These women will help you drop your beauty definition
IWB Post
March 31, 2015
Does beauty have any definition? Not really. These women stand for their right to be beautiful, loved and admired. And we call them truly beautiful from head to toes, outwardly and inwardly.
LAXMI AGARWAL
Laxmi was attacked in 2005 at age 16, by a 32-year-old man whose advances she had rejected. Today she has posed for the calendar and fashion shoots. She is an Indian campaigner with Stop Acid Attacks and a TV host. She has also advocated against acid attacks through gathering 27,000 signatures for a petition to curb acid sales, and taking that cause to the Indian Supreme Court. Her petition led the Supreme Court to order the central and state governments to regulate the sale of acid, and the Parliament to make prosecutions of acid attacks easier to pursue.
LEA T
The transgender model was discovered by Givenchy senior designer Riccardo Tisci and became the face of Givenchy in late 2010. After that, she appeared in many magazine editorials and strutted her stuff on runways. In 2014, LEA T also became the face of Redken, making her the first openly transgender model to front a global cosmetics brand.
DENISE BIDOT
Denise was the first plus-size model to walk the runways of NYFW in 2014. She has also appeared in campaigns for Target, Forever 21, Macy’s, and Nordstrom, and is now a spokesperson (along with model Marina Bulatkina) for “CURVES,” a campaign by photographer Victoria Janahshvili to start a conversation (by releasing an art photography book) about acceptance and body positivity.
JILLIAN MERCADO
Mercado has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, but that doesn’t define the striking beauty, who can be seen in campaigns for Diesel and Nordstrom. “There was a time where I compared myself to people around me…Too soon I realized that I was living a lie,” Mercado told i-D this year. “We must stop looking for guidance on how to be beautiful because we can be our own compasses.”
JAMIE BREWER
The 30-year-old actress, who is best known for her role on American Horror Story, recently achieved another milestone—she was the first model with Down syndrome to ever walk in NYFW. Although not aiming to be a runway regular, the actress stated that her part in Carrie Hammer’s “Role Models Not Runway Models” campaign was a step forward for the industry. “Young women…[see me] and say ‘hey, if she can do it so can I,'” she told Today.
CARMEN DELL’OREFICE
There’s no stopping this model, who—at the age of 83—appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Thailand. Considered the “oldest working model”, she first appeared on the cover of Vogue at the age of 15, and has been working ever since, with a short stint of retirement after her second marriage in 1958. Now, you can see her in campaigns for Target and Rolex, and in the pages of Vogue, W, and Harper’s Bazaar.
A model with a rare condition that causes white patches to form on the skin has taken the fashion world by storm after appearing in a New York Fashion Week show.
WINNIE HARLOW
A 20-year-old Canadian model is shaking up the fashion world and challenging the often-criticized airbrush-perfect standards of the industry. Winnie, who has a rare skin condition called vitiligo, is grabbing headlines after scoring two major international fashion campaigns this season. Harlow appears in Diesel’s new Spring/Summer 2015 campaign and in Spanish brand Desigual’s ‘Say Something Nice’ campaign.