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Thursday, July 22, 2010



ItalicI woke up this morning thinking about Twiggy. Twiggy was this young woman from Northern London who was discovered in 1966. One day she was a shampoo girl in a beauty shop, and the next she was The Face of the Year.

To get that black-eye look, she wore three pairs of false eyelashes, plus she painted extra "twigs" on the skin underneath them.

She was 5' 6" and weighed 91 lb.


In 1967, when I was 6 years old, her face (and her pencil-thin legs) were everywhere. She did 13 separate photo shoots for Vogue the year before, then landed on the cover of American Vogue no less than three times: April, July, and November. She also appeared on the covers of McCall's, Seventeen, Newsweek, and Harpers Bazaar.

In 1967, you couldn't escape Twiggy if you wanted to. Almost every girl I knew, but most importantly my mother, sister, and I, had Twiggy haircuts. We all thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Twiggy's measurements were 31-22-32.

Twiggy's legs were like two skinny snakes. Two very skinny snakes.

And she was impossibly cute.

Who didn't want to be skinny like Twiggy?

[This is where I could put in a few paragraphs about the sickos who serve up concentration-camp-thin fashion models as images of ideal feminine beauty, but I will refrain as I figure you already know where I stand on the modeling industry.]

I did some research, and it turns out Twiggy is still very much alive and well in England. Recently, she served as a judge on the television show "America's Next Top Model," that is, until she was replaced by a younger model.

She appeared in an Olay ad for wrinkle cream that created a stir when it was discovered that Twiggy's wrinkles had been airbrushed out. The ad was banned, and Olay was forced to replace the touched-up photo with one in which there had been "no post production work around the eyes."

To her credit, Twiggy's gone on the record as saying "Personally, I think there's something scary about injecting poison into your face."

Apparently, poison is out, but airbrushing is not, though in her defense I'm sure Olay paid her a huge wad-o-quid.

Either way, I was glad to learn that Twiggy's still alive and well, hawking her Twiggy London collection of apparel and accessories, that she didn't go into hiding when her Supermodel days came to their inevitable end.





2 comments:

seana graham said...

I remember Twiggy too. I suppose it's understandable that she seems somehow linked to the Beatles in my mind--it was all pretty much the same era.

I also mix her up with Mia Farrow, but I suppose that's understandable too.

Sherry O'Keefe said...

i wanted to do my country report in sixth grade on ireland, but my schoolmate chose england just so the report could include twiggy. i rather resented her then.

but now? i have a daughter who wanted to share her time with me- watching america's top model. i was so sure i'd not like the show, but i have to say i found much to like about twiggy being a judge on the show. grace and wisdom become her.