"We are not going to become a magazine for plus-sizes," [the magazine's editor] said.

In other words, instead of featuring anorexic professional models, Brigitte will now feature slightly-less-emaciated-but-still-underweight average women.

This is small beer, at best.

This approach does nothing to bring fuller-figured goddesses into the public eye. And only the proliferation of plus-size imagery can shatter the pernicious "thin = beautiful" myth.

Does Brigitte's new policy mean that there will be fewer pro-anorexia images in the media? Possibly. However, the approach may do harm as well.

As Judgment of Paris readers know, effective modelling requires considerable technique, from posing ability to facial expressiveness to emotional demeanour.

Brigitte's approach will therefore pit amateur presentations of non-models against the other fashion magazines' professional presentations of minus-size waifs. And based on this comparison, impressionable readers will inevitably conclude that the "true" models in the other publications are beautiful, while Brigitte's "ordinary women" are not.

In young girls' minds, this will reinforce the toxic notion that the recipe for attractiveness is emaciation.

Beyond its practical limitations, however, the Brigitte approach is acutely offensive in a different way, for it demonstrates a deep-seated prejudice against full-figured women. Even though Brigitte's new policy will ban emaciated professionals, it will still exclude plus-size goddesses.

In other words, Brigitte apparently finds even the plainest girl on the street preferable to a professional, full-figured model.

How deep does the industry's curve-o-phobia go, when a magazine would rather photograph thin women, however homely, to full-figured goddesses, however beautiful?

On the discrimination scale, this is every bit as bad as current fashion industry practices--and those practices are bad indeed. Brigitte clearly wanted to book slightly less emaciated models, yet the industry refused to provide them. Apparently, the modelling agencies would rather lose business than employ fuller-figured girls.

Thus, although the modelling agencies and Brigitte are divided over booking policies, they are distressingly united in their resistance to plus-size beauty.

One step forward, two steps back.

Now, let us consider a hypothetical proposition.

What if Brigitte had chosen to use full-figured "real women" instead of thin ones?

That would at least have been an improvement over its newly introduced casting policy, which remains discriminatory against timeless beauty. But it would still have been harmful rather than beneficial to the aesthetic restoration.

Consider the difference between this and the Mode/Figure approach. Those magazines provided alternatives to professional waifs in the form of professional full-figured models--girls who adhered an aesthetic standard, who possessed genuine modelling ability, and who were every bit as photogenic as their underweight rivals.

Thus, young girls comparing a Mode model like Shannon Marie to a Vogue skeleton like Kate Moss were compelled to acknowledge--despite media conditioning to the contrary--that the plus-size model was indisputably more attractive than the waif. And that realization showed them the fallacy of the underweight standard, and made them receptive to the timeless ideal of well-fed beauty.

The only way to eradicate the cult of skinniness is by producing images of full-figured goddesses who are more beautiful, and better models, than the stick insects.

But young girls comparing Brigitte's "real women" (whatever their size) to Vogue's waifs will be tricked into thinking that the superior beauty of the anorexic models is due to their emaciation, whereas it is simply due to the fact that the latter have been chosen according to aesthetic standards, and the former have not. As a result, girls will still believe--erroneously--that only starvation can lead to beauty.

Say what one will about the shortcomings of Glamour magazine, at least by using professional full-figured models it is on the right track, in terms of providing a viable alternative to the idealization of thinness. What a shame that the overall content of Glamour isn't more universally size-positive, and that its quantity of plus-size models remains minimal.

Incidentally, the Judgment of Paris addressed the "reality" issue once before, when the first set of "ordinary woman" ads began to proliferate in the media, several seasons ago. That thread appears at the link posted below, and offers further insight into this topic.

The gorgeous Charlotte Coyle (Wilhelmina) modelling for Marks & Spencer:

- ''Reality'': A Distortion