The editors of nearly 20 international editions of Vogue magazine recently agreed to ban from their pages all fashion models younger than 16 or "who appear to have an eating disorder."
Tyra Banks, who has featured thin women on her America's Next Top Model show for years, is applauding the decision.
In an open letter to models, posted at the Daily Beast, Banks says that "the truth is that if I was just starting to model at age 17 in 2012, I could not have had the career that I did. I would've been considered too heavy. In my time, the average model's size was a four or six. Today you are expected to be a size zero. When I started out, I didn't know such a size even existed."
In her early 20s, she says, "I was a size four. But then I started to get curvy. My agency gave my mom a list of designers that didn't want to book me in their fashion shows anymore."
After wiping away her tears and eating pizza, she says, she decided she just wasn't going buy into it. "In a way, it was my decision not to starve myself that turned me into a supermodel, and later on, a businesswoman."
