Back in January 2010 I did a popular post here called Bigger Bombshells Bring It On, featuring “plus size” fashion model Crystal Renn in various states of undress. This post was a celebration of curvy girls, in reaction to then-current curvy-model controversy and it has lots of heated comments. If you click through the links I included, you’ll see lots of nudity and one shoot that really conjures the character Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) from American TV series Mad Men.
At the time, magazines pretty obviously featured plus-size models as page view getters: people were talking about it. And that was okay. Yet, while Glamour and Harper’s jumped on the plus-size trend, they still felt squeamish enough about a fleshy female body to airbrush Renn smaller and smoother than in real life (missing the point of her allure altogether). Hence, the post.
I now see that in Tush Magazine’s Summer 2011 edition, Crystal Renn is featured in a shoot by Ellen von Unwerth, and she’s lost the weight that many of you found erotic. She dropped several sizes not long after the controversy, but this set really shows the difference. And, I find it undeniably sexy.
I’m really curious: what do you think? Did we lose something here?
I’m going to concur with the general trend of comments here: healthy women are sexy. That’s true whether they’re healthy-curvy or healthy-skinny.
Now, given the way our society promotes certain body types as ideal, I think we could stand to see more healthy-curvy women being sexy and proud of it. However, obviously every person has the right to adjust their weight as they desire and are able to.
I find her way more sexy like this. I can appreciate various forms of the female figure, but I always think someone that looks healthy and fit as the ideal. And that doesn’t have to be 0% body fat. My feminist sensibilities struggles with this; “real women have curves” but am I not just as real? I am a real woman and I am a size 4; I eat a healthy mostly vegetarian diet and go to the gym 5 days a week. It hurts me to see women starve and drug themselves into an unrealistic expectation of what they see in magazines. In the movie Gia, a woman in rehab with the infamous model says, “I’m some kid from Ohio, reading fashion magazines, looking at your picture and thinking I’m supposed to look like that. And going fucking crazy because I don’t. Because nobody told me it was a lie. Because the magazine doesn’t come with a label that says, “Caution: This is a lie. Nobody looks like this.” Not even you.”
@ Iris, I think that’s a great standard for your average person. But for models, both in fashion and erotic performance or photography, their body is their business. What they do with it and how it looks in clothes/on camera/etc. is their art. They’ve chosen that career path and consciously put themselvves out there in this way, and there’s no meaningful way to talk about their work without talking about their body. There are still some boundaries there about what’s relevant and what’s not, and there are respectful ways to discuss vs. destructive ways. I just can’t see putting the whole discussion off the table.
In the interview that BryanF posted, Renn says this:
“Do I like the fact that people have huge arguments over my size and whether it’s ok? No matter what size I am, it’s OK because I’m fine. Health is the most important thing. ”
I celebrate seeing sexy fat women in fashion/media because they are underrepresented, and I think that’s a shame. But I don’t think that asking whether someone is hotter at one weight or another is a direction we need to go in.
A brief Google check turns up this interview, which has some interesting points in the second half.
http://fashionista.com/2011/04/crystal-renn-explains-why-she-likes-modeling-for-vogue-japan-and-responds-to-the-haters-who-says-shes-gotten-too-thin/
Also I always assume that any fashion images have been digitally manipulated, and porn images for that matter, unless they specifically state otherwise. Photoshop — it’s not just for plus size models.
Sadly she also lost her eyebrows…
Otherwise she looks very good in the new shoot. I also do not think anything (other than her eyebrows) has been lost. She was sexy in the first shoot and she’s still sexy now.
I agree with Zaftiguana completely.
In terms of the woman Crystal Renn, no I don’t think we lost anything. She’s a great looking girl and would probably still look fantastic at any weight, because she wears it well. I suppose you could argue that we lost another plus-size model in a World of skinny-minis, which is a shame, but people have the right to choose what they do with their bodies, and I support everyone in exercising that right.
Personally, I preferred her when she was a little curvier – I identified with her more, being curvy myself, and I genuinely found her more attractive. And so (unfortunately?) she no longer stands out for me the way she used to. Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway on the other hand? Now she stands out. And how!
I think Zaftiguana really hit the nail on the head in saying “there is something more panty-moistening about someone of any size who looks like a sensual, “flawed,” human person you’d see in the real world instead of a stylized fantasy”. It’s an idea I’ve been thinking about a lot; realism is so sexy, which is also why I think amateur porn is so popular. And in my head it works both ways; I now find myself almost exclusively attracted to men who are simply attracted to women. Not blondes, or skinny girls, or tall girls, or girls with big tits, just women. And in the end, Crystal Renn is just that: a woman.
I think she’s definitely still sexy and beautiful, and sure, these are hot photos, but do I think we’ve lost something? Absolutely. The worlds of fashion and erotic photography were already full of thin models. Now she’s one more. Is she still an excellent model who gives great body and face? Absolutely. Is part of what made her special and more visually interesting gone? Again, absolutely. And sadly for me personally, there’s something something about what made erotic photos of her more exciting that’s gone. I don’t have a plus size fetish by any means, but there is something more panty-moistening about someone of any size who looks like a sensual, “flawed,” human person you’d see in the real world instead of a stylized fantasy. Crystal, along with plenty of thinner fashion and erotic models with non-generic quirks that made them somehow hotter, used to do that for me. Here, she doesn’t.
If she’s happy with her body now, though, I’m happy for her. I hope she didn’t lose it for the “wrong” reasons, but it’s ultimately up to her.
I liked her as a plus-size woman, she looked so natural and beautiful! The new Crystal is fine – but I think the curves really suited her.
The ultimate point for me is not whether she is plus sized or not – its about health. Some woman are very healthy as plus-size women; for others it may not be healthy to be that size. She looked healthy and vibrant as a plus size, she just looks completely different now. I’m not a fan of the transition, but its her life and body so good for her if she’s happy that way.
I agree that her timing in losing weight is a bit fishy and feels a little like shame on her part.
And it’s not a fetish to compare and contrast “plus-size” (read: average) Crystal with new, skinny Crystal and feel that she simply looks better with a little meat on her bones. Some people just are that way. Some look better thinner, some look better curvier. I lust for women of all sizes.
But her seeming inability to stay in the role as “real woman” with those real-life tummy rolls and all is what feels like a let-down to me and others, I’m sure. I feel the same about Sara Rue – I feel she looked better at her old weight compared to her new slimmer self. And the thinly-veiled shame-tactic Weight Watchers / Jenny Craig ads from the likes of her and Jennifer Hudson are disappointing, too.
Actually, I don’t think anything was lost at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.
It seems to me if people were turned on by Crystal when she was plus sized, but not now that she’s lost some weight (but by no means “skinny”), then it would almost seem like a fetish to me. That they didn’t think she was a sexy woman, but rather just into the whole bigger-girl thing. It’s no different than people who automatically rule out a woman as being unsexy if she’s larger than a size 3.
But to me, she was sexy in that curvy-girl shoot, and she’s sexy now. Perfect illustration that one particular body type isn’t the end-all, be-all of sexy. Now, if I found out that she lost that weight because of people’s negative opinions of her before, that would not be very hot. That would be most unsexy.