by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

With Plus Size Modeling becoming a force to reckon with all over the world, Plus Size Models themselves are becoming more and more popular and busy in their respective countries. The United Kingdom is no exception with names like Tara Gibson, Erika Elfwencrona Signe Nordström and Joycelyn Phillips becoming well known faces and names in the fashion industry.

Signe Nordström says “I never hear any negative comments. On the contrary, a lot of people think that curves are wonderful, it’s both sexy and beautiful.” Erika Elfwencrona started as a skinny model and weighed 48 kilos. Today she’s a size 14/16 and has stopped weighing herself. She says, “Even though I was 5ft 9ins I was convinced I had to be thinner. My parents grew so worried about the number of times I disappeared into the bathroom to weigh myself, they took away the scales.” She also says that, “I get a lot more compliments now than when I was skinny. But at the same time I take care of my body and like to work out.”

This success that plus size models enjoy is perhaps due to a perception that the underage, underweight models that tend to grace the catwalks are somewhat difficult to relate to. There is a growing perception that a full figure is a more natural looking figure. Increasingly advertisers are also waking up to this shift in perception and are realizing that they need to have more models that people can actually relate to and say “Hey that’s beautiful, that’s healthy, that’s natural looking!” and even “Hey if she can wear that, it’ll look good on me too”.

There is now an increasing acceptance among people as a whole, that they don’t need to punish themselves and even perhaps in make themselves ill in the bargain to attain a weight or size that is not natural or normal for their body weight. Perhaps this very clarity of thought has also obviously filtered thru to the modeling fraternity.

The perception among the models themselves is they are beautiful because of their weight - not despite it!