Roy Exum
There comes a time in a person’s life when they aren’t very good looking when they are naked. Mine came some years ago, but there are some people who should never pose naked for a camera and maybe that’s what all the joy is about in the September issue of Glamour magazine.
On Page 194 there is a woman who isn’t the type you would ordinarily want to see naked. But when you look at the picture of Lizzi Miller, a plus-size model who wears a size 12 dress, she is quite appealing with a very visible roll to her belly as she sits laughing wearing nothing but a thong.
Lizzi, a vibrant softball player and belly dancer when she’s not having her picture taken, is hardly what you would expect as a model – or a nude – but the reason the magazine has been inundated with a flood of emails since the picture was published is because – guess what – Lizzi looks like the rest of us.
This week we’ve learned that a naked picture of Jackie Kennedy, the most gorgeous of all the First Ladies, was found in some of artist Andy Warhol’s things and then there is this other artist in New York who livens up the subway when he takes pictures of very naked women as the other riders pretend not to notice. My goodness, actress Alicia Silverstone even announced this weekend she tends to her garden naked.
The thing Jackie O, the subway girls and Alicia have working for them is that they are probably pretty attractive when naked, but all the hoopla is over the 3-inch by 3-inch picture of Lizzi Miller in this month’s Glamour. Oh, the picture is tasteful, with no intimate parts showing, and the fact Terri is only 20 years old adds a certain “freshness” to the picture that was taken by Walter Chin.
But the big deal is best seen in a letter from Glamour’s Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive, who writes, “I'd loved this photo at first sight myself - we'd commissioned it for a story on ‘feeling comfortable in your skin,’ and wanted a model who looked like she ‘was’.
“But even so, the letters blew me away: ‘the most amazing photograph I've ever seen in any women's magazine,’ wrote one reader in Pavo, Ga. From another in Somerset, Mass.: ‘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 editor, who was quite taken aback by the “joy” all the emails contained, talked at length with the plus-size model and here’s what Lizzi told her, “When I was young I really struggled with my body and how it looked because I didn't understand why my friends were so effortlessly skinny.
"As I got older I realized that everyone's body is different and not everyone is skinny – naturally me included. I learned to love my body for how it is, every curve of it. I used to be so self-conscious in a bikini because my stomach wasn't perfectly defined. But everyone has different body shapes,” said the California-born Miller.
“And it's not all about the physical!” Lizzi continued, “If you walk on the beach in your bikini with confidence and you feel sexy, people will see you that way too."
But the best part of the whole thing – showing herself nude in the magazine – was Lizzi’s reaction to the emails that have poured into the magazine’s offices. “When I read them I got teary-eyed! I've been that girl, flipping through magazines trying to find just one person who looked a little bit like me. And when I didn't find it I would start to think there's something wrong with the way that I looked.
“When J. Lo and Beyoncé came out and were making curves sexy, I started to accept myself more. It's funny, but just seeing them look and feel sexy enabled me to do the same," she told the editor.
Well, all of this is hardly to suggest the way to feel sexy is to have your picture taken naked. I’ve had a life’s rule forever to guard myself against being in a picture naked because, with my luck, some prankster would slip it into the collection plate at church. Too many people have had naked pictures turn up in the wrong places.
But you have to admit there aren’t many Hollywood starlets that resemble those who buy tickets to the movies. It is a fact America is over-weight and we as a nation need to correct that from simply a health standpoint.
But when there is greater joy over a plus-size girl’s tummy showing than there is a feverish clamor to see an undraped picture of Jackie Onassis, I think that is a positive sign that the skinny girls with enhanced chests aren’t always the most alluring.
Lizzi Miller, bless her heart, is quite comfortable in her own skin and, for the record, no other opinion even matters. That’s how every one of us should feel as well.
royexum@aol.com