Model Coco Rocha: I’m not getting hired now that I’m a size 4
Coco Rocha isn’t one of my favorite models of the current crop (I save that honor for Doutzen Kroes), but I do like her. She’s gives off a vague Linda Evangelista vibe, if Linda ever stayed with a hair color for more than two seconds. Anyway, after I read Coco’s comments to the New York Times, I’m feeling some respect for her. Coco is castigating the fashion industry and their reliance on very, very young girls as the perfect size zero model. Coco points out that she’s a size four, and since she “realized I didn’t have to do everything people told me I should if I wanted a career,” Coco says she’s “not in demand for the shows anymore.” She got tired of people telling her to lose weight, and now she’s on the warpath. Sort of:
“I don’t do nudes, I don’t do semi-nudes, I don’t do cigarette shots,” Coco Rocha was saying on Sunday evening before the Diane Von Furstenberg show at the Bryant Park tents. “It took me a long time in the business to realize I didn’t have to do everything people told me I should if I wanted a career.”
Despite all the recent blather about promoting wholesome body images and encouraging designers to scale up sample sizes — and a prevalent fantasy that the industry has suddenly embraced people of all sorts and shapes — fat in fashion remains anathema.
Ms. Rocha knows this because, incredible as it may seem to anyone who saw her prance down Ms. Von Furstenberg’s catwalk on Sunday (in what was, by the way, one of the most admirably diverse model castings in many a year), a lot of designers no longer hire her for their runways. They consider her a veritable behemoth in a business that makes a fetish of being what the actress Emily Blunt once termed “edge of ill” thin.
“Everybody knows that, in general, a basketball player needs to be tall and a fashion model needs to be skinny, but how skinny is too skinny?” Ms. Rocha asked.
“I’m not in demand for the shows anymore,” said the model, who has worked for Marc Jacobs, Prada, Chanel, Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier and Louis Vuitton, among many others.
“I’ve been told to lose weight when I was really skinny,” said Ms. Rocha, who recently added a new line item to her résumé: correspondent for Modelinia.com, the Web site for the model-obsessed.
“You know what, I’ve stopped caring,” Ms. Rocha said. “If I want a hamburger, I’m going to have one. No 21-year-old should be worrying about whether she fits a sample size.”
“Girls are told they’re not skinny enough, or they hear, ‘She’s old, she’s boring, we’ve had her, she’s not tiny anymore,’ ” Ms. Rocha said. “A lot of people don’t take into account the vulnerability of these young girls.” And the latest crop of models is not made up of “adults or even sort-of adults,” she insisted. “They are children. Point closed.”
[From The New York Times]
I 100% cosign everything Coco said. I’m so tired of seeing little girls model clothes. I’m sorry, but when I see a 13 year old Russian girl modeling some $5000 outfit, I don’t want it. That image doesn’t make me enjoy fashion.
Another thing that bothers me is that most of the “older” models like Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, and so many more look amazing, and they should still be getting the major modeling contracts. The one “older” girl who consistently gets work is Kate Moss – and I’m so tired of her starring in every major campaign. It’s tired, and so is she. Instead of searching for the new “fresh” face, why not got back to some of the greats.
