Magazines figure it's time to feature curvy models

Photographs of supermodels proves heavier women can look gorgeous.
By LESLEY KENNEDY
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Skeletal models? Waifish singers? Emaciated actresses? It's time to adopt a new mantra and stop looking so hungry: Food is your friend.
So, go ahead and grab that Big Mac you've been craving since you landed your big break. Don't be afraid to order fries with that. Say it's a milkshake you covet? Go for it. Because, really, enough -- enough -- already with the super-svelte frames. Let's put a little meat on those bones.
Just check out curvy Beyonce Knowles, the first celebrity ever to grace the much-desired cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Airbrushed? Sure. But she still has a figure average women can aspire to.
Then, there's Tyra Banks. The now-retired supermodel is 20 pounds heavier than her Victoria's Secret days (weighing in at a still-slim 161 pounds for her 5-foot-10-inch frame) and she's not afraid to show it.
Big showoff
After paparazzi caught her in a most unflattering one-piece swimsuit, she faced her critics ("America's Next Top Waddle" one newspaper screamed) during her daytime talk show, wearing the offending suit.
Next, she donned a bikini for the aforementioned swimsuit issue, re-creating the shoot that landed her on the magazine's cover 10 years ago. She wore the same polka-dot bikini, but spilled this secret to the Associated Press: "I'd say I looked like a stripper when I put it on. They covered the sides of my chest so that it wasn't so much hangin' out. And they put some extenders on the sides of the bikini bottom so it fit."
Stunning proof
But, perhaps most notably, there's Jennifer Hudson. The Oscar-winning actress is certainly among the heaviest cover models Vogue magazine has ever featured. And, wow, does she look stunning.
Featuring a voluptuous, full-figured woman on the cover is a rare, yet welcome, departure, where size-zero models and starlets normally reign.
In her March "Letter from the Editor," editor Anna Wintour (a featherweight herself) writes, "The question of body image is a current one, and I can't think of a more compelling and beautiful argument for the proposition that great fashion looks great on women of all sizes than the sight of Hudson in a Vera Wang dress on the red carpet ..."
Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, who also happened to style Hudson for the Golden Globes, called her cover placement "history in the making." (Hudson is also just the third black ever to appear on the magazine's cover. Oprah Winfrey and Halle Berry being the other two.)
The words of Wintour and Talley, as well as Hudson's gorgeous photographs by Annie Leibovitz, are important steps in the war against the obsession with skinny.
Vogue is the industry leader -- the trendsetter and tastemaker for all things style. If Wintour deigns to show a (gasp!) size-10 -- or, heck, even a size-6 -- beauty in her fashion pages, others will follow.
Of course, whether the magazine will continue to celebrate women who dare to admit to wearing a size 10 or higher remains to be seen.