Check out this great blog entry on Kathy’s blog:
If you don’t have the time to read Kathy’s post, here’s the story in a nutshell. Chloe Marshall won the Miss Surrey pageant and is now advancing to the Miss England pageant. She’s 16 years old, 5’10″ tall, and wears a size 16 UK. (That’s a size 14 for those of us in the U.S.) She said during a recent interview with The Sun, “I wanted to go through to the Miss England finals to break the stereotype that you have to be tall and skinny to be considered beautiful.”
I say kudos to Chloe!! I think we need more role models like this to help young women (and young men these days) to realize that the world of the Abercrombie & Fitch models and the like is not “normal”. There is a LOT of retouching on the photos even of these “perfect” model bodies, so PLEASE don’t compare yourself to them or think less of yourself for not looking like them. They don’t look like them either!
I had enough body image issues growing up in the 70′s & 80′s. I can’t imagine what it must be like for young people now in today’s multimedia world. We need more beautiful young people like Chloe to stand up and remind us that beauty isn’t about being a size 0. It’s about being healthy, comfortable & confident in your own skin, and knowing who you are so that you don’t succumb to the peer pressure that is inevitable of the teenage years. Now I just need to remember that the next time I see a photo of myself or step on the scale and hate the number I see. 
Rock on, Chloe!! 
I weighed 150 in high school and college and thought I was enormous! There is so much pressure on young women to conform…and the ideal wasn’t even size 0 back then!
Hooray for Chloe!
Oh man, I have so many thoughts on this topic, I may have to just blog about it myself.
I was always the one the phys ed teacher in middle school ~~ Mrs. Draper ~~ held up as an example of who NOT to be. Every P.E. teacher has a scapegoat, I guess. I was hers. Wish now that I could see her all old and wrinkley and ask her if it was worth sacrificing a kid’s self-esteem just to be a beeatch. Wonder what she’d say?
Thanks for stopping by. Kathy is one of my favorites blogs to read. I try, but mine ends up being more everyday type stuff.
let’s hope it’s the start of a new trend! i think europeans in general (generalizing here) are waaay more open to different sizes and not all caught up in so-called perfection.