FoxNews.com is reporting that the January issue of PLUS Model Magazine is causing a global stir by featuring the nude plus size model Katya Zharkova beside a typical model in an attempt to "open the minds of the fashion industry" whose emaciated models are becoming increasing irrelevant to the average woman.
The photos appear alongside eye-opening statistics about today's sometimes dangerously thin models and the continuously shrinking frames of plus size models.
Among the revelations: “Twenty years ago the average fashion model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman. Today she weighs 23 percent less” and “most runway models meet the Body Mass Index physical criteria for Anorexia.”
As the feature points out, ten yearse ago, plus-size models wore sizes 12 to 18. Today those numbers have shrunk to size six to 14 - roughly the same sizes that super models Christie Brinkley and Cindy Crawford wore at the height of their fame in the 1990s.
In spite of the fact that 50 percent of women wear a size 14 or larger, the fashion industry and standard clothing outlets typically cater to much smaller sizes.
PLUS founder and editor-in-chief, Madeline Figueroa Jones said she cried when she first saw the images, which were photographed by Victoria Janashvili.
"When they came to me, there was no hesitation on my part," she said. "I knew this would be amazing or people to see and that if we added the correct statistics, the impact would be powerful.”
And powerful it was. The feature has gone viral.
“The statistics and photos in this article have had a global impact,” Tulin Reid, Executive Marketing and Creative Director of PLUS said in a statement. “As a plus size fashion magazine, we are thrilled with the results as it expands the conversation that we have monthly between advertisers, designers, readers and the modeling industry."
While it is equally unhealthy to promote being over-weight, Jones claims the magazine is not trying to promote an unhealthy lifestyle, but rather “the right to have as many fashion options as the next size 2, 6 or 8 woman.”
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