HSG

We will soon be posting screencaps from last week's America's Next Top Model broadcast, but first, we would like to celebrate a particular accomplishment that plus-size competitor Whitney achieved during that episode.

Every week, the program runs a feature called "CoverGirl of the Week," which involves viewers sending in their votes for their favourite candidate.

And this past week, the girl who earned the most votes from ANTM's viewers was none other than . . . Miss Thompson.

This means that going into the final episode of the season (this Wednesday), Whitney is the most popular of ANTM's contestants--among all of the show's viewers. Millions of them.

Keep in mind that the majority of ANTM watchers do not come into the program being favourably inclined towards timeless beauty. If anything, since this is a fashion show dominated by the minus-size aesthetic, most viewers are partial to the androgynous, underweight standard.

And yet Whitney changed their minds. Her beauty won them over.

For the audience to choose Whitney over the best straight-size competitors that America can offer indicates a seismic shift in public thinking. It also proves what this site has always contented: that if the populace were ever allowed to actually see full-figured feminine beauty, the kind of beauty embodied by the most gorgeous plus-size models (Whitney being among them), it would prefer the Classical aesthetic to modern androgyny.

One frequently hears of mythical "focus groups" in which consumers supposedly select thinner models over larger ones, but as we have always asked, what do those "larger" choices actually look like? Are they as attractive as Charlotte Coyle, or as ugly as Camryn Manheim?

Whitney's CoverGirl of the Week win proves that if the models that are presented are sufficiently gorgeous, then the public will choose plus-size over minus-size, well-fed over underfed, full-figure over stick-figure, every time.

Throughout this competition, week after week, Whitney has defeated rivals who epitomize the modern androgynous standard, and who are beloved by fashion's anti-feminine "in" crowd. And by winning CoverGirl of the Week, she has validated what she boldly asserted in her pre-show interview: That she is more beautiful than any of the other contestants because she has a full figure, not despite this fact.

Whatever happens in the show's finale, last week's CGOTW result proves that with the general public, there is no question as to who deserves to be America's Next Top Model:

The plus-size model.

- Click here to see Whitney's win