Natalia Vodianova responds to 'It's better to be skinny than to be fat' backlash

Unless you are living under a rock somewhere you will have heard the media going nuts over the comment Natalia Vodianova made while sitting on a panel at the Vogue Festival in London over the weekend. Natalia came right out and said 'It's better to be skinny than to be fat'. Oh how the media loved that moment in time. It's a chance to wave the "your horrible" flag in a model's face and call the industry a horrible machine. Well I got news for you, folks, Natalia Vodianova was saying what 99% of the western world already thinks but doesn't want to say for fear of sounding shallow and cruel. I'm not saying what she said was correct. In fact I think she was speaking her mind when every single PR would have told her to keep her thoughts to herself. Conversely, no press is bad press and this blow up has resulted in more people talking about Natalia Vodianova than ever before. Interesting how that happens. 

So here's Natalia Vodianova dealing with a huge press mess. So what's a girl to do? Well, in comes the glory of social media. Vodianova took to Facebook to publicly post her response to all the recent media attention... and this is what she said...(do feel free to share thoughts...)

I guess the reaction of the press is expected to be negative when I said it's better to be skinny then to be fat at the Vogue Festival this past weekend. However on the background of arriving from China where most people leave under the poverty line and have to share food and watch how much they eat to survive and on the background of how I grew up where sometimes I had to skip meals so there would be food for my little disabled sister and that feeling of missing bread so much some days because on some days we had no money to buy any (reason I had ulcers as little girl was constant irregular eating) could give an explanation why I felt moved to give another prospective on this issue.

I felt angry actually now I think about it. Our industry is scrutinised for giving false image and criteria of beauty and provoking eating disorders however there are other industries that might be even more to blame like food industry that constantly reinventing ways of pushing food on us. Makes people stuff fridges with food, buying pills, millions of books on diets, shopping for the right clothes to hide those extra few pounds, beauty products. I guess some would say that's what makes our economy go around. Yes, I choose to do more and eat less. Sorry world economy, I am a bad client!

It makes me feel even more sad that so much has been taken out of contexts by tabloid media. It happened to me in the past and still follows me around (like anorexia that I never had would be a good example! Just another case where words were interpreted at the desire of the journalist and copied by many). This time a really fun two hours I shared with Lily, Eva and Jourdan and our audience, where we had everyone laughing through most of it and where for 5 minutes I felt like a stand up comedian and had to add NHS and Daily Mail into it just to lighten the heavy subject of body issue up, turned into a sour one.

Again taking into consideration that the format of the event was not a speech by me but interaction with the audience it is clearly been blown out of proportion by some journalist/s to create a scandal. If I was giving a speech I would have chosen my words more carefully of course but considering the format and that so many people came up to me afterwards and told me how happy they were to have laughed and were glad that I was so "normal" and direct at the conference I doubt I offended someone there and if I did I apologise because I surely only meant to highlight a different point of view.

Back on the topic of discussion I wish I did say at the time, that I assume there is very little Anorexia or Bulimia issues in countries like Africa, China and Russia today!