Is TV finally accepting average-sized women?

By Martha Waggoner

updated 2:16 p.m. ET Aug. 26, 2009

RALEIGH, N.C. - Ask model and fashion designer Emme whether television and other media are more accepting of plus-size people, and she quickly corrects you.

"Average women," she says.

The host of the new Fox reality dating show, "More to Love," has been on this campaign since the mid-1990s, when she began telling full-size women to be more accepting of themselves. In her latest venture, she guides a 6-foot-3, 330-pound man as he chooses among 20 women who wear sizes ranging from 14 to 22.

Television is suddenly filled with images of full-figured people — real and fictional — although not as everyday people just living their lives. The shows focus on their size — on "More to Love," the contestants' height and weight, and that of the bachelor, were flashed on the screen as they were introduced in the first episode.

Oxygen's "Dance Your Ass Off" features 12 contestants, weighing a total of 3,000 pounds, who lose weight through dancing, and Lifetime's "Drop Dead Diva" is about a model-wannabe who dies and comes back as plus-size attorney.

The Style Network's reality show "Ruby" is in its second season, telling the story of Ruby Gettinger of Savannah, Ga., who's down to 350 pounds from her highest weight of 716.

"I think these welcomed shows are opening the aperture," on full-size women, said Emme, whose size ranges from a 12/14 to a 14/16. "These are fun shows to watch, and they are really taking the perspective of the full-sized woman and bringing it into the type of package people can relate to."

Some fashion magazines are ahead of the curve — so to speak — on featuring plus-size models. Glamour became serious about it in the past five years, featuring Queen Latifah on the cover in May 2004, said Cindi Leive, the magazine's executive editor. In the past six to 12 months, "there is just more and more of a hunger among women to see images of women that look and feel real.

"There's a sense that being a sort of cookie cutter, homogenous standard of what's beautiful has started to feel a little bit dated," Leive said.

‘I love the woman on p 194’
But the reaction to the 3-inch-by-3-inch photograph on page 194 of the September issue surprised even Leive. "I am gasping with delight," one reader wrote. "I love the woman on p 194," someone else wrote.

Free video   Plus-sized model speaks out Aug. 24: Lizzi Miller talks to TODAY's Matt Lauer about baring it all for Glamour magazine. Today show

Model Lizzi Miller, a 20-year-old who wears a size 12/14, is shown in sideways pose, her arms covering her breasts, only the string of a string bikini visible at the waist. The shocker: Her belly hangs over the string and rests just a bit on her thighs. Not only that, but she's laughing AS IF SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW.

"There's a roll in her belly that looks like every woman over the age of 16," Leive said. "And there she is, looking happy and confident and like she loves life and like she's the sexiest thing in the world."

If people do relate to the shows — and Fox hasn't decided whether to renew "More to Love" — it may be because they reflect the image that Americans see in the mirror. The average U.S. woman wears a size 14, and an estimated 56 percent of American women wear plus sizes, which start at size 14 or 16, depending on the brand.

But not everyone is getting on the curves-are-better wagon train. Who can forget the uproar about Jessica Simpson, whose true crime was one of fashion — wearing unattractive, high-waisted jeans? Or Jennifer Love Hewitt defending her bikini look with words that never should have to be uttered — "A size 2 is not fat!"

Women who are the presumed demographic for the shows aren't always with the program either.

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