Go Figure

Beauty comes in all forms.  Surfing the net, this author chanced upon the recent June cover of Vogue Italia and was inspired to make this arresting photo an entry.  In recent years, there were a lot of full figured women who graced the editorials of top fashion glossies to address the growing problem of anorexia in the modeling industry.  The body beautiful made a comeback in the last two years as fresh face Lara Stone was almost on every magazine cover from A-Z welcoming a change from the more than a decade fascination of thin is in.  Today, from bombshell to voluptuous, models Tara Lynn, Candice Huffine & Robyn Lawley appear arrestingly seductive on the covetable Vogue Italia photographed by Steven Meisel and styled by Edward Enningful.  This is no illusion or revolt against fashion but a reality that needs to be embraced and accepted as a fact of life.  If you look into art and history, the concept of beauty back then was far from the waif or slim figured-think Rubenesque( in reference to the painter Peter Paul Rubens or plump in an attractive way) or nowadays called Big Beautiful Women (or Big Beautiful Woman-BBW).  They were idolized and symbolized health, wealth and prosperity.  Italian Vogue has always been known as one of the leading Vogues (aside from the French) in revolutionizing fashion via the print medium in terms of editorial work, photography, styling, makeup and design.  On a global scale, the radical cover signals a positive change of perception of beauty--that beauty is unbounded and is a world of infinite possibilities.  It's all a matter of how we perceive things to be and not dictated by any norm, culture or society-after all, as the cliche goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".