The Glamour-ous Life

I received the September issue of Glamour in the mail the other day and since I’ve been having some serious body drama lately, I was eager to check out the article “What Everyone But You See About Your Body.” Better than the encouraging anecdotes in the articles was a picture I saw when I turned to page 194. That’s the page that boasts the photo of a model who is pictured in her underwear and is proudly showing off her little belly pooch. That’s right, there’s a model in a mainstream magazine that actually looks like the rest of us.

Take a look for yourself:

I can’t really articulate why, but the photo made me so happy. And I’m not the only one.

Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive says she’s received a flood of letters from readers about the image. She wrote on the magazine’s website:

…the letters blew me away: “the most amazing photograph I’ve ever seen in any women’s magazine,” wrote one reader in Pavo, Georgia. From another in Somerset, Massachusetts: “This beautiful woman has a real stomach and did I even see a few stretch marks? This is how my belly looks after giving birth to my two amazing kids! This photo made me want to shout from the rooftops.”

The emails were filled with such joy—joy at seeing a woman’s body with all the curves and quirks and rolls found in nature. (Raising a question: With all the six-packs out there, do you even know what a normal belly looks like anymore—other than the one you see in the mirror?)

The woman in the photo is 20-year-old model Lizzi Miller, and this is her second appearance in Glamour. She’s a size 12-14, avid softball player and belly dancer. In the modeling world she’s considered a “plus-size” model. But, as Leive says, “at size 12 she’s actually ‘normal size.'”

I applaud Glamour for being one of the few magazines out there that acknowledge that.