Warts and all, were there warts
Australian beauty queen (and 2004 Miss Universe) Jennifer Hawkins doffs her duds for the Oz version of Marie Claire, and there’s controversy afoot:
She is working with the Butterfly Foundation to promote a positive body image. However, the cover isn’t receiving too much praise. Some deem her “brave” for going un-airbrushed and nude while others are pointing out the obvious… Jennifer is 26 and is a lingerie model and it’s hardly “brave” for someone with a near perfect body to go un-airbrushed.
Others say it promotes the fight against obesity. Overall, the main goal of the Butterfly Foundation is healthy body images while fighting eating disorders. The argument is that a lingerie model’s body is not an average representative of a normal woman’s body.
One could argue that the “average representative” isn’t likely to appear on the cover of Marie Claire, Photoshopped or otherwise, but I tend to align with the critics on this one: women fighting body-image issues are not likely to find comfort in the example of a former Miss Universe, unless at some point she ballooned up to [fill in some unthinkable number] pounds or suffered some rare skin disease.
That said, she is sorta cute, and if she strikes a blow against the damn-near-universal practice of retouching everything to the point of unreality, she’ll have performed a genuine public service.
fillyjonk »
9 January 2010 · 3:31 pm
It strikes me that all those goals (some of them conflicting) are an awful lot of weight to pin on one nekkid picture of a model.
And before anyone asks, no, I did not intend a pun when I said “weight,” even though the picture allegedly helps fight obesity. (How? By making other women feel sufficiently miserable that they lose the will to eat?)