Most women would do just about anything to have a body like the one inhabited by Miss England Georgia Horsley, and Horsley herself is quite happy with it.
So it came as somewhat of a surprise to Horsley when she was advised that if she wanted a real shot of winning the Miss World title, she had better pack on a few pounds.
“I was a little bit shocked,” the 20-year-old size 4 told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira during an interview Friday. “Personally I don’t think I’m too fat. I don’t think I’m too thin. I’m happy with the way I am.”
At 5-foot-8, Horsley weighs 9 stone in England, 126 pounds in the United States, and 57 kilos everywhere else.
“I’ve just got more an athletic, boyish-type figure rather than the hourglass-type figure some women have,” Horsley remarked.
Nevertheless, for Queen and country Horsley is making the sacrifice of throwing herself into a high-fat diet and forcing herself to eat that extra chunk or three of chocolate.
“I’m going to eat healthy fat such as nuts and avocado – oily, fresh things like that – just to see if it will make me put on those curves,” she told Vieira.
The debate in Europe’s fashion world has been over size-zero models who have been banned from some runways because, many feel, they promote an unrealistic – and unhealthy – body image for women.
Horsley says she has a voracious appetite and is hardly stick-thin, but after she won the Miss England crown, pageant organizers told her that the Miss World contest tends to favor women who are more voluptuous. The contest will be held in China on Dec. 1.
“Beauty pageants are meant to appeal to women everywhere and Miss World has always championed real women," Miss England director Angie Beasley has told British newspapers.
“I can understand,” Horsley said. “More curvy women promotes a much more healthy image for the Miss World competition. I would probably have been a bit more hurt if they had told me to lose weight. That would have been worse.”
No big deal
Horsley sees the request as no different than asking her to try a different hair style or get a bit more of a tan.
“If it were something ridiculous like get me to chop my hair off, no,” she said. “[But] I don’t think this is a major, major thing. They just want me to put on a few pounds. They don’t want to me to put on a huge amount weight."
She hasn’t heard that any other contestants have been told build a little bulk. But, she said, “I’m sure that there are going to be girls going to China that are going to be bigger than me or smaller than me. I think there’s going to be a huge range of different sized girls out there.”
Vieira observed that the problem with trying to get curvier is that you never know where the weight is going to go. Horsley’s coaches may want her to be bustier, but she may just get a bigger stomach.
“I’m trying to work out at the same time,” Horsley said. “It’ll hopefully maybe level things out a bit. But if I do start putting weight on, say on my stomach or on my thighs where I don’t really want it, I’ll just scrap the idea and accept the fact I’m a naturally athletic build and can’t do the curves.”