But it was when Renn started eating and expanded to a UK size 16 that hot model career really took off. In Hungry, her autobiography, described by Nigella Lawson as "a riveting read" and launched on Tuesday at a glittering Manhattan party, the highest-paid plus-size model in America talks of the delicate new dawning of a vogue for women who are "lush and sparkly, with nary a jutting collarbone in sight".
Renn says that while "crazy town still loves to gawp at the ultra-slim" there is a growing appetite in the fitness model fashion world for "the natural shapes a woman's body takes when it's not being deprived of food".She should know. When she was spotted by a a photo gallery modeling agent at the age of 13 she was told to lose five stone: more than 42% of her then body weight. At 14, Renn was smaller than a US size zero and secured a three-year, $250,000 contract and moved to New York.
"When I started modeling in 2002 ? and to a slightly talent agency lesser degree, today ? the look of the moment was nearly skeletal," said Renn. "Starting in the early 1990s with the rise of Kate Moss and of heroin chic, the fashion industry fell in love with depressed-looking, emaciated girls."
The real public relations crisis hit in 2006. In a matter of months talent agency models Luisel Ramos and her sister, Eliana, and Ana Carolina Reston and Hila Elmalich died after starving themselves to death in their attempt to be thin.There was an outcry. The Council of Fashion Designers of America recommended that hot model be aged over 16. Spain banned models weighing less than 8st 11lb from Madrid's Fashion Week. But, said Renn, the immediate change was "nil". "High-fashion models remained as thin as ever," she said.
But now, Renn says, fashion has finally begun ? slowly and grudgingly ? to change. Inga Eiriksdottir agrees with Renn. She was spotted by the fitness model Women Agency in New York when she was 15 and a natural UK size eight. "When I reached 18, I was 5ft 11in and still a size eight, but they wanted a US size 0. It was awful. They pressured me and told me I was fat. I was obsessed with losing weight, but my body just wouldn't do it," she said.
"I did everything: I didn't eat, I exercised, but I couldn't make myself the shape they insisted on. Eventually someone suggested I become a plus-size model.
Source: buzzle.com
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