The Skinny Model Debate and a return to 1995

The most recent issue of Vogue with Kate Moss on the cover, the famous waif herself, has a short blurb about model Coco Rocha. She jokes around with designer Michael Kors, and hosts a luncheon in which the fashion industry's obsession with skinny size 0 models is discussed.

Coco confesses her own prior addiction to laxatives and the pressures to be thin in the fashion industry. This, of course, is written up in Vogue, which continues to feature super-skinny models. My girlfriend, an Australian model who was most recently working in Germany, reported to me how the girls there eat cotton and tampons so that they feel full and skip actual food.

I write all this because the other day, in the course of cleaning out our family basement, I came upon a bunch of old fashion magazines from the mid-nineties. Note that these girls have flesh, and curves. They are hips and busts and tummies. They fill a page, rather then disappear, and they're beautiful. I scanned some of them for fun.














While I was thumbing through the old issues of these magazines(all dating from 1995) I also stumbled upon some old pictures of now familiar faces. Below is Heidi Klum, Carla Bruni (aka Ms. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President), and Nicole Kidman (with Ronald McDonald hair).




Finally, I conclude with a few pics of Carolyn Murphy, who is today a very popular model. She has appeared on the cover of Vogue, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and in numerous makeup and fragrance campaigns. She is now a blonde beauty, with a tan, appearing as the all American girl. These pictures from her first season modeling show a dark, curly-haired girl with pale, pale skin. It is quite a transition to see what she has become.