Iskra Lawrence is a popular British lingerie model. Precisely because of a few extra pounds here and there and the way she fights against an unattainable beauty ideal as depicted by the fashion industry and media.
Iskra Lawrence: Caught Between Two Stools
Iskra Lawrence became a model at the age of thirteen when she was signed by the agency after participating in an Elle competition. However, Elle let her go a few years later because she got fuller hips and gained weight.
As a plus-size model, she wasn’t heavy enough, leaving her caught between two stools.
As a result, Iskra Lawrence started extreme dieting and considered surgery to have as thin legs as the models she was competing with. Until she realized that this wasn’t the way for her. She signed with a small modeling agency and started calling lingerie companies herself.
Often she was told that she was “too feminine” or “too commercial”.
A few smaller companies did book her, which gave her enough confidence to move to New York. When she then booked a job with the major lingerie chain Aerie for the campaign called “#aerie real”, her fame skyrocketed.
“No retouching”
The words “no retouching” come up frequently when speaking by and about Iskra Lawrence. She is particularly popular on Instagram because she wants to show only a real version of herself.
She only posts unedited, airbrush-free photos on her Instagram account.
As managing editor of the website Runway Riot, she provides a platform for women of all shapes and sizes. Iskra Lawrence finds it unfortunate that so many women edit their photos on Instagram. Instagram should be real, just a selfie of how you really look.
“Facing Haters”
Iskra Lawrence has a large likability factor. An example of this is the way she handled the following comment on one of her posts on Insta:
“Fat cow. It’s only cus every F****r on this planet is obese that’s the norm… Plus-size models? give me a F*****g breaking. Everyone needs to stop eating McDonald’s, the NHS is f****d because of people like her eating too many bags of crisps.”
Iskra Lawrence responded with this photo:
An Example, but not an Exemplar?
A beautiful, confident woman Destiny’s Child would be proud of. However, the question is whether Iskra Lawrence actually contributes to a more realistic beauty ideal for women.
Of course, she deserves praise for showing herself as she is. But how she is, is not attainable for many. In fact, I think “the average woman” has more chance of having the figure of a bikini fitness athlete than that of Iskra. One is a matter of hard work, the other of luck.
Replacing One Unattainable Ideal with Another
I must admit I was a bit critical of the “Iskra phenomenon”. I wondered if one unattainable ideal was now being replaced by an equally unattainable one.
Iskra Lawrence does have a few major advantages, both literally and figuratively. Most of those extra pounds she supposedly has too much for the majority of the fashion industry are actually fantastically distributed. Iskra could have been a star in many rap videos years before the rest of the world learned to appreciate butts (albeit in baby steps from Kate Middleton, via Beyonce and J-Lo, to Kim and Nicki).
Now that we’ve entered a time when women seem to be getting implants in their buttocks en masse, it’s naturally wonderful if your belly has a sort of fat-draining layer and most of the fat goes to your buttocks, breasts, and thighs.
However, I often hear a very different story from women. Complaints about the fact that for some, when losing weight, their breasts start to get smaller first, followed by their buttocks, and only lastly their stomach. Women like that would have a less attractive figure than Iskra Lawrence with a similar body fat percentage.
And I mean according to their own standards.
Iskra eats what she wants but in moderation. She also trains regularly, but is much less concerned with shaping her figure like thinner models in the fashion industry or highly trained fitness athletes. Some may find comfort in that. “So I can look beautiful without having to do so much for it.” The truth, however, is that Iskra Lawrence can look like this without having to do so much for it.
That says nothing about you, sorry.
The less she does for it, the more she owes to her genes and the less her results can also be your results.
Referring back to an article I recently wrote: do you want to be happier with your body by changing your body? Or do you want to learn to be happier with your body?
In that regard, Iskra Lawrence falls into the second category. Still, as always, there is the chance that others will want to look like her. If you are looking for someone to resemble, find someone who had the same starting position and achieved what you want to achieve. It’s likely that you’ll end up with the people who are masters of body transformations like models and fitness athletes.
Then there’s still the question of whether you’re willing to work just as hard.
Iskra Lawrence: Don’t Compare Yourself to Others
For Independent, Iskra Lawrence said:
Stop comparing yourself to anybody else. The [pictures of] movie stars, even the Disney characters, that’s not real. That’s not attainable. You can’t be anybody else. You are you. You can’t be them. So you really just have to start embracing yourself and accepting so-called flaws that society has given the name ‘flaws’. It’s just our body, our patchwork quilt.
Iskra herself is active in educating people about eating disorders and receives many requests for help from women struggling with themselves. I also genuinely believe in her involvement in this respect.
A Larger Box
Iskra Lawrence shows that you don’t have to be squeezed into that one tight box of the mainstream fashion industry to be successful as a model. She has found a different box, but not everyone fits in there either.
However, the fact remains that “the media” (of which I myself am a part as editor and photographer) shows what “we” think many people find beautiful. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing about Iskra now.
