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Audrey Hepburn | Coretta Scott King | Sally Ride | Margaret Thatcher

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There is a t-shirt design trending right now in the blogger and fashion community. It comes in a couple of variations, but ultimately it highlights the first names of several supermodels.

While I don’t want to hate on anyone’s livelihood and must admit that Nikki from Bedazzles After Dark is rocking the Super Chixxx version from Lulu’s, I still can’t help but feel like this t-shirt is leaving so much on the table.

Supermodels may be beautiful and tall and skinny, allegedly representing the perfect body type for displaying various cuts and colors of fabric. But that’s it. They are human clothes hangers.

With rare exception, supermodels aren’t typically healthy role models for other women. They are not often celebrated for their inner beauty, their intelligence, their kindness (even if they possess these traits). Instead their bodies are exploited as living canvases for a host of products; their images are manipulated digitally to make them even less human and recognizable, and yet we take one look at that Photoshopped image and can’t help but feel at least a little shame or disappointment in ourselves and our inability to achieve this manufactured ideal.

So while I respect that supermodels, and models in general, probably suffer the most under this constant and unforgiving societal microscope that provides them with a paycheck, what I cannot pretend to do is endorse their status as something aspirational or something material to the improvement of the world around us, or of ourselves.

That’s why I recently created my own version of the Supermodels t-shirt. But this version celebrates the Super Role Models that have impacted the course of history. Let’s celebrate and aspire to be like the women whose courage has toppled social inequity, broken records, heralded scientific breakthroughs, brought clean drinking water to remote villages throughout the world, and generally empowered the rest of humanity to want better, do better, be better. And not just on the outside. And not just in order to fit into a size 2 pair of jeans.

 

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“Good Hair Day” Cropped Faux Fur Jacket: Lulu’s, and similar here and here (indigo blue)

Super Role Models Tank Top: Add yourself to my Pre-order mailing list

Faux Leather Pants: Similar here and here

Rhinestone Necklace: Windsor

Faux Leather Clutch: H&M, similar here and here

Lips: Tarte Power Pigment for lips in “Tipsy”

Shoes: Similar here