Size 14 model Emme: love the body you’re in

October 17, 2007

From Alex Witchel in the New York Times:

“I see the straight models on shoots sometimes, and when they bend over their backs look like rats — all bones. They live on Diet Coke and Marlboros to keep their weight down. And they have to work out all the time.”THE moment came, as it inevitably does. She stood, turned and started to walk. Her lime green T-shirt tucked into her form-fitting pants, she lifted her head and smiled. The men had left the restaurant by now. The women had not. In front of her, they smiled back. Behind her, their eyes followed her pants, amply filled by a pair of hips as broad as her shoulders. Some looked concerned. Some looked relieved. All looked at their plates.

Emme Aronson was going to the ladies’ room, and at 5 foot 11, 190 pounds, she’s hard to miss. Emme (pronounced like Emmy), as she is known professionally, is the world’s leading model for plus sizes, which means size 12 and above. And that means 60 percent of the women in this country. Emme herself wears a 14 or 16 and a size 11 shoe. Though her agency, Ford Models, would not divulge her exact earnings, it did say that Emme is the top moneymaker in her division worldwide.

Most women would kill to have Emme’s face, with her great bones and wide eyes, recently on billboard display in Times Square for Liz Clai borne’s plus-size line, Elisabeth. Just as many would kill to have her confidence.

”I try and wear clothes that are tighter,” she said. ”I have a stomach and a fleshy butt. This is just another body type; it’s not slovenly. I have great proportion.”

Does she also have cellulite? ”Of course,” she said easily. ”And I have a gut. But when you look at everyone else, they have one, too. So, instead of standing in front of the mirror saying, ‘You look horrible,’ I don’t stay away from bikinis. The last time I went to the beach I wore a thong. Sometimes I go a little overboard to get to a balanced place. It’s all attitude. I’m never going to be size 10, 150 pounds again. But if I feel great, that’s more attractive than trying to cover up with a towel.”

It’s also attractive to eat with a woman who admits to an appetite. When the waitress at Park Avalon, on Park Avenue South, described the day’s specials, Emme’s response was ”Mmmmmmmm.” First she ordered a glass of chardonnay, followed by an appetizer of a swordfish hand roll with tabbouleh and an entree of crab cakes. She doesn’t pick. She eats.

”I stopped dieting,” she said. ”I’ve changed my psyche, my self-esteem, the ‘good girl, bad girl’ thing. If you cheat on your husband or commit murder, that’s bad. A cookie is just a cookie. I got tired of fighting myself every step of the way. I live my life now. I don’t get crazy.”

Emme, 33, shares her philosophy in her new book, ”True Beauty: Positive Attitudes and Practical Tips From the World’s Leading Plus-Size Model” (Putnam, $23.95), written with Daniel Paisner. More than 40,000 copies have been printed in this country, and the book has also been published in the Czech Republic, New Zealand and Australia. Emme has an avid following among Australian women, 66 percent of whom are plus-sized. ”I have the first magazine cover a plus-size model ever had there, for New Woman,” she said.

In the United States, Mode, a new fashion magazine for plus sizes, published its premiere issue last month. ”We could not have done this magazine five years ago,” said Julie Lewit-Nirenberg, who created it with Nancy Nadler LeWinter. ”It was all polyester then, and muumuus. Now, designers and manufacturers have recognized that this is not a niche market but the majority of American women. Versace, Givenchy, Emanuel and Dana Buchman are all doing collections now for sizes 14 to 24.”

But Alan Millstein of the Fashion Network Report, a newsletter for the retail industry, finds that change has been slow in coming. ”There is still enormous prejudice among retailers when it comes to plus sizes,” he said. ”Those customers pay higher prices for their clothes than other women do, and there is rarely a sale in those departments because the stores know they’re dealing with desperadoes. Swimsuits and intimate apparel are absolute nightmares, and shoes are a problem as well.”

Although retailers may not be meeting the need, Mr. Millstein said that catalogues, home-shopping networks and sewing patterns are helping to supply the market. ”But,” he added, ”Conde Nast and Hearst are also at fault. In those fashion magazines with their descriptive patter of ‘young,’ ‘thin,’ ‘waif,’ ‘chic,’ and their obsession with articles on diets and diet aids, the large woman hasn’t got a fighting chance.”

That’s an opinion Emme shares. ”The diet industry is a $33-billion-a-year business with a 98 percent failure rate,” she said. ”We’ve fallen into a whole system where we want to be accepted and seen as attractive. Those are basic needs, and who knows that better than advertisers? I don’t promote obesity, and I don’t promote anorexia. We should all have more compassion for our differences. We don’t have to be the same to be accepted.”

This was a lesson she learned early. Emme, whose name originally was Melissa Miller, was raised by her mother in Manhattan after her parents’ divorce. (Her mother called her ‘M,’ which turned into Emme.) When she was 5, her mother married a man named Bill (Emme won’t reveal his full name), and they moved to Saudi Arabia, where he taught music at a junior high school. Like her father, who is deceased, Bill was a large man, 6 foot 6, weighing more than 300 pounds. Along with his own weight, he was obsessed with Emme’s.

In her book, she tells the story of Bill’s instructing her at age 12 to strip down to her underwear while he took a black marker and drew circles on her outer thighs, hips, stomach and arms to highlight where she needed to lose weight. She scrubbed them off, or thought she did, put on her bathing suit and went out for a swim. But when she got to the pool, one of the boys started pointing and laughing at the marks that stayed behind.

”After that, I didn’t allow myself to feel,” she said. ”A few years ago I went into therapy and said, ‘I’m angry, and I need to know why.’ ”

She had enough reasons to choose from. Besides her stepfather and the weigh-ins he subjected her to, there was the death of her mother from cancer at 39, when Emme was 15. Her mother had had two more children with Bill: Melanie, now 24, a plus-size model at the Wilhelmina agency, and Chip, 26, a Wall Street trader and part-time plus-size model himself. Emme says she is close to both of them, though she no longer speaks to her stepfather. ”I had to put up a very healthy boundary,” she said. ”I had to move on and stop trying to fix what happened.”

Part of that process was demystifying food. ”I eat desserts when I feel like it,” she said. ”Yesterday, I had a Hershey bar with almonds. I was in the mood. I’ve allowed myself everything for so long I don’t have to overdo it because I haven’t had it. I eat Famous Amos cookies at night with tea. I eat pizza, goat cheese, french toast, waffles, omelets, roast potatoes. I don’t eat a lot of meat because it hurts my stomach. But when I need to eat it, I do. And I don’t eat poultry.”

Why?

Her look was dark. ”Our country does a lot of stuff to our chickens.”

That’s her former life as a reporter peeking through. When she was high-school age, her family moved back to the States, settling in Houston, and Emme attended the Kent School in Connecticut, where she joined the rowing team, sealing a life’s passion for strenuous exercise. After graduating from Syracuse University in 1985, she worked first as an NBC page in Los Angeles, then as an on-camera reporter for the NBC affiliate in Flagstaff, Ariz. She stayed for two years before pursuing a marketing career in New York, during which time friends encouraged her to try modeling.

Well! To become a model and be able to eat normal amounts of food and not only that, but also to be 33, when most models are considered ancient, is truly remarkable. Then again, their faces don’t have as much padding.

Emme smiled. ”It’s true I don’t show that many wrinkles,” she said. ”The majority of the women we represent range from ages 25 to 55. So, I don’t have to freak out about age or weight. I see the straight models on shoots sometimes, and when they bend over their backs look like rats — all bones. They live on Diet Coke and Marlboros to keep their weight down. And they have to work out all the time.” Emme swims and runs on a treadmill three times a week.

Not that she has time for more. Besides a full modeling schedule (she was on her way to Miami for a Bloomingdale’s shoot before taking off for Australia for a book tour), she is the spokeswoman for both Liz Claiborne’s Elisabeth line and for Playtex’s new full-figured lingerie, Body Language. She is also in demand on the lecture circuit.

”I have a deep concern for women who wear size 14 and above,” she said. ”They have no voice. My book and my talks are vehicles to say, ‘You’re not alone.’ Women who’ve read the book call me and cry. It’s the first time they’re hearing a positive, nonbashing message.”

Emme hears one all the time, from her husband of seven years, Phillip Aronson, whom she knew at Syracuse. The couple live in Bergen County, N.J., and he works in New York as a creative vice president for the Aronson Group, his family’s advertising agency. He is 5 foot 11, the same height as his wife, but at 155 pounds, he is 35 pounds lighter. He told People magazine, which included Emme in its 50 Most Beautiful People in the World issue of 1994, ”When I’m tired, she can give me a piggyback ride.”

Emme said happily: ”He’s been such an inspiration to me. He really stands up for what I’m doing. And we plan to have a family in the next couple of years.”

But first, dessert. ”Do you want to have some thinly sliced biscotti?” she asked, ordering them along with herbal tea. She ate one piece and left the rest before applying hand cream (”Want some?” she asked cozily) and freshening her makeup for a commercial audition.

”Each person has to ask, ‘What’s not making me happy?’ ” she said, reaching for her coat. ”My story is a story of hope, and maybe it can re-educate people. Everyone should start to become their own role model in their own image.”