When America’s Next Top Model first aired eight cycles ago, it was just another cheesy reality show.  We expected vacant expressions, bulimic-centered dramas, and an outrageous panel of judges led by Tyra Banks.  Eight cycles later, so much has changed.  Well, maybe not so much – Tyra still wears shamelessly oversized weaves, and the girls continue to backstab one another to no avail.  However, this season, we’ve seen several novelties.  Two (yes, multiple!) plus-size candidates were chosen to be contestants, and the host is no longer a smoking hot swimsuit model.  Thirty-pounds heavier, Tyra insists that she is still proud of her body.  It seems that the show is gradually beginning to accept women who don’t look like they weigh less than my twelve-year-old cousin.  As a pivotal marker in pop culture, it makes one wonder: has society too changed in its perception of the ideal female body?

Last week, I, like many other Americans, sat in front of my television, anxiously awaiting the fates of these bright-eyed hopefuls.  I wasn’t watching for the plus-sized models necessarily, but they were certainly fresh additions.  Will they prevail, besting their skinny counterparts through enthusiasm and “personality,” a criterion that seems to change erratically from cycle to cycle?  Or will they be eliminated quickly as the judges realize that they are fighting a fruitless battle against industry standards?  Although I root for the plus-sized models, I’m not holding my breath.  Just like Cycle Three’s Tocarra (Remember her?  Didn’t think so.), they’ll be dropped from the running soon enough.  It is common knowledge that the modeling industry has its standards, and these standards translate into the waif-like replicas that we continue to see in Vogue and other top-notch fashion magazines.  Of course, Tocarra came and went five cycles ago.  Perhaps Tyra has found the golden ticket.  Perhaps society is now ready for a plus-sized top model to reform its image of beauty.  Or, perhaps they were only accepted because this new season takes place in the aftermath of Tyra’s own weight gain drama.  It is amazing how being called “Tyra Porkchops” by the media could compel a million-dollar businesswoman to wear nothing but a swim suit on her own show just to tell critics to “Kiss [her] fat ass!” 

No doubt, the dysfunctions that surround body image go far beyond the modeling industry.  Even the seemingly harmless complement “You look good.  Did you lose weight?” takes us back to that five letter word that we just can’t stop obsessing over.  But as celebrities like Tyra come out as closet-eaters and this new cycle of ANTM shows us that “hey, normal people might be top models too,” will we finally begin to reform our standards of beauty?  Society, once and for all, is coming around... right? 

Maybe not.  Twenty years ago, we were ogling at rail-thin models and actresses.  Today, there’s the other extreme – the empowerment of the “average woman,” which to an extent, seems almost gratuitous.  In the latest issue of Vogue, Jennifer Hudson appeared on the cover.  Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief, wrote in her letter to readers about Hudson: “(She’s) also a style icon whose happiness in her own skin is something we can draw strength from.” The comment seems harmless enough, empowering almost, until we think about the implications.  Would Wintour have written the same thing about the women who normally grace the cover of Vogue (read: not a size 12)?  It’s like saying, “Yes, you see this beautiful plus-sized woman on our cover, but she’s only on here because she’s one of the few who is comfortable in her skin.”  Is it so natural for the rest of society to assume that women of Jennifer Hudson’s girth would feel uncomfortable in their own skins that the ed-in-chief has to put out a warning label? 

The same pattern applies to the current Tyra and numerous other plus-sized models.  I constantly hear praise about how they are happy about their weight, given that they’re not “normal” by Hollywood’s standards.  This disclaimer tells me that no, society hasn’t changed at all, and honestly, I don’t see it changing as long as women can attain the oh-so-popular skeletal look, whether through healthy eating or ala Kate Moss’s convenient drug habits.  And because we’ve bought into this idea that heck, everything’s just dandy (even America’s Next Top Model has two plus-sized models!), we’re still going to critique each other’s weight as if nothing’s wrong.  And as we tenderly wrap our thoughts around the idea that the media will soon see normal sized women as beautiful too, we’re blind to the millions of women who continue to obsess to an unhealthy extent about being skinny.  And by painting the Tyras and the Jennifers as a representative sample of society, we sadly ignore the other 99% of pop culture that remains seriously in the dark about a realistic image of beauty.