Gemma Ward returns?

Several years after being ousted from the modelling world for - shock horror - gaining weight, Gemma Ward has landed her first magazine cover (albeit that of a supplement, to Harper's Bazaar Australia) since her withdrawal from the industry. And thank God for that - am I the only person in the world who thinks this is a positive thing for the fashion industry? That cover models who have curves and beauty (yes, imagine that! Beauty without being rail thin! Gasp!) are the real models - role models, that is? But while everyone involved in the fashion industry keeps saying how much they advocate health and fuller figures, there still seems to be little change in the size and shape of the models flaunted on magazine covers and runways.

But a change in this damaging hierarchy might provide more perks than a little diversity: honestly, I would be much more open to actually buying something that was put on a woman with a shape that more closely resembled my own than that of a lamppost. We all know full well that a model so thin she could squeeze through a mail box can make pretty much anything look good - but what is that high-necked Peter Pan collar dress going to look like over my C cups? Frankly, I'm not going to pay good money to buy into the idea that if I purchase this piece of merchandise, I'm going to look like the model toting it in Vogue - I'm really not that stupid. What I will pay money for is a well-crafted, flattering garment that unapologetically werks it on a healthy model with a 29-inch waist.

One can only hope that the fashion industry will cotton on to this eventually. After all, to draw on a senario detailed in Page Six's article on Gemma Ward's industry "betrayal": commenting on Gemma Ward's appearance, a fellow Australian trekker remarked that he 'couldn't believe she was a model' and that she "looked rather like the rest of us". And just who is a model hired to sell merchandise to? The alien population among us? Blimey, they really must be a minority group. Someone draw them up a bill of rights.



Image: glamcheck.com