Models who are in their mid 20's and to late 40's to me are the most attractive-although people now are looking younger and younger, Lauren Hutton is 60 and she is still attractive, and Ali MaCraw and Angelica Huston are still some of the most striking looking women, I think the stereo type is changing, as the babybommers age, scientists are publishing more studies and doing more studies on women in their 50's and 60's and 70's and their sexuality. People used to think women passed 50 stopped having sex, stopped being sexy! And women used to think it was inappropriate to look sexy after 55! Now that perception is changing, and we are seeing women like Susan Surandon modeling for Cover Girl, and Isabella Rosallini still modeling. I find women in general start to look really good in late 20's onward, Kate Moss looks better now than when she started, she looks better in her Calvin's too, more flesh in all the right places, and traces of life experiences on her face. Really young teen models often look blank and the inexperience could be found on their faces-even with tons of make up and in YSL outfits. I think models who can exudes emotions and have thousand expressions are more beautiful to me. The height and weight are not the first thing come to mind unless they are runway models.

40 is the new 30, and 50 is the new 40, 60 is the new 52, 70 is the new 60. 80 is the new 72....

20 is still just 20.

Have a look in this months Vogue for a discussion titled "The Skinny Debate".
Penny's blog "Let's have a heated debate!" (http://www.showstudio.com/blog/17409) also seeks to address this issue.

Fashion has not made it trendy to have eating disorders or be unhealthy. Fashion, in my personal opinion, however is

responsible for the representation of body and even its movements in modern day globalised culture. Mental illnesses

in relation to eating disorders are more know about now - they are not caused by 'simply' feeling under/over weight,

there is other issues involved. There is a big push at the moment for healthier lifestyles - smoking bans, healthy

eating promotion and better healthcare. I believe this will be something that will affect this topic.

I also agree with pretty much all of what KaWai said about emotion.
I have worked with teens and it is unbelieveable how apparent it is that they have not discovered themselves yet -

unexperienced. Beauty, in fact, does lie within. The eyes of a model, or any women for that matter, are extremely

interesting to me, conveying largely what that person is about and how they feel in that moment.

I just posted a reply to "Let's have a heated debate". Well, the fact is, the fashion industry has presented very limited standard of beauty. It's been like that for as long as the fashion industry existed. The models in the 50's were thin, although in popular culture Marilyn Monroe was the ideal figure. Body type has nothing to do with beauty. Unless the body types are at the 2 ends of extremes, than it's not attractive. But the range in between doesn't affect true beauty. But fashion industry isn't about true beauty, is it? The image of beauty is what every artist seeks, and in the process something never change, that is there's got to be some inner life, wisdom and intelligence behind the facade. The more I talk about beauty the less it is about body type. The best models around they all have something in common-they have expressions, emotions, warmth on their faces and they know how to use their instrument. You can have the most pretty girl in the world but if she can't move and give you emotions and expression then you can get tired of looking at her pretty quickly. I always go back to Kate Moss, she is a good example. She is not the most beautiful woman on the planet, she isn't even the most beautiful model, but she is the best, and now when you see her face, compare to her face at 17, you see so much more going on in her eyes, on her face. She isn't tall, doesn't have the ideal figure, but she knows how to use her instrument, and she has attainable beauty. Tyra Banks in People magazine was talking about her weight, she got so tired of trying to fit into high fashion standard that she told her booker to find jobs for her that require busty fuller figured models, and that's how she got Sports Illustrated and Victoria Secrets.

If you see that new video of Tyra Banks...moaning and complaining about how people view fuller figures..etc ...etc....I just felt sorry for her.......rather sad to see how she presents herself physically and mentally .....being fuller is not that big deal as yet she makes it sound in the video as if trying to gain sympathy for herself....as if the whole world is against her ?....in this case it is not about being fuller what bothers her it is just about her big and fuller ego !...........Not the right person to address the issue......

Everything thing about our bodies is encoded in our genes....thanks God we found that out!........ and some people tend to be full... fuller.......extra fuller......Some people are encoded to be thing......but extra, extra thing is another story....
Maybe people should just learn to understand how nature encoded their bodies and make the best of it..........be sensible !... eating well...exercising.....etc etc etc.......There is no magic formula........

To blame " Fashion " for the ills is being rather naive to put it mildly.......maybe it is more to do with how we treat each other......how we view people who are different and do not ‘perfectly’ fit in the ideal of what is today considered "beauty"...maybe is to do more with peoples own insecurities born from the circumstances in their own immediate environment.........maybe the problem lies with how parents also help to build teenager’s confidence about what really matters in life.....charity begins at home as the saying goes.......

.....Sometimes I wonder .......what are we really talking about..?.....people talk about models put on the covers as the ideal beauty......but do we see 100 or 1000 of pseudo Kates ....Naomis....Doutzes....etc etc....walking on the streets because they happened to be the personification of ideal beauty ? .........can people really become them ?........physically ?......

Fashion is just part of the fantasy......and part of the fantasy is to know....that it is a fantasy.............

What is beauty in women in real life vs in fashion?

I never watched the video of Tyra Banks, just as well.