Transcript for Models vs. Real Women: Growing Body Gap

They are everywhere around us in the fashion magazines and on the runways and a lot of young girls grow up wanting to be just like them these models who seem impossibly thin. And today it was revealed that the gap between them. And the average American woman has never been greater that even the super models from the seventies and eighties like Cindy Crawford and Christie Brinkley. Might be too big to succeed in modeling today. Here's ABC's Lindsey Davis on this dramatic change in American life. The picture is supposed to be shocking. An average size woman in twine with an average size model that they were really beautiful. I thought they were shocking. -- -- they were going to cause some controversy. Plus model magazine says standard fashion models have gotten so tiny. Supermodels of twenty years ago she Brinkley's interest offered Beverly Johnson would be plus size models today. At the height of your career what size were you wearing. Earth -- varying between us for in the six would you be surprised to know that if you wore a size six today that you might be considered as a plus size model. No I would not suppressed. -- and I don't. Even as the average American woman is getting bigger. Models continue to shrink twelve years ago the average fashion model -- 8% less than the average woman. Today she weighs 23%. Less. This is the real life this I don't think that people realize how much fashion and models and -- campaigns and -- -- as does to the woman's self esteem. -- like to order is a plus size him up and she's one of my heroes that we need to embrace our bodies -- lover buddies. As they are. While the fashion industry continues to praise skinny. These photos are proof that the conversation between mothers and daughters advertisers and designers. May need to expand. Lindsey Davis ABC news New York.

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