The February 2010 issue of the Australian version of Marie Claire magazine reveals the ‘naked truth’ as model Jennifer Hawkins not only poses nude but the photo is untouched. The Miss Universe 2004 agreed to do the photo to encourage positive attitudes to body image and also to support the Butterfly Foundation; an organization that helps Australian girls with eating disorders. She did confess that before hand she never could have done such a shoot where her cellulite is revealed as well as some minor rolls around the waistline. She said,

“I would have been worried about what people thought, whether it was the right decision – a thousand different things… But over the past year and a half I’ve grown into myself, and I’m more confident and comfortable within the modeling industry. I did it for the experience… It felt quite sensual and sexy. I felt empowered.”

Inside the magazine Jennifer talks candidly about her rise to fame and even though she’s naturally thin she gives great detail about her strict diet and strenuous daily workouts. Marie Claire follows in the footsteps of magazines like Glamour and V as well as Bettina Liano Jeans, who are trying to show what ‘real women’ look like.

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As the fashion industry gears up for the January debut of V Magazine’s plus-size issue everyone’s talking about the photos that have already been leaked of plus-size model Crystal Renn. As seen in the photo above this is just one example of Crystal posing alongside Jacquelyn Jablonski, a ‘thin’ supermodel rather new in the modeling world but has already modeled for Calvin Klein Jeans and Proenza Schouler. The images were taken by fashion photographer Terry Richardson and they are the latest in a series of campaigns for designers and magazines to enlist models that represent a variety of shapes and sizes.

These days Crystal Renn is a staunch campaigner against identikit catwalk models as she almost died from an eating disorder when she was younger and just beginning in the modeling world. She said,

“I’d love to see [the fashion industry] open their eyes to the variety of women. That variety is what’s beautiful.”

She doesn’t feel that ALL models need to be a size 16 but the small clothing at the fashion shows don’t fit girls and that’s why they starve themselves in order to fit into the clothes. But if designers make larger dresses they will fit all kinds of sizes and can be pinned and altered if needed for the fashion shows. The new issue of V Magazine will be out on January 14th.

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The 32-year-old actress Brittany Murphy died of cardiac arrest and/or natural causes over the weekend. There are still no concrete conclusions as to the cause of death but many are assuming she’s been anorexic for years and possibly abused drugs. However, during her 15 year Hollywood career she always denied any eating disorder and drug use. It was in her 2002 film Spun, when people started talking as she was drastically thinner than she was for her breakout film, Clueless, in 1994. The in 2005 she became vocal in denying the reports. When asked about drug abuse she told Jane Magazine,

“I have never tried it in my entire life. I’ve never even seen it…. It couldn’t be further from the truth.”

During that same year while promoting Sin City she denied having an eating disorder. She said,

“I’m the same size I was in Clueless; it’s just that the weight in your face changes as you grow and get older,” she said. “This is my body. I’m proud of it … I’m healthy.”

On the other hand, there are sources that claim Brittany had a very poor self-image and she was always concerned about her weight, hair, wardrobe, teeth, etc… The director of Clueless, Amy Heckerling, believes that it was on the set of Clueless where Brittany first started having problems with her body image. She said,

“She seemed to go through a change on Clueless. Maybe she felt like she was not the, like, skinny, pretty girl, you know? And then the next few movies she was, you know, thinner, blonde … going out with Eminem and Ashton Kutcher.”

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Who would’ve thought one of the skinniest celebrities in Britain actually wants a fuller figure? With the plus-size debate continuing not only in the United States’ magazine circles, but also across the pond in the United Kingdom, Sienna Miller is one of the latest celebrities to endorse the plus-size model.

The former model-turned actress told New York magazine that she thinks plus-sized women are more beautiful than their “poker-thin” sisters.

“I really do,” she was quoted as saying. “I would love to have boobs to go with my hips, but I don’t – that’s just not the way the cookie crumbled.”

The 27-year-old beauty was responding to a question about glossy fashion magazine, V Magazine, debuting plus-size models in their January 2010 issue. The magazine is taking a stand and the next step into the future, proving that been skinny isn’t as glamorous (or realistically in touch with readers) as it once was.

Speaking about her own body issues, when she was still modeling, Sienna said she could’ve sworn she was only hired for shows to make the other models feel better about themselves.

“I was, like, the short, funny one that they booked to make the other girls laugh and to make them look taller.”

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V Magazine, the glossy fashion magazine that has had the likes of Miranda Kerr, Gisele Bundchen and Gwen Stefani grace its cover, is going for a new look for the January issue. Plus-size models such as Crystal Renn will be beauties of the issue and poses will range from fully dressed to completely nude. The editor-in-chief of the magazine Stephen Gans said,

“Big, little, pint-size, plus-size — every body is beautiful. And this issue is out to prove it.”

Granted so called ‘plus-size’ models are only a size 8 or 10 but this act by V Magazine is proving that the fashion and media industries are finally realizing that the average supermodel is not glamorous anymore. In the past year, with plus-size model Lizzie Miller posing forGlamour magazine and other controversies such as the emaciated Ralph Lauren model or the waif photo of Demi Moore it’s apparent there is still a double standard in the fashion industry but a change is on the horizon and maybe someday average woman won’t be labeled as plus-size models and instead be the supermodels of our time.

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The Girls Aloud singer Kimberley Walsh recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro will fellow singer and gal pal, Chery Cole to raise money for Comic Relief. The two high glamor pop stars are known for their hair extensions, acrylic nails and smooth skin but in a recent interview with Kimberley she said the mountain climbing experience was life changing and she’s actually a ‘normal’ girl who has her good days and bad days and wants to be confident with who she is. She said,

“I’m like any other normal girl. I have ups and downs; I can focus and be healthy for a few weeks and then I’ll have a bad week. If I ate what the rest of the girls ate I’d be three times the size, but at the same time, I’m not vain enough to starve myself.”

Kimberley said that’s it good that all the singers in Girls Aloud are different sizes since so many young girls look up to them. The songstress did mention that she’s a size 10 on top and a size 12 on bottom and she’s happy with that.

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The Saturday Night Live (SNL) comedian, Casey Wilson, has recently left the iconic late night comedy show. Most known for spoofing celebrities such as Rachel Ray and Jennifer Aniston she has left the show and now in search of greener pastures.

However, last week E! Online mistakingly reported that the curvy comedian who had just joined SNL in 2008, was fired from the show because producers had demanded that she lose 30 pounds over the summer of 2009 but failed to do so. But Casey laughed it all off in an exclusive statement to People Magazine that those rumors are wrong. The 28-year-old said,

“I had an amazing time on SNL, and these rumors are completely untrue. And to clarify, the issue isn’t that I’m too fat, it’s that I’m too phat. Can I get a WHAT-WHAT!”

In addition, a representative from SNL also told People Magazine that there was no truth to the E! Online report.

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It has been interesting the past year observing how the fashion industry is playing up to the needs of us normal humans who are not bone thin models or celebrities who can afford personal trainers and quick fix detox treatments. We’ve seen morbidly obese Beth Ditto pose nude for the cover of Love magazine, plus size models like Lizzie Miller appearing semi-nude in Glamour magazine and Crystal Renn writing memoirs about how she starved when she was a skinny model.

The media and the fashion industry have become obsessed with the physical, stars like Kelly Clarkson and Jessica Simpson get hassled for being ‘chubby’ and then at the same time people like Tyra Banks tell us to embrace our curves.  And yet here we have another example by Victoria’s Secret and the Love Your Body contest.  In hopes of selling more underwear they’ve launched an online contest where normal women can upload their photo and get voted on by other Internet surfers out there and possibly win a trip to a spa in New York City as well as some money for a shopping spree.  Yes, the prize would be fabulous to win but what’s not pleasant is the fact that women are posting images of themselves on the site, some all glam’d up and posing as if it were a professional photo shot and other images of chubby women sporting their underwear and bra while in the living room; and all of these women are all willing to have a global audience vote on their appearance.

Why this obsession with proving to the world that we love our bodies or embrace our curves and how silly is it for Victoria’s Secret to launch a campaign labeled ‘Love Your Body’ but then use an online voting system where strangers will be picking a winner based on a photo?  How about a campaign about embracing the mind or loving your brain?  It’s just a thought.

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Crystal Renn, once a super skinny model on the brink of collapse, has penned a new book Hungry. The now plus-size Ford model covers everything from health, to weight and even self-esteem issues in the memoir and hopes to shine a light on how people in the industry and in general perceive beauty.

“I’d like to see everyone take on the attitude that there are women of all different shapes and sizes as ‘the beauty ideal,’ and that it’s not one type or another. There are women who are naturally a size 2 — you can’t forget them, and that’s discrimination the other way,” Renn said in an interview. “All women bring something different to the table and we have to appreciate them all.”

Renn, who now works the pages of Vogue and Glamour as well as the runway with Jean Paul Gaultier, believes that there is a cycle to everything. From the Wall Street crash, to the housing market meltdown and now modeling. She says during the Victorian era the fuller figure was celebrated, while in the 1950s is was breasts, the 1980s shoulders and the 1990s the waifs. And now it seems it’s the return of the fuller figure.

Recent media coverage seems to agree. Just this week, we reported on Lizzie Miller’s triumph in Glamour magazine and the backlash from Kelly Clarkson’s Photoshopped Self cover shoot.

After the recent celebrity Photoshop fallout when Self magazine digitally slimmed down Kelly Clarkson on the cover of their September issue, a healthier, fuller photo has been published in a woman’s magazine. In Glamour magazine no less.

Twenty-year-old Lizzie Miller, who is between a size 12 and 14 and weighs 180 pounds, was photographed semi-nude for a story on body confidence that appears on p.194 of the fashion magazine’s September issue. Editor-in-chief Cindi Leive said on The Today Show that within hours of the magazine hitting the newsstands, their offices began receiving emails from readers about the photo.

Comments such as “She’s real and she’s beautiful”, “This woman rocks and we need more women like her to make a mark on what real women actually look like” and “Finally a woman who looks like most American women” began flooding in, and it more than proved that the magazine’s readers are demanding for a more realistic view of them in fashion magazines.

With the amount of publicity Miller’s photo is generating, will women’s magazines and Glamour magazine in particular be using more realistically-sized women in fashion spreads?

“Speaking for my own magazine I think it absolutely will,” says Leive on The Today Show. “I think it’s a sign of the times that women are looking for a little more authenticity and a little less artifice in every aspect of their lives.”

Watch the full interview in the video above.

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