And she wants to show that big is beautiful. She stands 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighs pounds and wears a size 16 dress. She no longer diets, and steps on the scale only when she visits the doctor. Today she is spokesperson for Playtex Body Language Lingerie, has her own Web site for fan mail, and runs a one-woman crusade for accepting your size right now, even if you never lose those 20 pounds. Well before , when she was invited to speak before a Congressional subcommittee about eating disorders, Emme endured her own humiliations. From ages 18 to 27, Emme suffered through bouts of compulsive overeating. Today she lives in a northern New Jersey suburb with her husband, ad executive Phillip Aronson. Around , a friend mentioned a new plus-size division at Ford Models. But the fashion industry has been slow to respond.

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Skip navigation! Story from Fashion. Channing Hargrove. Only recently have brands and designers begun casting plus-size models. But this community was thriving long before "inclusivity" entered the collective vocabulary.
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Models are, by definition, models, not matter what size, shape, form. A household name if your household is particularly trendy, Renn is famous for speaking out about the pressures of the modeling industry in her book Hungry. After getting healthy, she reemerged a size 12 and rebranded her career. From there, she changed the tides of the industry. But Graham has always been challenging beauty standards. At the time, Miller was neither a celebrity nor a professional model. The American model wrote about her experiences in an op-ed piece for BBC that same year.
Fashion Week. Seven plus-size models who paved the way for today's biggest names. In partnership with. Written by Channing Hargrove, Refinery This article was originally published by Refinery29 , the leading next-gen media and entertainment company focused on women. The opinions in this article belong to the author. Only recently have brands and designers begun casting plus-size models. But this community was thriving long before "inclusivity" entered the collective vocabulary.