose body seems to demonstrate what proper exercise can do for you. But the models pictured next to magazine articles usually don’t do what the accompanying text suggests to readers, whether that’s eat right or use a particular face wash, and readers aren’t seeing themselves in her anymore—or maybe they never did but before they wanted to be like her. It seems our attitudes have changed.

When I look at Vogue, Elle, or any other fashion or women’s interest magazine, I see pages with beautiful people wearing lovely clothes, but I can’t always see how they fit into my life. Often, I don’t even imagine myself in a cheaper version of what’s pictured. Even women who follow exercise plans espoused on glossy pages don’t always end up resembling the models who demonstrate the routines. But there are so many different “me” types to please. A magazine’s readership can’t be comprised of millions who are exactly the same. How can editors make everyone happy (or at least happier)?

Now that Leive and other magazine editors have seen how natural-looking women with more realistic bodies strike more of a chord with readers than perfection, perhaps we’ll see more of ourselves in magazines. But remember, an issue can’t be filled with women who have bodies just like yours; that would leave out whole groups of readers with other body types. Magazines don’t have to become home to only plus-size models and skin with wrinkles. All we can ask for is a little diversity. [Glamour]

comments

Coral
wrote on August 21 2009 @ 03:36 pm: [report]

I like this a lot. But I can’t believe that the model is a size 12 or 14. She looks more like a 4 or 6 to me. It might be the angle though. But it’s great that magazines are beginning to accept people of all sizes and shapes.

Alli
wrote on August 21 2009 @ 04:24 pm: [report]

well if she’s a model she’d be at least 5’10 so just imagine blowing up a girl who’s 5’4” and a size 4/6 and then you’d get her being a size 12/14

impoddity
wrote on August 21 2009 @ 04:25 pm: [report]

I’m glad the readers are responding. I’m a size 4/6 (gym and good genes) and seeing those models whose thighs are as narrow as their calves is simply nauseating. At least Photoshop a little meat onto them!

develange
wrote on August 21 2009 @ 04:37 pm: [report]

well…what happens once we start seeing models with more “normal” bodies? there will be something else to dislike. Maybe it will move on to the face. This model has a pretty face, clear skin. It will always be something.

joyy
wrote on August 21 2009 @ 04:47 pm: [report]

I never read ladymags, but I saw this when I flipped through one while waiting to get my hair cut last week. I just stopped and thought “how nice” - it reminded me of the dove real beauty campaigns.

Jenn805
wrote on August 22 2009 @ 02:48 am: [report]

B-R-A-V-O! Depicting such raw reality is rather refreshing.

prgirl
wrote on August 22 2009 @ 05:55 am: [report]

I love this and hope this continues because it will (imo) help the next generation of women accept and love their bodies more readily and easily than we do now. High school already beat themselves up for thousands of reasons, and how perfect a body they should have is certainly at the top. I am a size 6 but will always have a pudge like the model’s above because of pregnancy. Because of stretch marks, I will never have a full-on flat belly, even though my abs might be “of steel”. That’s the reality, after gaining only 20 pounds, my lower body was full of stretch marks no amount of exercise would reduce. To see beautiful women with my same pudge is lovely and empowering!

tishfish44
wrote on August 22 2009 @ 08:43 pm: [report]

She’s obviously gorgeous but are we so deluded to think she’s a size 12/14???? She’s a 6/8, and there is NOTHING wrong with that. WHATEVER size she is, she is clearly very healthy looking. I would prefer the picture with clothes however, only because then I could see what the clothes might look like on me (as opposed to the ads with the size-zero models, which I have no idea how that translates to a size-8 figure).

Shasta
wrote on August 22 2009 @ 11:09 pm: [report]

I had a guy remark that he didn’t care what size a girl was as long as she was firm.

We somehow have come to equate low body weight with a good body, and thin doesn’t always mean hot. You can be skinny and saggy and veiny and icky.

Girls talk about “losing weight” when they should be talking about “getting in shape.” Men don’t care about the number on the scale or the size of your jeans.

writergirl
wrote on August 23 2009 @ 05:30 am: [report]

Actually, I would agree she’s a sixe 12/14 based on her bottom half—she just carries her weight below her waist—she’s a pear shape. Something the photoshop department in magazines works overtime to eliminate all traces of.

She and I are the same size…given she’s probably about 4 inches taller than me though, she is better proportioned and looks better over-all.

Me—I still have to keep making dates with the treadmill.

Its a good picture, and it would be nice to see more of these in magazines but it still isn’t going to do anything to bolster my self esteem.

bettyboo
wrote on August 23 2009 @ 02:22 pm: [report]

I suspect they mean a UK size 12-14.. which looks about right to me.. :O) I seem to recall that UK size 10 is about a US size 4 so about a 6-8 is US sizes I guess..Whatever she is I think she looks great :O)

bettyboo
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 10:42 am: [report]

Just watched the tv footage and seems I was wrong.. it sounds like she is a US 12-14.. UK size 18-20. which looks amazingly good on her :0)

_jsw_
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 10:57 am: [report]

I’m very much in favor of using non-sticks in ads. On a similar note, I’d be very happy if the balding guy wasn’t always the idiot in commercials where there’s one out-of-shape receding-hairline guy and one model-attractive one. I’m sure the same goes for ads with women in them.

It’s nice seeing ads where the people look like ones you’d meet in real life. I mean, yes, some level of attractiveness is nice - to the extent that that aren’t distractingly unattractive - but “real” people sell me on things more readily when those things aren’t specifically fitness or beauty related.

That said, I don’t want to see truly obese people in ads. Not because there aren’t a lot of obese people (BMI-wise, I border on it), but because obesity isn’t something I want to see promoted - as typical as it is nowadays, it’s still incredibly unhealthy. A far smaller percentage of the population was obese 25 years ago, so “it’s genetic” doesn’t much stack up as an excuse for most.

For the record, I do not consider the model in this post to be even vaguely obese. I just think that it’s getting far more acceptable to be truly fat nowadays, and that’s not a good thing. And I say that as someone who weighs 50% more than I did when I graduated college.

bogart4017
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 12:56 pm: [report]

Nothing was more of a turn-on than this plus-size underwear catalog i got my hands on a few years back. I never knew there were size 16-20 models. Man it was better than any issue of Playboy i’ve ever seen.

_jsw_
wrote on August 24 2009 @ 01:03 pm: [report]

@ bogart4017: Sure, fine, but were the articles as interesting?

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