Last Madrid Catwalk show banned models with a BMI below 18 as they didnt want annorexic/heroin chic type models. Personly I like a few curves.
Heres an article in the same vein, From todays UK Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/fashion/2006/09/20/efskinny20.xml
Spiral
Hilary Alexander: my fight with Hugh Grant
Charlotte Coyle would have no problems in Madrid. At 5ft 11in, with long blonde hair, huge aquamarine eyes and undeniable charisma, she is a successful model. She also has one vital statistic that the organisers of the Spanish capital's Fashion Week might find particularly attractive – a body mass index (BMI) of 26.4.
Cole vs Coyle: unlike super-skinny Lily Cole
, Charlotte Coyle has not been asked to model for London Fashion Week
BMI (calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by the square of height in metres ) is the indicator used to determine a healthy weight, and the Spaniards have caused a furore by declaring that all models on the catwalk this week must have a BMI of more than 18. This is an attempt to stop scarily underweight models stalking the runways like death on two legs.
In fact Charlotte's figure is actually rather too impressive – even for el fashionistas. Her BMI is just over the top edge of the "normal" range. And that is the reason why, despite her stunning looks, Charlotte has not been asked to hop on to the catwalk this week in Madrid, London or anywhere else.
Yet this is something she's proud of. For her success as a model so far has been in the "plus-size" market, and now Charlotte is the face for a very different, albeit unofficial, fashion campaign – one that aims to change radically the way the modelling industry works.
In March she was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, Beauty Reborn, that followed her attempts to get a plus-size beauty pageant off the ground. Not surprisingly, she found most of the fashion industry unable or unwilling to get involved. It is not a position Charlotte has much time for.
"The fashion industry is supposed to be about shock," she says. "So let's do something really shocking – like using bigger models."
Certainly, the time is ripe for a new attack on the cult of extreme thinness. Madrid's decision to ban ultra-thin models follows the death of Luisel Ramos, 22, in Uruguay last month from a heart attack moments after stepping off a catwalk. She had been told to lose weight and had been existing on little more than fluids.
Elsewhere in the world, however, the Spanish edict has been met with equal amounts of cheer and scorn. The Mayor of Milan threatened to follow suit, while an Australian modelling boss declared it a "positive step" for the industry. But in New York the talk was of discrimination lawsuits and in Paris, well, "everyone would laugh", says Didier Grumbach, the head of the French Couture Federation.
London's fashion community declared itself unmoved – even when Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, called for designers to shun girls who appear too skinny. The Government is being lobbied by doctors and parents, who are alarmed by the trend among celebrities to shrink themselves to an American size 0 (British size 4). This, they argue, is having a quantifiable effect on the number of girls suffering from anorexia.
Dr Jon Goldin of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London said yesterday that the glamourisation of emaciated women was significantly to blame for the number of seven-year-olds being treated for eating disorders.
One of Britain's most successful models, 18-year-old Lily Cole, whose size has been particularly criticised, has decided to fight back. "I am fine," she says. "I am healthy. I eat." At 5ft 11in – the same height as Charlotte Coyle – she would need to weigh at least 9 stone 3lb to be allowed onto the Madrid catwalk. While her weight is a closely guarded secret, most observers doubt she is that heavy.
Charlotte is more relaxed about revealing her weight. "I think I am about 13½ stone." she says. Raised in a family of five children in Derry, Northern Ireland, Charlotte, 24, was raised on regular Irish food and was a "chubby child", she says.
By her teens she was a size 14-16 and dieting furiously. "I read all the magazines and I believed their message: that you can't be beautiful unless you look like this – that is, thin. So I tried eating nothing but steamed rice and drinking water, crazy stupid diets like that. I thought being thin would make me happy."
Charlotte's breakthrough came in America four years ago. She was working as a receptionist in a salon in Washington when someone came in and uttered those immortal words: "You should be a model."
What he meant was plus-size modelling, a huge industry in America, where so many women are obese but still dare to enjoy clothes.
Charlotte was overjoyed when an agency took her on its books. "I never liked being bigger – suddenly I was valued for it. In front of the camera for my first shoot, I finally found what I was good at."
Charlotte returned to the UK a size 18-20, with a portfolio she was sure would land her work. It was, however, very different. "The negativity was horrible. I was toned and healthy looking but agencies told me to drop to a size 14. Don't you think that is outrageous? In the real world, size 14 is not a 'plus' size. The average British woman is size 16 and about 5ft 5in tall."
Charlotte is not a model basher. "Some of the girls on the catwalk are naturally slim and they look good. There are girls who are naturally size 8 and that is okay. But others are forcing themselves. You can tell who has an eating disorder – their bones are sticking out everywhere, their faces are emaciated and their eyes are saying 'feed me'. It is so sad someone had to die for this issue to be properly debated."
During filming of her documentary, Charlotte interviewed many of fashion's most influential names. The experience left her in no doubt about where the taste for skinny models originated, and why.
"The magazine editors told me they couldn't use larger models – even sporadically – as the designers didn't make any clothes big enough. Designers told me it cost too much money to create larger ranges."
Her solution is simple. Why not keep the slimmer girls for the catwalk, but use bigger girls for advertising and editorial work, for cosmetics, for example?
"There's no issue about clothes sizes, and bigger girls have less wrinkled skin, anyway. Let's have variety," she says.
Charlotte is now with the Close Models agency run by Harriet Close, who agrees with her. "The larger girls have fabulous skin and look incredibly healthy. I think women want to see models who look more like them – who have a few curves."
"What I want is balance in beauty," says Charlotte. "It shouldn't be skinny or nothing." Good sense, but she has a fight on her hands to convince the fashionistas.
or like the sign in my mother's kitchen said, "Skinny cooks can't be trusted." My wife is not a rail nor is she heavy set at all. However, man o' live, can she russle up some swanky grub. 
