BEAUTY WARS: Skinny or scrawny? Fashion gets an ugly look at itself.

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Models Jen (size 12) and Marianne (size 0) squared off across the pond…and Jen’s the last woman standing. Probably because Jen ate breakfast.

As you might guess, I’m not a huge fan of those Who Wants To Make Me America’s Most Smartest Supermodel shows which pit skinny self-impressed morons against other skinny self-impressed morons, and which are judged by petty, sarcastic, self-enamored has-beens who hate every single contestant for being younger than they are.

I was, however, recently induced to watch season 2 of England’s Make Me A Supermodel, which featured model Jen Hunter, a gorgeous young mother who happens to hover somewhere around a size 12. The show’s producers (whose IQ’s are at least a standard deviation above any of the judges) let the judging panel, led by hosebeast Rachel Hunter, have their heads as far as insulting the “fat, lazy and greedy” Jen. The judges completely melted down as the popular vote put Jen through round after round, and English audiences got a front row view into the icy, hollow insides of Ms. Hunter and her evil minions. The result was that Jen’s size became her kryptonite to the weak, pasty horror of all the size 00 female contestants, who dropped like flies. Jen, eliminated after the swimsuit round, was nevertheless the last woman standing, as well as the first woman to walk into the lookbooks of Cape Model - a major modeling agency - in size 12 couture. While she continues to face prejudice in the industry regarding her size, she maintains both her her dignity and her bodyweight in stunning form.

Skinny wasn’t always the rage; the general preference has historically been for the women considered most beautiful to be voloptuous as an indication of good health and fertility. The fashion industry, which is in the business of selling clothes, not beauty or health, moved away from regular sized models to super skinny waifism in an effort to reduce the amount of attention that the models were diverting from the clothing. In other words, they didn’t look enough like hangers. Kate Moss resulted.

Even original supermodel Twiggy, known for impersonating a giraffe, is speaking up in defense of larger models.

“It’s very worrying,” Twiggy said in Los Angeles.
The 57-year-old pop icon has called on fashion magazines to ban unhealthily skinny models and for the modelling [sic] industry to be regulated.
Born Lesley Hornby, but given the nickname Twiggy for her reed-thin body, said she was naturally skinny when she revolutionised [sic] the fashion world in the late 1960s.
“When I was modelling through 16 to 20, when I got blamed for making kids want to be thin, I ate absolutely everything, but I was naturally skinny,” she said.
“I ate, but I had a really high metabolism.”
Today, many models, actresses and women in the public eye have lost large amounts of weight and Twiggy, without naming names, says it is easy to spot them.
“You get what I call the lollypop look,” she said.
“If somebody is not naturally slender, if their head is too big for their body, the chances are they are dieting too much.”
It is not just Hollywood’s young women that concern her, with Twiggy pointing to well-known actresses beyond their 20s who appear to be starving themselves.
“A lot of them aren’t girls,” Twiggy continued.
“They are women. You can’t believe somebody in their 30s and 40s would want to do that or go there.
“It’s incredible really.”

Europe has begun to reclaim fashion by insisting that clothing be designed for a larger range of sizes. As recently as last month, three models were fired during Milan’s fashion week for being too thin. This move needs to hop the pond and descend like a ton of bricks on the sort of people who would call Liv Tyler fat, post-haste.