Twiggy (1949- ) was a British supermodel famous in the 1960s. Back then she seemed shockingly thin and boy-like, even to white people, but now most high fashion models are like that. Current ideas of thin as beautiful start with her.
Marshall McLuhan said, “Twiggy is an X-ray, not a picture.”
Diana Vreeland, the head of Vogue magazine in the 1960s said she was perfect: “the straightest legs, knees like little peaches, tiny narrow supple feet, rounded arms, and beautiful wrists and throat. She was both modern and romantic.”
When asked about her figure Twiggy said, “It’s not really what you call a figure, is it?”
But what mattered most was not what McLuhan, Twiggy or even Vreeland thought, but what the fashion designers thought. They loved her figure, or the lack of it: she made their clothes look so wonderful.
Her height was 1.69 metres (5 foot 6.5 inches), her weight, 41 kg (90 pounds) and her measurements, 81-58-81 cm (32AA-23-32). She barely had any breasts. She was anorexic-thin without being anorexic: she ate like a horse.
Growing up, Twiggy hated her figure: “You were supposed to look like Brenda Lee, very curvy and round, pointed breasts and pointed-toe shoes,” she said. She only started to like her figure once it made her rich and famous.
She was so thin that the other children called her “Twigs”. No matter how much she ate she did not gain much weight. Her mother took her to the doctor to see what was wrong. Nothing was wrong: it was just the way she was.
Born Lesley Hornby, she grew up in north London. By age 15 she had dropped out of school and worked for a hairdresser. Against her mother’s wishes she took up with a man ten years older than her, Nigel Davies.
But Davies was no ordinary man: against all common sense of the time, he thought she could become a model. He had her hair cut short and put her picture in shop windows. Her look caught on. By 1966 the Daily Express called her “The Face of 66”. In 1967 she came to America and was famous overnight.
She spoke English not in the RP of the Queen and the rich, but in the Cockney of the ordinary people of London. She wore the new mod fashions of Mary Quant, who wanted to bring high fashion to the masses.
In 1970 Twiggy left modelling to sing and act. Most of her stuff is forgettable, but she was good in “My One and Only” with Tommy Tune on Broadway in the 1980s and in the film “The Boy Friend” (1971). One of her songs reached number 1 in Japan and another reached number 35 in Britain in 1977.
In the 2000s she was a judge on Tyra Banks’s television show “America’s Next Top Model”. She also modelled for Marks & Spencer, the British department store.
See also:
I LIKE TO BE LIKE HER
LikeLike
Does it matter how tiny she looks?People are too busy worrying over what others look like…come on get real already!I exactly her size and i’m very natural being thin like her.I have 2 very thin parents and both and i cannot gain weight for nothing and i hate it when people says that crap about me being so skinny and looking anorexic…people have no lives..really!!!!
LikeLike
Well I have been with a girl who was this body type and nothing wrong with that. Nice girl. But I just like more rounded type of women. And I’m not sure nobody here tries to tell that it is wrong to be thin or skinny by nature.
What I, and I guess some others are saying is this: it is terrible that this bodytype is shown in magazines etc as the only good one. Teenage girls diet like crazies, there are even dieting kids under ten now, which to me is just fuckin crazy. I mean, were is the common sense! We are all different. There is no “bodytypes”, just humanbeings. One is fat,another is thin, one is tall and another short. That is how we are.
In recent years the acient sauna culture has been declining in Finland and what has happened: more and more kids are havin eating disorders. When I was growing up the whole families went together to saunas. You saw naked people, old people, young people, nude, and learned that we are all different. When I was at my teens I knew only two girls who had eating disorders of somesorts. Friend of mine who is a teatcher told me that now almost fifth of the teenagers have somekind of problems with their weight or imagined bodyfats. That is sick.
Point is that be yourself. Respect that. Yes, you can keep fit if its your thing. I used to lift weights, play american football, did some boxing, judo and mma (only back then it was called free fighting), but I remained short and fat, barrell type. Nothing I could do. I’m one ugly SoB, but because I was always ok with myself I had no problems with girls, women or anybody. Was I called fat? Sometimes, but so what?
Courtney, you say you are naturally small and petite. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is that some girl whose natural bodyweight is around 70kg tries to get down to 45kg’s. Problem is that once womens bodyfat percentage goes below certain level, their hormonal system goes haywire. Once that happens, you are in trouble. Ballet dancers know this. When they eventually retire their bones are like glass. Reason? No periods during the career because they had to stay thin. This is a fact.
If you are naturally petite, there is nothing wrong with that. But it is wrong to try to force majority of women to the same model. I know thin women are not behind it. It is the fashion industry and cosmetics industry, the weight loss industry and others.
LikeLike
She has such big eyes! She’s so cute!! 😀
LikeLike